For the past few years I have been making a monthly contribution to the local food bank, part of my usual charitable giving. A couple of weeks ago I learned that USDA had been giving grants to food banks around the country, but those were cut by DOGE recently. I wondered how I should respond to this news. Should I increase the amount of my monthly contribution? As one person operating in isolation, that would just be a drop in the bucket. Would it be possible for enough like-minded people to contribute more so as to enable the food banks to continue their operation, even if it weren't a perfect match for the DOGE cuts? And how would the needed coordination come about to make this outcome possible? It is these questions which provide the fuel for this post.
The post is also fueled by the little bit of news and opinion pieces I have been reading as of late, which have the Democrats searching for a coherent direction in which to respond to the Trump offensive. I will offer an idealistic pie-in-the-sky approach that might at least be considered some before dismissing it as too impractical. Let me begin.
The good about charity is that it addresses a felt need and that those who make donations to the charitable organization do so voluntarily. Under these circumstances, the need always seems to exceed what the charitable organization can deliver. In other words, the donations and the need don't line up perfectly and the charitable organization is constrained to limit its services within what's made available via donations. Government provision of service, in contrast, can scale up well beyond that, but then services are funded by taxes (or deficit spending) and taxes are often cast as coercive rather than as social obligation needed to maintain the public weal. With this simple (and perhaps simplistic) casting of the circumstances, the scale of the need then determines the better way of doing things. At low scale, charity is better. At very high scale, government provision is better, so food stamps rather than food banks. Joint provision makes the most sense when the scale is somewhere in the middle. This story could be readily complicated to make it more realistic. I will refrain from doing so here, because I want to move onto other matters.
I receive lots of solicitations from non-profit organizations, some of which are charities, but some of which are not, such as for a Democratic Party organization or a Democratic candidate. I find there is a very large number of such solicitations. And I also get commercial solicitations, a remarkable number for life insurance that I don't need, and others for a new credit card or a new bank account. In total I find the solicitations overwhelming and for the most part I entirely ignore them, which renders them ineffective. I wonder how many others are in the same boat as me on this score. Would it be possible to reduce the volume of the solicitations, perhaps by consolidating many of them, and thereby get the few that do still come through to capture my attention in a way where I might respond positively to one of them?
On a different point, one needs to concede that the Republicans are far better at propaganda than the Democrats. In large part, this is because negative messaging is usually more effective. In the past, some of that negative messaging has gone into demonizing the people who receive government assistance, casting them as immoral cheaters. For example, back in the 1970s in response to AFDC, we heard about Welfare Queens who were ripping off the taxpayer. While personally I find such messaging offensive, there is no doubt that it was effective with many other voters, by appealing to their prior prejudices. The Democrats have a harder job here, in trying to deliver an uplifting message about government being helpful to its citizens, one that voters take sincerely rather than regard with deep cynicism. How might such a message get through?
And still a different thought, which I think should be given some consideration. In a well functioning society every citizen plays a role. But in the rhetoric of politics, there is a tendency to focus on some sub-population only and ignore the rest of the voters. It is necessary to have inclusivity across economic classes in the political rhetoric, if at all possible. The Democrats now want to embrace economic populism, which to me is quite okay, but then it seems that voters like me are largely ignored, a mistake in my view. We have an important role to play, though mainly out of social obligation rather than as recipients of government largesse. Widespread need and social obligation are two sides of the same coin. The political rhetoric should reflect that.
Having set the table, I'm ready to deliver my proposal to address these issues. The Democrats should form a charitable foundation, for now call it the Democratic Party Foundation (DPF). (I tried to come up with an alternative foundation name that was a riff on The Invisible Hand, but everything I attempted was already taken. Somebody more adept at marketing can come up with a better name.) The purpose of the DPF is first to make grants to charitable organizations, such as the food bank. Second, when there is evident need but there is no charitable organization operating to address the need, the DPF will be empowered to create such a charitable organization to fill the gap. Third, as long as the Democrats maintain minority status in Congress all Democratic organizations, such as the DCCC, will suspend their own fundraising activity and instead redirect potential contributors to the DPF. Likewise, Democratic candidates for office will redirect their campaign contributions to the DPF. The hope is that this will refocus attention on the need the DPF attempts to address and away from current political issues, which are quite nasty. Fourth, partly just to educate Americans about their fellow citizens and partly to encourage additional donations, the DPF will shine a light on people in need, under various circumstances. And last, up front the DPF will announce that if and when the Democrats become the majority party in Congress, and take over the White House as well, some of what the DPF supports might very well move to government provided programs instead, because the need is much greater than the contributions the DPF can bring in to address the need.
Some evident challenges that the DPF will face are about how to maintain fairness in selecting those charities the DPF does support and what level of support the DPF does provide, how not to become overly bureaucratic so that the bulk of the donations to the DPF end up as grants to other charities, and how to avoid even an appearance of impropriety. I don't have solutions for these challenges that I can present here, but it is evident that such solutions need to be contemplated in advance of the formation of the DPF. Further, as one can anticipate that many of those in need won't receive any help from the DPF, one wonders whether they will remain bitter about the Democrats or if they might as least come to agree that the DPF is doing as best as it can to address the issues. What would it take to make the latter more likely?
In case it is not evident yet, going all in with the DPF is meant to be an extraordinarily drastic solution, which one might hope should become evident soon after the DPF begins to operate. For the sake of argument, let's say the DPF has some early success, the consequence being that the narrative in the media becomes more about the overwhelming need many citizens are feeling and much less about what Trump and Musk are doing to upset the apple cart. Further, suppose this new narrative begins to have appeal to some very wealthy Americans, both Democrat and Republican. Might they then make significant donations to the DPF? And might they also speak out about the absurdity of tax cuts on their own behalf? Were that to happen, we'd almost be home.
When I was a child my dad would read to me and my siblings at night before we went to bed. Sometimes it would be Aesop Fables. My little sketch of a solution to our current dilemma is very much in the spirit of The North Wind and the Sun. In the story, the Sun wins out. Wouldn't it be delightful if that were to happen here, pipe dream though it may be.