Blue State Blues: ‘I’m From the Government And I’m Here to Help’

“The nine most terrifying words in the English language are: ‘I’m from the Government, and I’m here to help.'”

That is one of President Ronald Reagan’s most famous quotes — a declaration of war on the bloated bureaucracy of the Great Society.

Conservatives are used to hearing that quote cited as the ultimate example of what we believe, or are meant to believe: that the government is responsible for our problems, crushing individual initiative and traditional values.

I had reason to reconsider that quote this week, when Secretary of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) Scott Turner visited the Pacific Palisades to meet with victims of the recent wildfire.

About ten of my neighbors came to meet Turner on a cold, rainy evening outside the local public school — which had burned down, save for the rainbow mosaic on the front entrance.

When he arrived, Turner said: “I’m here, and I’m willing and able to help and to serve.”

He meant it. And my neighbors and I were moved by the fact that he was there, and that he listened to our ideas — such as low-interest or zero-interest Federal Housing Administration (FHA) loans to cover the gap between fire insurance payouts and the costs of rebuilding; or federal intervention to make whole those residents who were dropped by their insurance carriers in the weeks before the fire, thanks to California’s ridiculous price controls.

Turner is from the government, and he is here to help. And he really can help, because if HUD and the FHA can provide loans — or can be authorized by Congress to do so, if a new program is necessary — they can jump-start rebuilding in our community.

Without that assistance, many of my neighbors will be unable to raise the cash to rebuild. They will be forced to leave their lots empty for years — or to sell to outside developers, and move away.

As I stood there, watching Turner interact with my grateful, hopeful neighbors, I reconsidered Reagan’s famous quote.

The state government in California certainly seemed to fit the description of the kind of bad government Reagan was talking about. So, too, did the local government, as personified in Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass, who slashed the firefighting budget and then flew off to Ghana when she knew that a life-threatening wind was coming.

But the federal government has generally been extremely helpful. President Trump visited Palisades and pressured Mayor Bass to let the residents return to their homes and begin clearing their lots.

EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin visited and oversaw the biggest and fastest cleanup of hazardous material in American history.

Ambassador Ric Grenell has been intervening whenever state and local officials have fallen short or descended into infighting.

So was Reagan wrong?

It helps to revisit the context in which he said those famous words, on at least one occasion.

In August 1986, Reagan visited his birth state of Illinois to deliver federal assistance to struggling farmers. He noted that while government is often the problem, it can also be part of the solution.

His full quote, in context, is below:

I think you all know that I’ve always felt the nine most terrifying words in the English language are: I’m from the Government, and I’m here to help. A great many of the current problems on the farm were caused by government-imposed embargoes and inflation, not to mention government’s long history of conflicting and haphazard policies. Our ultimate goal, of course, is economic independence for agriculture, and through steps like the tax reform bill, we seek to return farming to real farmers. But until we make that transition, the Government must act compassionately and responsibly. In order to see farmers through these tough times, our administration has committed record amounts of assistance, spending more in this year alone than any previous administration spent during its entire tenure. No area of the budget, including defense, has grown as fast as our support for agriculture.

Earlier this month we announced our decisions on grain exports, and this morning we announced a drought assistance task force and, with regard to storage problems, the availability of price-support loans for all the grain in this year’s crop. The message in all this is very simple: America’s farmers should know that our commitment to helping them is unshakable. And as long as I am in Washington, their concerns are going to be heard and acted upon.

Reagan, like Turner, was from the government, and was there to help.

The Trump administration’s interventions for the communities affected by the Palisades and Eaton Fires have been in that tradition. Government, the conservative economist F.A. Hayek argued, can play a role in emergencies, when people have no other way to protect themselves.

“There are good reasons,” he wrote, “why we should endeavor to use whatever political organization we have at our disposal to make provision for the weak or infirm or for the victims of unforeseeable disaster.”

But it is important to remember: government often does not do the right thing unless the public compels it to do so.

My neighbors and I will be watching what the administration does, and fighting for what we need to rebuild, quickly.

Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News and the host of Breitbart News Sunday on Sirius XM Patriot on Sunday evenings from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. ET (4 p.m. to 7 p.m. PT). He is the author of The Agenda: What Trump Should Do in His First 100 Days, available for pre-order on Amazon. He is also the author of The Trumpian Virtues: The Lessons and Legacy of Donald Trump’s Presidency, now available on Audible. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.