Belling the Cat: "Smaller Government"

[TygrBright]

“What do we want?”

“Smaller, LESS EXPENSIVE, LESS INTRUSIVE government!”

“When do we want it?”

“RIGHT NOW!!!”

Groovy. So let’s vote out the last bunch of scoundrels who swore they’d shrink government and get it off our asses, and then ended up with more government employees sucking more cash from the public trough, and pecksniffing more of our daily lives, and vote in this new bunch of scoundrels who are swearing really, really sincerely that they’ll undo what the old bunch of scoundrels did, and (incidentally) shrink government and get it off our asses.

Insanity, they say, is doing the same thing over and over, and expecting different results.

Maybe it’s time to investigate why, in spite of all those earnest promises, and special Commissions to reform (read: shrink) government, and militant talk about getting it out of our lives, etc., the government just keeps growing, and growing, and growing. And the rules keep getting more and more complicated and seem to require more and more bureaucrats and judges to interpret and enforce and report on, ad infinitum, all on the taxpayer’s dime. (Or buck, considering inflation.)

Bear with me, here, this is a really wild, out-of-left-field speculation, but…

…could it…

…could it just possibly bear some relationship to the fact that in October, a baby was born who was (more or less,) the three hundred millionth inhabitant of these United States?

Naaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah.

Y’think? Coincidence?

Couldn’t be. Could it?

It’s awfully hard to imagine, isn’t it? Forty years ago, the population of the United States was about two-thirds of that amount. Oddly enough, our real per-capita Federal expenditures at the same time were just over $5000, and today, they’re about one-third larger than that, nearly $7000. (Depending on how you calculate it, of course, and using the government's own figures. Well, one set, anyway.) But I’m sure it’s just a coincidence.

Isn’t it?

Let me clarify that “per capita” thing. That means that the annual Federal expense per person rose in real dollars, not inflated dollars. We really are spending about a third more, per person, for our Federal government on an annual basis, than we were forty years ago, per person.

To illustrate: If the population had stayed constant, at (for example) a thousand people, and the government had cost six dollars per person per year forty years ago, at this rate of increase the government would cost the same size population nine dollars per person today, sending the total Federal expenditures from six thousand dollars to nine thousand dollars, with all adjustments for inflation factored in so that the real dollars stayed constant.

However, in actuality, the population has increased by about a third (let’s round it off to 1,330 people). Who are now paying a third more (per person) for their government today than they were forty years ago, meaning the total Federal expenditures went from six thousand dollars to $11,970, with all inflation factored in.

Gosh, it just doesn’t seem fair, does it?

Newsflash: “Fair” doesn’t apply.

It didn’t cost much, per person, to govern a country of a few million people spread over a large geographical area in a pre-industrial era (although people complained about the cost of government even then.) Especially pre-Civil War when military expenditures were comparatively modest.

In the 19th Century things started getting complicated. Wars. Industrial Progress. We hit the Pacific Ocean, limiting the amount of elbow room. The world began to shrink, thanks to increasingly efficient transportation and communications technologies. Population began to skyrocket, thanks to medical and public health innovations. Wars became exponentially more costly, thanks to advancing military technology.

Cities filled up, and began to diversify ethnically. The cost of governing all the increasing millions of Americans with different ideas about culture, religion, tradition, what constitutes good manners and civic duty, and what they should be able to expect from their government skyrocketed. And that was before the population even reached the one hundred million mark.

Let’s get real for a minute, shall we?

Government cannot get smaller. Period. Ain’t gonna happen no matter who is in power or how determined they are to drown anyone or anything in any water-holding vessel. Wake UP. Stop fantasizing. Did you get that clearly? Let me repeat:

IT IS NOT POSSIBLE FOR THE UNITED STATES TO ‘SHRINK’ GOVERNMENT BY ANY MEANINGFUL MEASURE UNLESS WE KILL HALF THE POPULATION AND REVERT TO PRE-INDUSTRIAL TECHNOLOGY AND THE REST OF THE WORLD’S MILITARIES FOLLOW SUIT.

Got that? Sorry for shouting. But we have gotten so good at denying the existence of that pesky thing called “reality” (with its notorious liberal bias, yet,) that no amount of emphasis is too much.

Is there government fraud and waste? Yes.

Will eliminating it (if that were possible, which it isn’t) shrink government? No, the best it could do would be to slow the rate of growth. Eliminating fraud and waste, and keeping it eliminated, costs money! Hello!! “Quis Custodiet Custodes Ipsos?”

Are we spending money on a lot of stupid stuff? Hell yes.

Of course, what I think is “stupid stuff,” a hundred million or so of my fellow-citizens devoutly believe is Utterly Essential. But I’m firm in my belief, because at least another hundred million or so of my fellow-citizens agree with me that it’s Incredibly Stupid. It even costs money to for us to investigate and gather data and analyze it in an attempt to determine who is right, and then more money to appoint someone different to gather more data and do more analysis because of course the first lot were biased in the wrong direction.

Can we, for the sake of argument, stipulate that we will not be able to shrink total government expenditures any time in the foreseeable future, and, in fact, they will continue to grow at a rate most of us will find painful and shocking?

Okay.

Given that, what is the best we can hope for from our government as it spends all that money? What should we be holding them accountable for?

Let’s start with keeping the rate of increase modest. Can we all live with that? Even not defining “modest” too closely, we can at least get some general inkling of whether we’re getting what we want.

Second: Let’s set some basic minimum standards for performance. That is, if we have, as a purely theoretical example, a government agency whose stated mission is to help Americans affected by some form of terrible disaster, that agency should (GASP!) actually be seen to render effective, efficient, timely help when an actual disaster strikes actual Americans. Ya think?

Third: Let’s be realistic, and strategic, about fraud and waste. There’s a law of diminishing returns when you try and eliminate one hundred percent of all fraud and waste. Eventually you end up spending WAY more policing against fraud and waste than a small amount of fraud and waste will actually cost. Without ever saying “hey, it’s okay, rip us off!” let’s set realistic goals for keeping fraud and waste under control, let’s establish meaningful sanctions for when it does happen, and let’s concentrate on trying to establish a culture in our federal workforce of pride and professionalism and responsibility.

That will almost certainly cost less and yield better results in the long run than hiring phalanxes of pecksniffs to “gotcha” every civil servant who goes home with a pencil in their briefcase, or approves an assistance application from someone who doesn’t QUITE match ALL the criteria for help. Protect whistleblowers, boot out the bad apples when we find them, sure. Spend millions tracking down a few thousand schmucks who cheat a few bucks on their income tax? How about we spend a fraction of that tracking down a few dozen schmucks who cheat a few million on their income tax?

Fourth: Let’s prioritize spending that yields long-term returns, rather than short-term political capital. Slapping a few bandaids on a broken Medicare system and heading out to photo-ops with the gang at the Senior Center costs less than a complete retooling of the healthcare system, but fifteen years from now, we’ll be spending a lot less if we fix the broken system than if we’re still trying to hold it together with spit and string. Jazzy color-coded charts about terror threat levels, and new hazmat suits for the Poohackety, IA police department is cheap compared to subsidizing the development and installation of quality container-scanning and port entry security systems at every American seaport, but which is likely to have a better chance of preventing another expensive “incident” like 9/11?

Fifth: Let’s be careful how we delegate (and pay for) government functions. Whenever we “privatize” some government function, we get suckered in by an artificially low initial price tag and eventually end up spending as much if not more than we’d spend having government just do the work. And the profit ends up in corporate CEOs’ compensation packages, not in the wages and benefits of government employees who will pour them right back into the economies of thousands of cities and towns across America. If the private sector has some magic secret to doing things cheaper, let’s study them and apply what we learn to our government agencies. Unless, of course, the “secret” is just outsourcing the work to workers paid subsistence pay and denied benefits and safe workplaces and human dignity. Let’s not have our government doing that with our public employees— and let’s not have them paying someone else to do it, either.

Finally: Let’s demand that our government be honest about costs. No more funny numbers, no more putting things “off budget,” no more deciding not to collect certain information or documentation in the hopes that people won’t notice what’s going on. No more changing the rules on how we count things just to obscure how much we’re actually counting. Apples to apples, oranges to oranges, lightbulbs to lightbulbs, and a clear summary of the lot. And let’s not grudge the money required to keep track of and report all that.

Look, I’m sorry. I’d really like there to be some magical Government Fairy out there who could actually “shrink government” if we just found out who it was and elected them. But there isn’t, and that’s all there is to it. Wouldn’t it be better to face up to that reality and start concentrate on getting more for our federal spending bucks?

It’s a shell game, people. They inflame your indignation about “gummint spending” and “waste and fraud” when they’re trying to distract you from the cronies they’re letting no-bid contracts out to, or whatever stupid mistake they’ve made on the foreign policy front this week, or the cost of gas going up.

Then they promise to “shrink government,” and once more, we fall into the trap, believing there IS such a thing as a free lunch, and vote for them again, expecting that this time, the results will be different.

No comment on that. I’m done.

[NMDemDist2]

1. kick to find and read it later n/t

[Warren DeMontague]

2. Sorry, I think a half trillion per year in Military-Industrial Outlays, whereby we spend

as much as the rest of the planet COMBINED, is excessive. Not "may be" excessive, it IS. Shit, the Military-Industrial Complex gave Eisenhower pause, ferchrissakes. If it was big then, it's fucking leviathan, now.

$40 Billion a year -and growing- for a "drug war" aimed primarily at keeping jamband fans, Willie Nelson, and cancer-ridden grannies from smoking weed... And add to that the costs of being the largest per capita incarcerator of non-violent offenders in the industrial world. We're just supposed to throw our hands up and say "oh well", because I guess only Howard Jarvis and Club-For-Growth Ninnies actually believe you can do something about bloated, idiotic, harmful and wasteful government?

Look. Government is not intrinsically good, or evil. (I think most people on this board can come up with a good sized list of ways they, personally, believe it IS too "intrusive", however.) But it's worth noting that the folks who crossed over to our side in this last election were NOT the GOP members enamored with fantasies of more government- government to censor what other people can read or watch, government to tell women what they can or can't do with their own bodies, government to interfere with people's medical, pain management, or end-of-life decisions. The wing of the GOP and the pool of independent voters that flocked to our party, and the subject of your OP makes me believe you're aware of this, was the Libertarian wing. Pure and simple. The Jesus wing, the control freak wing, the Authoritarian wing of the Republican Party came out in force, Foley or no, and the fact that the "Thumpin'" took place anyway should lay to rest once and for all any lingering myths about the all-powerful "values voter".

My point is that the impulse to "shrink government", like government itself, is not intrinsically good OR bad, misguided or on target- however, it is sometimes -oftentimes- necessary and more than pertinent to specific situations. The only way we're going to get the kind of prioritization that we want out of government- a government that focuses on infrastructure, health coverage, that sort of thing- is if we find places, like the Military-Industrial complex, or the drug war, for starters, that are long overdue in need of serious reductions in funding. And the Libertarian (eeek! That word, again!) impulses of a good portion of the voting populace -the people who helped us win this previous election- are the only thing that will ever get us there.

[clichemoth]

5. When "conservatives" talk about "shrinking government"...

they specifically don't mean those things. They mean the things that directly help the poor, the elderly, minorities, and women. It's fine to blow all the money you want on killing people(in the end, that's all the drug war is about, too), but inner-city schools or pension benefits are "entitlement" and that is bad.

Missile defense? Sounds good, but it doesn't work. Space weapons? It's not the Klingons that are flying planes into our buildings. Heck, NASA's pretty useless, too, since the capitalist wet dream of colonies in space is well-nigh physically impossible. Why isn't all the brainpower and money behind these things being used to develop alternate energy sources or something that would actually benefit mankind rather than wave our big chrome wanger at the world?

How many law enforcement agents are we paying to sit behind a desk and monitor Websites like this one or to infiltrate "dangerous terrorist organizations" that just happen to protest administration policy in a non-violent manner? How many fewer minimum-security prisons would we needed if we stopped locking people up for marijuana possession or for coming to this country to seek a better life?

How much money does * waste when he stages flashy photo ops on aircraft carriers or flies Condi to Iraq on a whim?

[Warren DeMontague]

13. Those are all excellent questions. I disagree with you about NASA, though.

While I think a case can be made -both pro and con- regarding human exploration and presence in space (I happen to fall on the "Pro" side, strongly, and I also think in the long run our humanity depends on it) I think it's indisputable that the science money that has been put into NASA has been extremely well spent. First off, money for research, discovery and knowledge about our Universe is ALWAYS well spent, but who can put a price tag on the pictures from, say, the Hubble? The information gleaned from the $750 Million price tag Voyager missions?

If colonies in space are an impossible "capitalist's wet dream" maybe that explains why China is pursuing space exploration so vigorously. ;-) I disagree. I don't think they're "impossible", I actually think they are, eventually, inevitable. And I think space WILL be lucrative, but I don't have a problem with that. I don't have a problem with profit motive or capitalism, as long as they are played out on a level playing field with appropriate environmnetal oversight. Actually, I think the long-term solutions to many of our problems here on Earth, from energy on, can be found in space.

I disagree that one should lump NASA's meager budget -which, for all it's faults, is a peacetime organization with what I consider noble goals- in with the blaoted military-industrial complex or our misguided law enforcement priorities. (Alberto Gonzales, when he took the AG job, said the number one FBI priority in Bush's 2nd term would be fighting -not terrorism- porn. Not child porn, but Legal, adult porn.)

[smb]

10. The Question Is "What Do You Want Government To Do?"

A thousand people, or a billion people, or any population in between can create a libertarian minimal state, a totalitarian dictatorship, or any level of government in between. The two variables are simply orthogonal to one another.

[Ravenseye]

3. I don't agree with your premise

Clinton shrank the government.

"In constant dollars, payments amounted to $5,694 for each American in 1992, $5,647 in 1999." http://www.thenation.com/doc/20010129/burnham

The population during the time increased, so the drop is even larger than that.

I agree with the fact that it's a shell game, and I think anytime someone decries spending or waste, or taxes, they need to have specific numbers, and the press should ask them for specific numbers. WHAT would you cut. HOW would you cut it.

[smb]

9. Agreed

There's a lot of razzle-dazzle language, but the premise (that government somehow magically costs more per capita, not merely in absolute terms, as population increases) is just pulled out of the author's nether regions and not supported by evidence.

If anything, the cost of government should be lower per capita for a larger population, because the elements of government that do not directly scale (e.g. it doesn't cost more to defend a given piece of real estate simply because more people live on it) are divided among more people.

[Demeter]

4. Ignore Those Diehard Believers!

I concur with your assessment---what we want is BETTER government, one that supports and sustains people, not corporations. If the corporation cannot make a profit legally, then it goes out of business, period. Eliminating corporate welfare, converting those funds to universal single-payer health care and pensions, would solve nearly all the people problems in this country, and probably half the environmental ones, too.

[Greyhound]

6. I wouldn't have guessed that you could pile that many false premises

on top of one another without being the host of a radio program...

All to provide a preemptive excuse that isn't needed yet?

[GOPFighter]

7. Spot on, TygrBright

As a long-time federal employee I can attest to the stupidity of "privatizing" government. I have two employees who do the same work my government employees do. They cost the government MORE than my federal employees and they get less pay and fewer benefits. Why? Because there's a middle man (actually a number of middle men and women) who must be paid. Also, the private sector has pressured our agency to contract out some of the work the government used to do. While the contractor's work is generally good, they only do what's in the contract and nothing more. If something unexpected comes up, the contract has to be modified and the cost goes up exponentially.

If you want to keep government reasonably efficient you have to cut each program's budget by 10-20% every 8-10 years. This forces the program managers to review the program and cut the fat. Yes, it's painful and disruptive, but it's effective. I've been through budget cuts a couple of times and we always emerged leaner and more efficient.

[civildisoBDence]

8. And Michael Moore doesn't have any room to lose weight...

There's plenty of fat to cut out of the federal government--like the entire Dept. of Education--simply by moving responsibility for local issues back to local government.

That would be a good start, anyway. And local governments have a MUCH harder time funding ridiculous crap like the Bridge to Nowhere.

Newsprism

[charlyvi]

11. First of all, Al Gore dramatically reduced the size of government.

To help create a federal government that works better and costs less, Vice President Gore led the National Partnership for Reinventing Government. The initiative has been critical to balancing the federal budget -- saving taxpayers more than $137 billion, eliminating 16,000 pages of regulations and 640,000 pages of internal rules, and reducing the size of the federal government to its smallest level since President John F. Kennedy's Administration. This effort has helped make American government smaller, leaner, and more dynamic -- and better able to keep up with the fast-moving global economy and Information Age.

http://www.sla.org/content/Events/conference/ac2007/conference/keynoters/algore.cfm

Secondly, as one of those nasty civil servants that you seem to think steal everything not nailed down, I am working in an agency where fully one third of our workers will retire within the next year. Whether or not they will be replaced is a question the agency has not answered, other than to say certainly not all of them. This means I work harder, and I already work my ass off. Not that the public, especially people like you, would give us any slack when we can't provide the service they want as quickly as they want it--preferably YESTERDAY! Because, you see, people like you perpetuate the myth that civil servants do nothing but file their nails, order takeout on the government tab, care nothing for the people they serve, receive exorbitant salaries for doing what a trained monkey could do better, and steal money from the pockets of "real" workers like you.

Your post is so wrong on so many levels, full of such bile and ignorance, it's astonishing.

[Festivito]

12. It's the .. campaign funding .. more than the rhetoric of smaller gov.

BTW:
1965 $5000 -> 1.0T$
2005 $7000 -> 2.1T$ (Umm, this is what we COLLECT, last I recall we collect 2.2, SPEND 2.9, borrowing .7)

ASIDE: I must disagree, technology can reduce the size of government. We just have high expectations for our lives. What used to take hundreds of clerks, can now takes a creep with a PC and an account at Kinko's.
But, I obsess.

YOUR POINTS:
1. Increase gov size moderately with population increases.
2. Set response performance standards. (Isn't this really called: We need a press.)
3. Minimize waste, not eradicate it at twice the cost.
4. Set long-term standards for long-term projects.
5. Carefully delegate, i.e. keep on reporting the actual cost/benefit after privatization.
6. Honestly report.

Don't all of these say: We need a press????

1. Gore reduced the size of government. Do any RW callers know that? NO! Any swing voters? Noooooo!
2. Didja notice Katrina coverage died? RW and swing recall soggy parked busses and not much else.
3. RW rhetoric rules somehow. Get that last welfare queen off the roles they scream. Where's the voice of reason?
4. Are you imagining Nightline doing a chart and talk?
5. Another Nightline or Dateline accounting review geared to a six-year-old mentality?
6. Honest media? HOW DO WE GET THAT?

Well, one more thing. The press makes too much off our elections which skews coverage. Think. We need to be the purchasers of our own candidate information. If we let corporations purchase our information for us, the corporations will run our democracy. If we purchase it, we run the country. IT'S THAT SIMPLE.

It's the campaign funding for one.
reformation mindedly,
fes