Government can actually be good
From Make America Dream Again — the ethos under the house. One human's voice. No lying.
This one was dictated on a walk to a swimming pool, the morning after an all-nighter, between an Arizona tea and the water. In this house that's not trivia; it's a citation. The arguments here carry their provenance. And it starts with a cartoon: I'm just a bill, sitting on Capitol Hill. Schoolhouse Rock taught civics through a song; this museum's front door teaches humanity through a music game. Same method, same family. The lesson rides in on the melody.
Here's the argument, said plain: I believe government can actually be good. Everyone right now knows the government is bad. We need government good. And notice which of those beliefs is the cheap one. "Government is bad" is the least expensive opinion in America — it costs nothing, proves nothing, and asks nothing of the person holding it. Believing government can be good is the radical position, because it hands you homework: read the record, score the budget, show up, vote like it matters. Cynicism is the shrug in the middle — and this house has always held that the only loss is the shrug in the middle.
It funds everything. What it channels is what we get. The budget is the country's true values document — not the speeches, not the slogans, the ledger. A nation that says it loves life and channels its taxes into bombs has signed the opposite testimony, and the signature is public record (books, not bombs; prisons, not pools). So say the unsayable out loud: taxation is good — taxation is the tool that built the roads, the schools, the courts, the fire department that comes when anyone calls. The question was never whether to channel the money; the money is channeled either way. The question is what it channels into. Fund joy, not war.
And I'll steelman the other side, because that's the house rule: government failure is real, and the cynic has receipts — capture, waste, cruelty on the record, promises broken in writing. Granted, all of it. But look at what the receipts are: public records, auditable budgets, FOIA-able files, retractions forced into daylight. You can only hold receipts against a government because a government keeps records you're allowed to read. Try holding receipts against the private power that answers to no one. The failures aren't the case against the tool; they're the case for scoring it — and scoring the record is this museum's entire religion. The cynic quits the game and calls it wisdom. The citizen stays at the table and scores.
That's why this argument lives one door down from the Article V petition — the founders wrote a repair manual into the document because they believed the machine could be fixed, which is just this argument in 1787 handwriting. You don't pack a repair kit for a thing you've given up on. (His coin, dictated 2026-07-17; the machine held the pen close to his words — refine to his. Values page, labeled opinion; the budget claims are the argument's frame, not cited statistics.)
If the sentence ever feels like it wants to end — in the US, call or text 988 (Suicide & Crisis Lifeline), any hour; or find help anywhere at findahelpline.com. You are not alone, and the story isn’t over.