Ever heard the saying, “People who bite the hand that feeds them usually kiss the boot that kicks them”? Surely in these Southern United States you have, as the proverb tends to be thrown around just as often as the myth of Dallas’s legendary barbecue or Texas’s sovereignty. The saying, believed to have originated in 600 b.c. when Greek poet Sappho used the metaphor of a dog biting its master, was first seen in print during the 18th century, when Edmund Burke, the Anglo-Irish political writer, wrote concerning the role of government in providing necessities to its people, “having looked to government for bread, on the very first scarcity they will turn and bite the hand that fed them.”
Now, while Burke, in the (incredibly long) letter Thoughts and Details on Scarcity, written to the Prime Minister of Great Britain, was referring to the people that he believed would quickly turn on the same government that had “fed” them if ever faced with scarcity, his recorded beliefs echoed a very American sentiment: that government should practice limited government, wherein the federal government is not sticking its nose in private business, be it a corporation’s or a citizen’s. Edmund believed that there should be a separation of government from the day-to-day lives of the people and that the government had no role in providing for the citizens who fell on hard times, but rather that that should be the duty of private charities rather than the state.
Yet, and ironically, though the United States continues to parrot this dreamy sentiment, it does very little to practice it. Or at least when it comes to big business. The truth is that in the United States, government aid is often handed freely to entities who need it the least, only for those same entities whose profitable mouths are being excessively fed to turn around and bite the hand that handed, just as Edmond had stated all those years ago. We’ve seen this by way of entire industries standing against government regulation and oversight, only to create the raggedy conditions from which they’ll ultimately need that same government to bail them out.
Even still, the United States has a long and exhausting history of feeding the very mouths that have bit it. In fact, in early 2023 alone, we watched the federal government throw on its stared and striped cape and run in, head first, into a burning financial institution that had lit the blaze from which it was about to collapse under. Silicon Valley Bank (SBV) of California failed quickly and, quite frankly, spectacularly. But what was quietly written in the pre-collapse history books was that SBV and some of its bank buddies had run amuck all over Washington, D.C., increasing lobbying budgets to pursue Congress to repeal the Dodd-Frank Act, an Obama-era package of laws meant to regulate Wall Street and help prevent such collapses in the first place.
The new law that SBV and its bandit of bank buddies lobbied to have put in place after the repeal removed mandatory stress tests and liquidity requirements that would’ve included banks the size of SVB and that were literally designed to protect the economy from the same kinds of bank collapses the country saw during the Great Session and during, well, the collapse of SBV itself. Per Edmond (and Sappho, of course), the same mouths that had broken and eaten, time and time again, of government bread would go on to bite the hand that would feed it, time and time again. Honestly, the relationship is toxic.
Then there was, of course, the legendary CARES Act, known better to everyday working-class people for providing the clutch T (Trump) Daddy “stimmy” and to political critics as one of the largest corporate bailouts in U.S. history, wherein Congress handed over barrels of taxpayer dollars to big business and billionaires. The package, made up of $2.2 trillion (yes, trillion with a “T”) in taxpayer money (because it’s important to continue to remind y’all that you paid for this), was sold to the people as an economic stimulus package, meant to keep the economy afloat as citizens found themselves out of work and with plenty of time to learn to bake sourdough bread and pretend like the random self-proclaimed “investment experts” in those Clubhouse rooms were interesting.
But, as quiet as it was kept, the CARES Act did more to care about big business than it did those who were in big financial trouble. It was one that, in the words of New York Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (or AOC if you’re nasty), provided “crumbs for our families.” AOC would go on to give a passionate speech on the house floor that would call out the “half a trillion dollars that went to Wall Street.” The same Wall Street that had, for years, lobbied against government oversight and regulation in their shops but had, without a single reservation, welcomed with open arms, tax payer dollars for “payroll protections.”
These companies would go on to hand out offensive “bonuses” for rank-and-file employees while lining the pockets of executives who wouldn’t know how to turn on the lights in the office buildings they’re now trying to force employees back into. And that may seem, well, harsh, but the truth is, the same corporations that spend big money each year attempting to keep big government out of big business are happy to take those big checks when they’re in big trouble. Edmond said it best: “Having looked to government for bread,” “they will turn and bite the hand that fed them.”
Another example of this is, tragically, the recent death of Congresswoman Eddie Bernice Johnson, whose work had literally fed the mouth that would, according to her son, Kirk Johnson, turn around and bite her. It’s one thing to recognize that in the United States, healthcare for Black women is, well, trash, and that we can all but expect the level of care to be subpar for women of color. But, it’s another thing to recognize that the very mouth of the hospital being accused of playing a role in the Congresswoman’s death had been, in the past and more recently, a hand-fed government funding as the before mentioned industries, and even worse, government funding that was both secured and delivered, directly or indirectly, with the help of the Congresswoman herself. As the former nurse and first registered nurse turned Congresswoman had done for other medical institutions in the past including UT Southwestern Medical Center, where she’d helped secure funding for a $120 million Texas Instruments Biomedical Engineering and Sciences Building that supports research for UT Southwestern and UT Dallas, Eddie Bernice Johnson had played a role in the expansion and survival of Baylor, Scott & White, whose headquarters sit in Johnson’s backyard.
Baylor Scott & White, the largest not-for-profit healthcare system in the lone star state, is well known for receiving incredibly large amounts of money from private donors, corporate partners, and the government itself. In fact, in April 2021, just over a year after the world shut down in an attempt to curb the then-novice COVID-19 virus, the Washington Post would report that Baylor Scott & White Health had laid off 1,200 employees and furloughed others in an effort to stay financially afloat. While Baylor Scott & White’s story wasn’t unique, it was all the more impactful as the very service they offered was needed to combat the very thing that was threatening to take countless lives and level their operation.
The federal government quickly stepped in to rush $454 million in (tax-payer funded) relief funds to help keep their operations up and running as the virus began to rip through the states. But that’s not where the story ends, children. In fact, not only did Baylor survive, they thrived, accumulating an $815 million surplus and higher profits than their peer hospitals, all because Uncle Sam found it in his heart to donate. Even so, the hands that had worked for decades to bring policy and funding that would ultimately work on Baylor’s behalf for decades wouldn’t be safe from a longstanding American tradition of toxic relationships between big business and government, where the former takes and the other gives endlessly without an expectation of reciprocity.
The Congresswoman was the hand, even if, at times, indirectly, that fed Baylor’s expansion to become the not-for-profit powerhouse that all but dominates the Texas healthcare industry. And the congressman would succumb to the biting of her very hand, being left to experience what her son described as excruciating pain. But, to be fair, it’s also worth mentioning that Baylor is simply part of the same consolidation that other industries inside the United States are experiencing, looking for what D Magazine called “ease and efficiency” as primary care groups have been swallowed up (a nod to T.D. Jakes) by private equity firms looking to build rehab, dermatology, dialysis, and physical therapy arms as a means to diversify their holdings, their profits, and probably the different buckets of government funding they’ll qualify for in the long term.