That is Speaker of the House Mike Johnson at the podium, accompanied by other Members of Congress who are in his leadership group. I obtained the photograph from the online version of the November 14, 2025, edition of "Potomac Watch," a Wall Street Journal opinion column written by Kimberley A. Strassel (among other contributors). A complete copy of Strassel's November 14th column, which is titled, "The GOP's Government Enablers," is found at the end of this blog posting.
I have a comment on a statement made in Strassel's first paragraph. She says, "government is the cause of most problems."
"Government" (you can look it up) is defined as the "act or process of governing." Note that this definition sees "government" as a "verb form" not as a "noun," although the dictionary does recognize that the word has come to be used as a noun, too.
I don't think that Strassel's assertion is true, even when "government" is made into a noun. However, when "government" is used as a verb, it is clear that the "process of governing" is not the cause of our problems. "Governing" is our collective effort to solve our problems, or to deal with them, at least.
If it were true that collective efforts to address issues that a majority of the citizens have identified as problems is actually the cause of those problems, then we should not have any "government" at all. Maybe, Strassel and The Wall Street Journal actually believe that, on behalf, presumably, of those members of the "billionaire class" who think that they can address any problems affecting them by mobilizing their own, personal resources, without any need to involve the rest of us, and that "no" government is needed or helpful.
Even among the billionaires, however, no one truly believes that! We are, as I keep saying, "in this together," and that means we need a mechanism to try to eliminate problems, and to promote positive possibilities.
A lot of us (those of us in the non-billionaire cohort) have come to believe what Strassel asserts. "Government" is seen as "the problem." Well, it's not. "Government" is not the problem. The problem is "bad" government, "inefficient" government, "corrupt" government, "inattentive" government, "unconcerned" government, "unrepresentative" government. Etc.!
If we want to deal with our problems, and realize our possibilities we need to stop rejecting "government," and start making government work, instead.
That means we need to get directly involved in government ourselves! That is the problem with "government." Here is a link to a recent article citing to Hannah Arendt, as she makes exactly this point.
Don't be fooled that because the act or process of governing isn't going very well right now (and it's not) that "government" is the problem. "The" government (the "noun" version of the word) may well be a problem, but that's because it is not doing the right thing to solve problems and to realize possibilities. Luckily, in a nation which was founded on the idea of "self-government," we have a solution for that.
Mike Johnson, and his cohorts, shut down our government for more than a month. Did things get better, or worse when we shut down our government, as defined as the "act or process of governing"?
If you think "worse," then that proves that Strassel's statement is in error. Get involved!
oooOOOooo
The GOP’s Government Enablers
Republican populists sound like Democrats as they vent their rage against Big Business
ET
It was once a Republican article of faith—mostly because it is true—that government is the cause of most problems. Donald Trump’s GOP is finding a more politically expedient bogeyman. Welcome to the age of the Bernie Sanders-JD Vance coalition against Big Business. Say goodbye to prosperity.
A case in point: The president this past weekend floated a solid proposal. Rather than continue to dump government subsidies into the government-created and government-micromanaged system called ObamaCare—which is failing because of, well, government—why not hand that cash to individual Americans, giving them more choice over their care? “Republicans should give money DIRECTLY to your personal HEALTH SAVINGS ACCOUNTS,” Mr. Trump wrote on Truth Social.
It’s a smart concept, one that moves toward a free-market system in which consumers control dollars in ways that produce more transparent, portable, cost-effective and results-oriented medicine. Only the president in the same post undermined the premise by asserting that the reason to adopt his plan was to get revenge on the Democrats’ buddies in the “insurance industry,” which is “making a ‘killing’ ” while the “little guy” suffers. That is, move toward a free-market system so as to stick it to business. Work through that logic.
And so it goes. Vice President Vance regularizes the slur “Big Pharma,” trashing on drugmakers with a vitriol to make any socialist proud. The president orders the Justice Department to investigate the “Meat Packing Companies who are driving up the price of Beef through Illicit Collusion, Price Fixing, and Price Manipulation”—a replica of Joe Biden’s accusations. Missouri Sen. Josh Hawley introduces the End Airline Extortion Act—a new low in shooting fish in a barrel—making common cause with Elizabeth Warren. The only “Big” the GOP can tolerate these days are their own not-so-beautiful bills.
The most charitable excuse for this is economic ignorance. And it’s true that an alarming number of congressional members—and their staffers—these days think the supply side is a band from the ’90s. Then again, our onetime venture-capitalist veep suggests something more cynical at play. Trashing on wealth creators is an easy way to stoke the furies of the “forgotten man” voter the GOP courts. And it’s easier (read lazier) than explaining markets, intellectual property, prices—or the central and inevitable problem of government policy failure.
Why bother explaining the government mandates, government price controls, and government subsidies in ObamaCare when you can blame the government failure on insurers? Why rethink government-imposed tariffs and government quotas on affordable beef imports when you can throw Tysons in the grinder? Why argue to modernize moronic immigration policy when you can rail at business for inviting foreign labor to fill U.S. jobs?
Corporate America hasn’t bathed itself in distinction in recent decades, though its sin is hardly an excess of capitalist spirits. The exact opposite. Its failure has been making itself a government extension, working to capture its share of corporate welfare, to slice the regulatory pie to its benefit, to gain “woke” plaudits—rather than to fight interference. Let’s indulge the Biden electric-vehicle fantasy! Let’s work with the feds to censor Covid-19 debate! Let’s ask for subsidies for everything! Let’s roll over to European socialist price controls on drugs! It’s a bit much to ask CYA politicians to stick up for a business world that uniformly fails to stick up for itself.
Yet the Republicans pandering to antibusiness “populism” are already suffering the political and economic consequences. The GOP’s summer reconciliation bill was its best shot at injecting life into an economy still hampered by Biden-era blowouts and now tariff uncertainty. And yes, the party did waylay what would have been a devastating tax hike.
But it completely whelped on the policies necessary to spur growth quickly. Why? Because the panderers forbade all the pro-growth provisions—reducing top marginal rates, repealing the corporate alternative minimum tax, reducing the capital-gains tax—since those might help “the wealthy.” The party also (again) failed to reduce in any meaningful way the biggest drag on the economy—government spending. The bill’s money instead went to gimmicks to win votes, like tax exclusions for tips and overtime pay.
How’s that working out for Republicans now? See the latest economic data—and voter sentiment in the New Jersey and Virginia elections, frustrated the GOP hasn’t lifted the economy. Those elections were proof of one more thing, too: In a competition for who can rage against private actors and present government as the savior, Democrats win every time. They genuinely believe it. Republicans twist themselves into ideological knots attempting to synthesize a worldview in which limited government and government-run business exist simultaneously.
Mr. Trump, an entrepreneur at heart, has a general belief in markets—but these days he is surrounded by throwback Rockefeller Republicans. And how long will the Trump “working class” coalition last with a middling GOP economic record? The limited government crowd is going to have to get a lot louder if it doesn’t want the movement to end up a pale shade of AOC.
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