My father never quite understood how I could live in New York City. He preferred Montana, open rather than dense, prairie rather than concrete. Great Falls was his birthplace, and later he stayed in Carter and Plains, before living his last years in Boulder. If he could have, he would have kept close to the Missouri River at all times. Before he passed last July, he asked us to mark the end of his life at the put-in by the Wolf Creek Bridge, cool waters swishing gently past lush green fields.
The kind people of the town of Boulder helped keep my father alive. The small grocery and pharmacy fed him and stocked his medication. Neighbors looked for smoke from the chimney and called if there was none.
But we owe his life not just to this tiny town and the care of his dear sister. I am a historian who studies public policy in the U.S. I know that the United States federal government kept my father alive. With Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) laying off thousands and President Trump proposing deep cuts, I see how government services made my dad’s life possible.
First, federal investment in cancer research gave him a decade of life beyond his 2014 diagnosis. Specifically, Xtandi/enzalutamide slowed his metastatic prostate cancer’s growth. 99 percent of all drugs depend on federally-funded research. I’m not a scientist, so I can’t trace the exact connections, but the National Institutes of Health’s database shows hundreds of projects totaling $270 million of federal investment into prostate cancer research. President Trump has frozen or cut many parts of scientific research funding. Some courts are pushing back, but the attack on scientific research infrastructure continues. People with cancer, and many other diseases, are more likely to die.
Second, my father was proud of a few things – his work as an air traffic controller, the modest but beautiful houses he built by hand. And his children.
All three of us graduated from college – something that never happened for my dad. We depended on federal student loans to supplement what he scraped together toward tuition. DOGE laid off half of the staff of the Department of Education, and President Trump announced plans to close it and radically cut most of its core programs. Among other key supports to schools, the department administers financial aid for college students and their families. Threats to the agency create great uncertainty about whether parents today can rely on the student loans that changed my, and my siblings’, lives for the better, and let my father beam with pride.
And third, although his spartan lifestyle let him accrue some savings, my father depended on his Social Security payments. He checked his bank statement each month, and sat easier in his beloved recliner afterward. As he got older, he’d sometimes have difficulty figuring out exactly where the money was. A spike of anxiety would interrupt his usually placid mode. I can only imagine how he would feel seeing reports of massive layoffs at the Social Security Administration or lax or nonexistent security for private data. How furious he would be to see billionaires treat so callously that which he and so many others needed to live.
My dad was a distinctive person. He never signed up for cable news; he hated the cell phone I bought him. He would plane a piece of scrap wood for hours to fit some job rather than spend a few dollars on a new piece. He was fiercely independent. He shook his head at government bloat or overreach. I bet he voted Republican more than Democrat.
But he also knew that he depended on others. Like all of us do. Some of those we depend on are in our town or the other end of the valley. Many others are workers at an acronym agency: OPM or NSF or SSA. They are distant, but their work is a tributary that twists and flows to the mainstream, our lifeline.
Out of love for those who are no longer here, we have to fight to keep crucial government services. We can see beyond the bluster, because we know that our lives are not short-term cost savings. We must demand that our representatives in Washington stop their heedless destruction. They must ensure that the programs we pay for with our taxes remain available and reliable. If not, people like my dad will have less life to live along the river.
Ansley T. Erickson, a descendant of three generations of Montanans, is an associate professor of history and education at Columbia University. She lives in New York City.