How is shrinking the government to blame? It's expanded colossal ever since the new deal. Grover Norquist, the guy you're quoting, is not an elected official. He was just saying what he believes. That's pretty weak evidence for "the problem". The only nation that ended up containing it was China, because being able to tightly control what your population does is one of the perks of authoritarianism. That said, it doesn't make it a good trade-off.
I live in the US, I would prefer being anywhere else in the world right now. Even Italy is currently in a good position since they peaked and will likely recover in April. In the US, sky is the limit. There are almost 0 precautions to limit the spread. Even states that pretend to do something, actually does nothing. I live in MA, which has a shelter-in-place order, but all the businesses that I know of are classified as "essential" so all my friends are working business as usual. We're talking about people who work in random mailrooms, in random thrift shops etc. Businesses can do however they please because there is no regulation. And I think it's pretty clear US will likely experience millions of deaths by the end of April.
My point is, there is a huge spectrum between "China level authoritarianism" and "making government fit your bathtub". It's really frustrating to explain this again and again. We should not allow government to invade our private lives, but we also should have government regulating businesses, especially in time like this.
the welfare state expanded dramatically after the new deal, but that reversed with the turn toward austerity in the late 70s. "the government" is an overly broad way of speaking about this, as it places budgeting for defense contracts & bailing out finance capital, or monetary policy geared toward preventing the labor market from getting tight (as opposed to full employment) under the same umbrella as tanf & snap.
The only time the welfare state in the US has actually gotten smaller was Clinton's welfare reform in the 1990's. That was easily offset by things like Medicare Part D in the 2000's.
People keep talking about "stripping away the safety net", but when I look at entitlement spending, it just keeps getting bigger.
clinton's slashing of the welfare state is a matter of degree, not the only instance of purported beneficiaries losing benefits.
medicare part d doesn't allow the government to negotiate prices and thus functions more as a subsidy for the pharmaceutical industry than people for whom it is ostensibly intended to prescription access.
lots of games can be played with budgets (such as block grants, one notorious example being the 1981 repeal of the mental health systems act) so the raw dollars of entitlement spending can grow without representing a true shift in resources.
when cost of living (eg rents, healthcare) outpaces spending, all while units of public housing are destroyed without being replaced, and the terms of occupation have grown ever more stringent (for example, requiring maintenance come out of tenants' rent while lowering the maximum eligible income for tenants), the mere dollar amount of spending becomes a less definitive measure, i think.
