Subsidiarity
If you haven’t encountered that word before, it refers to an organizational principle whereby political and social issues and problems are best dealt with at the lowest (most local) levels that can resolve them. You can also think of subsidiarity as calling for as little government involvement as possible.
For example, in our not-too-distant past, welfare needs were typically handled no higher than on a county level, and often at a town level. And frequently, much of the burden was handled through churches and other private charitable groups, often on a volunteer basis. That way, there was little or no welfare fraud (because locals knew who had real need – and who didn’t), and most people who received benefits tried to get back on their own as soon as they could. Virtually no one starved, and no one who needed shelter went without it.
Today, with so many transfer payments coming out of Washington through faceless bureaucrats, it’s fairly easy to game the system. Indeed, some analysts estimate that a third of federal welfare is wasted on fraud, and we are seeing examples of that dramatically played out today. Indeed, fraud plus the “administrative costs” of the bureaucracy have led to estimates that for every dollar allocated by Washington for welfare, people in real need are lucky to get about forty cents. Also, with the various types of welfare payments from federal coffers, most transfer payees are not publicly identified, so there’s no social pressure (or hurry) to get off the wagon.
Under the US Constitution (Article 1, Section 8), the feds are expressly given a limited and specified number of responsibilities (powers), all of which are either beyond the capabilities of individual states or more practical to be handled nationally – for example, providing a national defense, laying and collecting certain taxes, maintaining a sound currency, conducting foreign policy, controlling naturalization, regulating patents and copyrights, and setting basic rules for interstate commerce. All other duties – i.e., those not specifically delegated to the feds – are reserved to the states (10th Amendment).
But even though the Constitution hasn’t changed on these basics, the feds have wormed their way into virtually every facet of our lives – how we educate our children, how we provide for retirement and health care, how we take care of those in need, where (and even how) we can worship, how some products are made, how we protect our families…. The list goes on and will keep getting longer if we let it.
The COVID pandemic provided a clear picture of what might be in store. You probably noticed that at the outset of the pandemic many state governors (and of course the media) were blaming the feds, specifically Donald Trump, for being unprepared for this crisis. Never mind that under the Constitution, governors have primary responsibility for the well-being of the people in their states (that’s federalism); and mayors, town supervisors, etc. share in that responsibility for those in their constituencies. Yet, most of these officials looked first to Uncle Sugar to “do something.” Then, when Uncle Sugar didn’t immediately give them what they wanted, some of them overreacted with repressive lockdown measures. Wisconsin and Michigan were two examples.
And regarding the potshots at Trump’s “unpreparedness,” the country was just as unprepared under previous administrations. Actually, in 2005, George W. Bush warned of our unpreparedness for pandemics (after reading a book on the 1918 Spanish Flu pandemic) and ordered substantial medical equipment, including N95 masks, to be stockpiled. The stockpile was mostly depleted by 2014 and never replenished. None of the more local leaders spoke up because everyone depended on Uncle Sugar.
Of course, once the buck of meeting the COVID emergency was passed up to the federal level, it was fumbled by DC bureaucrats and lost in a pile of needless regulations. As a result, there was delay, confusion, and (above all) politics involved in their response. In hindsight, it would have been far wiser for both the feds and the states to procure and stockpile ventilators and masks instead of rules, regulations, and political talking points.
Of course, this piece isn’t meant to be a commentary on the COVID response. The need for subsidiarity in governance is much broader. Consider, for example, the US Department of Education. US taxpayers spend some $200 billion a year to keep this bloated bureaucracy afloat. But ask yourself: Are the educrats in Washington any smarter with more advanced degrees than the educrats in, say, the Wisconsin Department of Education? Or in the Maine Department of Education? Or in the Vermont Department of Education? Do the feds somehow know the educational needs of Missouri kids better than the Missouri educrats? Does one-size-fits-all suffice for all states? What if the one size is a colossal failure, like Common Core? These questions are rhetorical – that is, they answer themselves – and one might well conclude that the US Department of Education is largely redundant and a huge waste of taxpayer money.
A similar line of questioning can be applied to several other federal bureaus that have similar state counterparts – the EPA, Health and Human Services, and HUD, for example. We spend hundreds of billions a year keeping these redundant agencies alive – and in return, we get to share equally in their one-size-fits-all failed “solutions.”
As one pundit noted regarding the pandemic: “There’s a huge [government] revenue shortfall coming and when this fiasco is over it will be the ideal time to downsize government bodies large and small” (Barney Brenner, Townhall, 4/20/20). Ironically, in the pandemic, most of the non-essential workers were in government. They produced nothing of intrinsic (marketable) value, and yet nearly all continued to collect paychecks.
The fact is, world history (unretouched) shows that most top-down central government planning schemes have not ended well. Recall, for example, Stalin’s five-year plans in Russia, or Mao’s agricultural planning in China. Inevitably, coercion must be employed to enforce its diktats, and tyranny is often the result. And because God is increasingly seen by government elites as an obstacle to central control, He must be officially (and coercively) denied.
And that’s why subsidiarity is so important to a constitutional republic like ours, since most social, moral, and legal issues and problems call for bottom-up management and accountability by those closest to the action – i.e., by government bodies that are as local as possible and by local civil groups. By “civil groups,” we mean grassroots groups like local churches, charities, community organizations, professional groups, and, of course, our families.
Indeed, because loving your neighbor is as grassroots as you can get, we can be reasonably sure Almighty God also smiles upon subsidiarity – because in no way did Jesus preach abdicating our basic responsibility for our neighbors by shunting it off to the equivalent of distant government bureaucracies. The bottom line is that even in today’s climate of government overreach, the principle of subsidiarity can still work for us locally if we as individuals: (1) trust in Jesus for wisdom generally; (2) actively obey His command to look after our neighbors; and (3) partner with other like-minded individuals to expand God’s work, one needy person at a time, in our communities.
by Norbert J. Kuk