What We’re Talking About When We Talk About Big Government
Last week’s largest domestic, non-security focused storyline left the public consciousness without significant — or sufficient — spotlighting. The General Accountability Office, or GAO, found a massive amount of overlapping and even duplicative programs amongst federal agencies. The GAO did not release a figure regarding the total amount of such waste, but Senator Tom Coburn — who pushed for the report to be conducted — estimated that the report identified between $100 billion and $200 billion in redundancy. Coburn’s figure does not include spending that is neither duplicative nor overlapping but simply ridiculous, as judged by rational men, and as such the actual figure of federal program waste is quite more disgusting.
Conservatives — Originalists — speak of Big Government always: an aversion to it is deservedly the driving intellectual thesis behind conservatism. We despise Big Government, more than anything, and I can’t emphasize strongly enough that I don’t believe the left has any clue why. They have theories about guns and fear, psychological weakness, bigotry, and the like, and these are all weak arguments against Big Government, which makes them easy to dismiss and continue to be a leftist. They are not, of course, our arguments. There is a disconnect between what we say, what we mean when we protest Big Government and what we are thought to mean by our political opposition.
Fighting Big Government is not just about Don’t Tread on Me, although it is much about that; it is not just about national security, though it is fractionally about that. Perhaps we can transmit a better explanation via this GAO report and the below examination of the actual agencies of our current government, or I hope we can, and then I’d like to ask a question of the non-conservatives, because conservatives also do not understand a key plank of the left and the West would benefit from a clear answer.
The Federal Highway Administration
A healthy nation requires public roads for ease of commerce and the movement of the military — a truth acceptable even to most libertarians, and evidenced by a frequent PJM contributor who lives in Central America separated from the town by a private road he cannot use, requiring him to ride a horse through jungle to see the orthodontist.
So America requires a governmental agency funded by public dollars facilitating this essential public service, the movement of the military being the strongest argument for “essential.” How does such a thing get created? The elected representatives of the people, once realizing that such an agency is necessary, name the thing something sufficiently Washingtonian — let’s call it the “Department of Transportation” — and they craft a mission statement, a mini-Constitution, to ensure that the agency does not overstep its bounds and trample liberty: control of transportation puts an agency in position to violate the trust given it in the form of public wealth. Here it is, the DOT mission:
Serve the United States by ensuring a fast, safe, efficient, accessible and convenient transportation system that meets our vital national interests and enhances the quality of life of the American people, today and into the future.
Further: that agency should be held accountable to the public trust via an inspector general and freely available financial records and salary structure, its actions superbly documented and accessible.
If you are an American born after the publication of Das Kapital, you know this fine idea would derail at “Serve the United States” and go Alec Baldwin bats*** at “safe.”
“Enhance the quality of life of the American people”? Hide the silver, and hit up Stephen Green for the top-shelf stuff.
What actually transpired? The Department of Transportation was so established in 1966, by an order of Congress, presumably because there was nothing else at the time fulfilling this necessity. Right?
I could cut the size of government by roughly 90% in as much time as it would take me to read through the list of departments and projects.
Cutting spending isn’t hard when you understand that its 90% giant ponzi scheme and 10% useful but vastly inefficient government functions.
Couldn’t we both. Most of the crap listed here and at least 90% of what is in the federal government is unconstitutional. But they ignore the constitution just as they ignore their oaths of office, “to protect and defend the constitution, from all enemies, foreign or domestic”. As said by a small innocuous cartoon character once upon a time, “we have met the enemy and he is us”. Or “we is him”. Something like that. We have allowed and continue to allow this to go on. It must be stopped.
this is the absolute dirty little secret
People like you give conservatives a bad name.
Is 90% in the right ballpark? Probably.
But even given absolute authority, untying this Gordian knot would take a SENSIBLE person YEARS.
To do otherwise would be to cause GREAT HARM to this country’s economy and security, and to many innocent people.
The leftists have interwoven the tendrils of government into every part of our society. Ripping it out blindly would do great damage. It would be like an emergency room doctor just yanking on a pole that was embedded in an accident victims’ chest.
Yes, it’s not supposed to be there, and yes, it needs to come out, but HOW it comes out makes a huge difference.
Leftists love to paint us as unintelligent and uncaring. You are giving ammunition to the enemy!
Assuming someone could just flip a switch and end the redundant agencies…oh wait, they couldn’t. Please keep the alarmist stuff out of the conversation.
For the sake of your arguement, let’s assume we can flip a switch and turn off an agency. By it’s definition, redundant means there’s already an agency that could or should pick up with the other left off. When people figure out that their phone calls are going unanswered, you don’t think they could figure out whom to call next? I can’t imagine it’s that difficult.
Mark
To simply pulling the on plug these agencies, you say:
“It would be like an emergency room doctor just yanking on a pole that was embedded in an accident victims’ chest”
This is the wrong analogy.
The government is bleeding us to death…bright red, spurting, arterial blood shooting from the Obama wound. “Just pulling the plug” on these agencies RIGHT NOW, is the equivelent of immediate DIRECT PRESSURE on this otherwise fatal wound.
The first, immediate, and ONLY thing to do in order to save this patient, right this second.
Stop the bleeding, NOW…worry about infection, nerve damage, and ruined clothes LATER.
It can be done with “no harm to the country” as these agemcies serve no one IN the country besides themselves. They are interconnected with themselves, refer to themselves, communicate with themselves, rate, recommend, authorize, oversee, report and administer TO THEMSELVES. Can you name a single PRIVATE SECTOR WORKER that would be negatively affected by the closure of these redundant political agencies? These B.S. “outreach” and “advisory” groups that feed at the trough?
The majority of that list is fluff and nonsense…government agencies that provide nothing but imaginary make-work jobs to people completely isolated from the population at large.
Ripple effects? Sure… a lot of unemployed office workers suddenly not buying lunch. Or shopping at the mall. Starbucks and The Gap may see a hickup, Office Max might feel a pinch.
But again SO WHAT? When has any OTHER industry that went belly up concerned the economy at large? 3 to 5 thousand pink slips at major corporations is the norm at times. Steel workers, accountants, I.T. people have been laid off in large numbers before, and we didnt collapse.
So WHAT if a 5000 person Federal Agency is closed tomorrow, and another a week later, followed by a 3rd next month…
Its called “reality”, and it wont hurt us a bit.
Bravo!
Well said, thank you.
I know i’m kind of late with this, but when the aliens read this in 10345, I’d like to add my bit.
I suppose it was cruel of us to put all those nice Nazis out of work, too. It must have been tough to find that many baking jobs in 1945. Perhaps we should only have laid off the camp guards first, then the doctors, and then the “bakers”. Mustn’t create too much sudden unemployment.
More like it would be removing a tapeworm.
How horrible that all those government bureaucrats would be out of work! How horrible that the Eaters would have to become Makers!
Actually, some of us are intelligent and uncaring.
At some point you have to just say WTF.
What will happen to all those people who are dependent on all of this when the economy goes down the tubes?
An excellent capsule. However, I must differ in one particular:
This is inexact. The driving force behind conservatism is an aversion to abrupt or unwarranted interference with established ways and institutions. In this view, Big Government, as noxious as it is, is not a primary but a resultant.
Conservatism in earlier times wasn’t inherently friendly to human freedom. Only with the rise of statist leftism in its multifarious guises – i.e., in the Twentieth Century, particularly after the World Wars — did persons of conservative disposition realize en masse what was at stake.
The political meanings of the words Liberal and Conservative and almost completely swapped from their previously understood meanings. Now, a true conservative is someone who wants to stick to the constitutionally limited government envisioned by the founding fathers of our country. We want the government to stick to its enumerated powers as per the 10th amendment. Most republicans are not conservative, they don’t have any more inclination to stick to their oaths of office than democrats do. The only difference is the speed with which they subvert the constitution. They talk about 61 billion in cuts as though that is a lot. PHAW! 600 billion would be a good start on the cutting.
The context, Francis, is “modern political conservatism”. The man is correct, and you know it.
Others can be correct without detracting from the personal aggrandizement of Francis. Honest.
Only in America is the label “conservative” associated with a political view favorable toward individual freedom. Anywhere else, the equivalent term is “liberal.” That makes it difficult at times to converse about politics and political alignments with persons from other lands and backgrounds. Note further that whenever an organ of the Legacy Media reports on a foreign personage or movement that promotes an anti-freedom position, it hastens to style him a “conservative.”
You will notice, “white tiger,” that I always go by my full and correct name. That’s because I intend to stand behind what I say. If I make a point, it’s because I think it to be one worth making. I hardly need your endorsement to be secure about my opinions or the appropriateness of expressing them, your opinions about “aggrandizement” and such notwithstanding. Now, was that perfectly clear to you, or should I have put it in shorter words?
That’s why I’m telling my Congressman and the Speaker to CUT THEM ALL. Start with AA and work their way through ZZZZ. Skip the redundancy check. Is dept XYZ constitutional? No, kill it. Passing that, do we have someone working on that, yup, kill it. Rinse, repeat.
“The GAO did not release a figure regarding the total amount of such waste, but Senator Tom Coburn — who pushed for the report to be conducted — estimated that the report identified between $100 billion and $200 billion in redundancy.”
This just proves that the smaller the Federal Government, the better. What I find so disgusting about the Democrats right now is that they are refusing to even cut $61 billion from the Federal budget, which is a spit in the bucket when you have a $1.5 trillion (and rapidly growing) deficit. According to the Democrats, nothing can be cut or else the world will end. But the larger point is, if we can’t even agree to cut a miserable $61 billion, how are the Democrats going to make the really big cuts when it comes to Medicaid, Medicare, or Social Security?
The answer is, they just don’t want to cut anything. This is all a game and the Democrats are stalling for time. They hope the Republicans will just grow tired of arguing and then give up. Well, folks, giving up isn’t an option anymore, because if we do give up we go broke, literally go belly up. We just can’t afford spending like this anymore and anybody who wants to do so is either a blind socialist or wants this country to fail, or both. Or he could also be Obama.
The Republicans simply can’t give in now. There is too much on the line. If they give in now, it just proves nobody in Washington is serious about cutting anything. Personally, I don’t mind a government shutdown AT ALL if it means finally bringing a little fiscal sanity to Washington. Call their bluff, Republicans, and show who the real adults are in government.
Yes, “46″. and the Pledge To America will NOT be kept, because the GOPers are just as “bought” as are the Jackass Party people.
Tmyy T is mistaken. The socialists(communists) are already in power. He who controls monetary policy controls the nation. The Fed controls monetary policy and so controls the nation.
The Fed is a privately owned bank.
Please name those men who control it.
Rothschild, Rockefeller, Goldman, Sachs, Morgan; ie, the international bankers of the world.
Folks the Fed is a license for these thieves to print money and lend it to us at interest! We even pay for the printing presses and the paper!
The whole process is insane and morally bankrupt and must end, NOW!
Great article. For amusement, my wife and I go through the list of government jobs, and laugh all morning at their pointlessness, incomprehensibility, and indeterminate purpose. It is an endless parade of unnecessary work for useless people–and this even in the middle of a terrible recession.
The federal, state and local governments have offered a non-stop jobs program for well over 50 years, inventing imaginary employment for dubious skills. But with millions of Americans on-board the government jobs train, it’s now very hard to toss them off, but toss them off we must. It’s not about across the board cuts, but about identifying essential services, retaining those skilled and useful employees, and then dumping the rest. With a solid CEO, the government could lose half the workforce and still perform as well as it does now.
But keep in mind just how many of those jobs were invented as political jobs, jobs as favors for valuable political constituencies; it will not be easy to target those departments. And the way the government imaginary employment complex works when cuts are applied is to intentionally withhold valuable services and retain the most useless services so that when the cuts are applied, people notice the missing services. The government mafia then blames the cuts for the pain, never intending to seriously look into removing or eliminating whole departments that do little or nothing useful.
He [King George] has erected a multitude of new offices, and sent hither swarms of officers to harass our people, and eat out their substance.
–Declaration of independence
Glad you brought that up. I was wondering when someone would.
Wow!
It must have been painful researching this.
How many pages of rules, definitions and regulations must these agencies have produced? How many fiefdoms? And how many arbitrary and unnecessary power structures?
Your list should make it easier for cuts to be made.
One easy way to identify a wasteful agency;
It claims that it cannot tolerate cuts, and
demands increases, particularly in Admin.
See also Parkinson’s Laws and Pournelle’s
Iron Law of Bureaucracies.
One easy way to identify a wasteful agency;
It claims that it cannot tolerate cuts, and
demands increases, particularly in Admin.
Has there ever</b? been an agency that failed to make those exact claims? It seems to me that all agencies view themselves as essential and that Civilization As We Know it will end if anyone attempts to shrink the agency in any way. They then demand additional money to do even more good than they are currently doing.
[Sorry, the previous post had a formatting error. I really have to start using the "Preview" button....]
One easy way to identify a wasteful agency;
It claims that it cannot tolerate cuts, and
demands increases, particularly in Admin.
Has there ever been an agency in any government anywhere that failed to make those exact claims? It seems to me that all agencies view themselves as essential and that Civilization As We Know it will end if anyone attempts to shrink the agency in any way. They then demand additional money to do even more good than they are currently doing.
Here is a 2004 article from Imprimus.. It is a good blue print for us to use on how New Zealand cut their government waste.
http://www.hillsdale.edu/news/imprimis/archive/issue.asp?year=2004&month=04
SARCASM WARNING! SARCASM WARNING! The following statement may contain sarcasm not suitable to immature, fragile intellects; Read with caution. YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED!
And how many of these ‘useful idiots’ are unionized? Being in an obscure and anonymous agency, and collecting exorbitant and lavish funding is ‘fashionable’ with these ‘challenged’ and ‘minority’ groups.
If the trend maintains pace, there will be more ‘special groups’ of individuals in America, than there are races of people on the entire planet. And this is intentional, to keep these groups in dedicated, predictable, voting blocks.
Being a former government employee, I am fully aware of the validity of this article. And it’s beyond any point of recovery. Deletion of any department, will result in other functioning departments absorbing the workers and workload, naturally, at higher cost.
Under the current ‘regime’, the United States Government will become the most oppressive government in history. And probably never surmounted by any other government in the history of mankind.
This article would be hilarious if it weren’t so painful. The list of violations of the government’s enumerated powers is long and arduous just to read. We need a body (Yes I know), a new government body whose only job is to go through all the books and abolish unconstitutional agencies and programs. See if they can keep up with congress passing new ones.
Thank you so much, David, for this great piece. This should definitely be read by every journalism student as an example of how editorials, based on facts, should be written (eat your heart out Krugmann). I’m bookmarking it so I can use it against the librul nitwits who try to defend the government as it is now, reactionaries that they are.
None of those agencies, departments and other collections of make-work jobs for politicians’ idiot relatives are “essential”. Essential is: national defense; a stable currency; maintenance of the rule of law together with an abiding respect for private property and individual rights – only individuals have rights, by the way – making sure the state governments don’t violate our rights; making sure the state governments don’t screw with the free flow of trade, commerce and the movement of people among and between the; and that’s about it. Re-read the Federal Constitution and you’ll realize that not much more than that is constitutional. So, just throw out all those activities and wait about ten years without re-creating any of them. The ones that are still seen as being “essential”, Congress can then re-consider, slowly and deliberately, checking to see if they’re constitutional and then if they’re not just a smoke screen for making money or economic/political advantage for “our buddies”.
The best part about the budget debate is the extensions of two week increments to keep the federal government open. In doing so, the budgeteers have to mathematically derive that which is absolutely essential, and the rest of the phoney departments can go starve. The federal employee welfare state becomes exposed for the paper shuffling parasites which they have become. Eventually this domino effect of trimming the useless fat would roll back into the university system where they have learned to study all things unimportant.
Just a comment on your headline. The Republicans and conservatives also held majorities in the Congress and had presidents in the White House. It doesn’t matter who has the majority, that Big Government you write of keeps growing so liberals are not the only ones to blame.
For several years, the last “BUSH” had a Republican majority and what did we get–more debt, two wars and a bigger government and a new HUGE agency — Homeland Security!
Oh, and I forgot that it was on Bush the Second’s watch that we had the 2008 global financial crises with about 64 trillion dollars in global losses.
It doesn’t matter if the politicians are conservatives or liberals, Republicans or Democrats, they all spend too much and grow government.
No. Republicans have held majorities and there have been Republican Presidents. Other than Harding/Coolidge and arguably Reagan, there have been no Conservative Presidents in well over a century.
Outside of the 1920′s, Conservatives have not held majorities in Congress since the 1800′s.
That is why people like me stopped giving to the GOP and why the Republican Party will die a quick and painful death if a Rino like Romney is nominated next year.
What Old Soldier means is that a Republican is not necessarily a Conservative, hence the derogatory term RINO. And yes, the financial crises happened on Bush’s watch, but the roots go further back before Clinton, to the start of the causes for the housing bubble, without which there would not have been a financial meltdown. Just as 9/11 happened on Bush’s watch as a result of the fence put up between the FBI and the CIA by Janet Reno, during Clinton’s “watch”.
It takes 60 votes to “control” the Senate. I’m not defending Bush, but until Repubs control 60 votes in the Senate, reduction of government is virtually impossible.
“but until Repubs control 60 votes in the Senate”
“but until conservatives control 60 votes in the Senate”
FTFY.
However, we actually need 67 conservatives, so we can impeach and remove members of the executive and judicial branch who don’t understand the problem.
A 60 Senate seat Republican supermajority would be necessary, but not nearly sufficient.
First of all, that number would have to stand firm and vote as a bloc to cut these wasteful programs, and in practice, that’s unlikely.
Reducing the size of gov’t would also require a House majority (if not supermajority) plus a compliant White House that won’t seek to veto what amounts to an amputation of unecessary parts of gov’t.
Frankly, I’m not optimistic that any of these things are EVER going to happen.
At the root of this problem is that its far easier to start a gov’t program than to end one. Once started, programs suck up money, undergo mission creep, and provide one of many ways for politicians to exercise power and influence.
Nothing is going to change until EVERY American starts to get mad about this waste, including the ones themselves subsisting on gov’t handouts.
The House of Representatives has the power under our Constitution to cut off funding for any or all of the organizations listed above. The House has the right to do this over the most strenuous objections of the Senate, the President, and the Supreme Court. I strongly doubt it will happen and suspect that they will squander the opportunity to defund even one of these organizations completely. So far, this Congress has chosen to address the cancer afflicting this country by lightly snipping a little bit off of one or two of the more egregious tumors.
And lets not forget the Big Lie that all the States have to “balance their budget”.
States get funding from the Fed for everything from meeting weekly payrolls to supplying slush-fund campaign bribes. Every single State in the Union is operating in the Red.
We can pretend its a balanced budget at the State level because outlay matches “income” for a given period, but remember the INCOME is in large part an artificial debt that will be passed on to our grandchildren.
State purchased lap-tops, traffic lights, police cars, K-9 units, SWAT vans, padded overtime, salary, retirements…from Federal Dollars, so All of it is Future Debt (plus interest) tomorrow, for State Level spending today.
Put it this way…
My wifes Grocery Budget for our family is “balanced”, she doesnt “overspend” more than we have…because I direct deposit CASH to her Grocery account, using a Home Equity Line Of Credit….
Wow, isnt SHE a wonder of fiscal responsibility that we should all copy?
Red ink is red ink, people.
States are just as bad, if not worse, than the Fed.
And the sad part is that most of those agencies could be better handled at the state level. Government closer to the people tends to be a bit better and more responsive. At least we now have a number (the GAO Waste Report) and the names (thanks to the author).
“Paging Stephen Green, paging Stephen Green. Your presence is requested at the bar.”
Just curious… This person you know thinks it’s the government’s purpose to extract money by force from innocent people and build a road in order to make his orthodontist commute more convenient? Some libertarian!
I suspect that the reference in the fourth paragraph of the article is to me. You assume that I think
I don’t think the government should do anything even remotely resembling that.
What I would like the government here to do is to enforce existing laws (as my wife and I have for quite some time and at significant expense been in court requesting) to require that an existing public road through a commercial orange grove on a neighboring piece of land, unlawfully closed by the owner for almost two years, be reopened; it is the only vehicular access to our farm. When opened, we are quite prepared to maintain it at our own expense so that we can drive our car to and from our house on it and so that the fruit from our own nearly five hundred orange trees can be sold and transported.
The road had previously been used by the public for over eighty years. It is only 420 meters long and connects our farm with another public road, where we now must keep our car. I’d walk, but due to significant back and leg problems that is quite painful as well as potentially harmful. Fortunately, we still have one of the horses I had trained and he seems to read my mind and to be very anxious to do what I ask. I have no concern that he will do anything to cause me further back injuries possibly resulting in paralysis.
Thank you for spotlighting this incomprehensible and unconscionable government boondoggle.
According to Martin Gross (in his book National Suicide), there are 40+ programs designed to deal with some aspect of welfare. These programs are scattered across multiple agencies with little or no coordination and duplicate each other over and over again. Almost every agency has its finger in this pie, one way or another. It’s time to stop this madness.
Like many above, I’m certain that in under a week, we the people could cut 80% of the duplication instantly and restructure the entire snarled mess into something 1000% more rational, manageable and doable.
The fact that we’d save billions in the process is icing on the cupcake.
The following was FAX’d to Congressmen John Boehner, Brad Miller, Pete Sessions, Eric Cantor & Paul Ryan and Senators Mitch McConell, Richard Burr and Kay Hagan.
Gentlemen and Gentlewoman,
In your noble and epic struggle to cut $100 billion from a $1.5 trillion dollar budget, a budget the Democrats defend as absolutely essential to save the children, the poor, the homeless, the elderly, the infirm, those poor unfortunates that suffer from “panic attacks,” etc., an epic struggle to save America from extinction, you might be interested in looking at this.
http://pajamasmedia.com/blog/what-we%E2%80%99re-talking-about-when-we-talk-about-big-government/?singlepage=true
While I’m sure all of these worthy organizations, groups, departments, administrations, custodians, etc., all helpfully hyperlinked, are absolutely essential to keep the ailing heart of America ticking it might be worth a little of your valuable time to carefully take a look here to see if you might not be able to detect just a little redundancy buried within. You might even find a way to save a few more bucks here and there. Just a thought.
Good job, Gepp.
I myself am so sick and tired of the democrats (well almost all politicians) telling me that this is FOR the CHILDREN, or the Elderly, or those less fortunate and that they will die if we do not support this or that legislation. Well they ain’t my kids or parents and those less fortunate got that way HOW? Yes I am mean, and want to keep more of my own damned money!
Let all the above mentioned go to the churches and ask for alms and assistance leave me alone!
CUT PRESIDENTIAL PAY.
Obama has been on domestic trips, on vacation, or has plainly just refused to show up for work, for 30% of his time in office, as of December 31st, 2010.
He has every service and necessity supplied to him, so why is it necessary to pay him so lavishly? He doesn’t have to spend any of his own money for the four years he’s in office, and he gets a guaranteed pension when he leaves.
And in this case, what a enormous waste.
WOW! What a stupendous service you have provided your fellow Americans! Can you imagine WTF we could have done with all taxpayer funds if this sh-t had been ripped down, DECADES AGO???
Publius,
You are right on about the problems, but need to think through some of your solutions. Having spent a lot of my life either as a student or teacher in public and private universities, it’s frightening how government money has so corrupted the private ones that they resemble the public ones far too closely already. And letting enrollment completely determine a department budget will kill essential but unpopular majors like mathematics and physics and will put ignorant, naive (and frequently downright lazy) eighteen-year-olds in complete control of the curriculum.
Let’s just eliminate the state subsidies altogether and let the state schools truly compete with private ones.
I would dearly love to read a list of some of the less-traditional programs in our universities these days along with some enrollment numbers. I expect we’d see a number of programs that are – effectively – Nintendo Studies or Applied Substance Abuse – although I expect that the names would not be quite as obvious.
why not just reboot the entire thing
cut everything
then start from scratch
when your computer gets a virus and you’re sick of pussyfooting around you delete everything and reset the machine to its factory settings
an enormous headache? absolutely, but at least you have a functional machine and you eventually realize that most of the stuff on your computer didnt really matter in the scheme of things
this country is in need of a gigantic reboot
What a profound idea! Just do a reinstall of the original program that ran so great to begin with, until you started slowly adding all kinds of needless items and then all of a sudden you realize hey something is wrong with this machine!
So you reinstall and after re-installation it is like you have a new machine and you are perfectly happy and still alive!
Sheesh! Next January when Congress convenes again, they should read this list instead of the Constitution on the floor. Although it will take longer….
Wow! Thanks for writing this article. It is mind-numbing, even to someone who just finished reading Dr. Kengor’s “Dupes”, which was the most shocking set of facts anyone growing up in the Cold War era has ever seen.
The laws of economics are like the laws of mathematics: provable. The warning signs are all around us that we are at the end of the 100-year reign of pretending economics doesn’t exist, that we can copy the USSR and not eventually wind up like they did. If we sent each congressman and senator a copy of Thomas Sowell’s “Basic Economics”, would they or could they read it?
>>If we sent each congressman and senator a copy of Thomas Sowell’s “Basic Economics”, would they or could they read it?
The question answers itself.
They won’t even read the bills they’re supposed to be voting on, so why on earth are they going to sit down and read (let alone understand) an actual textbook?
“Economics? What’s that?”
“Its filled with scary numbers and graphs!”
“This textbook is racist!”.
“I have advisors to understand this stuff for me”.
A better plan, I think, is to try and reserve your votes for politicians (who are, at least on paper supposed to be educated adults) who have already demonstrated some life experience in economics.
Hint, if they’ve spend their entire adult lives in politics or academia, chances are good that they’re economically illiterate.
One of the many reasons Sowell’s Basic Economics is so great is because of its lack of scary numbers and graphs.
Most of them would not, and I’m quite sure that many of them could not.
A fellow who talks about islands capsizing comes to mind…
The government of the United States is a slush fund. Nothing less.
The pursuit of life, liberty and happiness has turned into the pursuit of wealth, power, and freedom from the law by our self-styled “elites”. They use the US Treasury as a cash machine to payoff their allies, cronies, sychophants and mercenaries, otherwise knows as the “democrat base”.
That list is bloody brilliant, but why’d you leave out defense? DoD, NSA, CIA, FBI, ATF, DoJ, TSA, SS, and God knows how many others.
I wonder how many posts it would take to get that entire list into the comments section at the Puffington Host. Maybe I’ll try it, and see if I can get at least one liberal to find at least one department to cut.
Not much will change until we can stop Peter from stealing from Paul. We need to take away the vote of anyone receiving any Governement money. If employed by the government than no vote. Getting welfare, no vote. Also the 50% that pay no tax, no vote (this is a redundancy, just to make a point). Then maybe these politician will starting working for those that are paying the bills.
I wouldn’t go so far as to totally take away the vote from people who didn’t pay taxes or received more money from the government than they paid in, but I would take away their ability to vote for races for seats in the House of Representatives. That would do more than anything to end the welfare state as we know it.
Agreed. It’s like a conflict of interest, no different from the public unions who ‘negotiate’ with politicians for mutual benefit at everyone else’s expense.
The Liberal response to the question is; “What did you say?”
Nah, it’s “RACIST!!!!!!!”
NBC News has had a series called “The Fleecing of America” for some years now. I would like to see a small team of researchers in every state and one at the Federal level based on the NBC series and headed up by a person like the author of this article.
The intent would be to destroy, tear down/apart bureaucracy and the motto of the agencies would be “We Are Angry”. Their recommendations would be handed off to the President, governors and senates. The goal would be to get the government out of our lives and to reduce our tax burden.
Abolishing the Dept. of Education, the National Endowments for most everything, de-funding Public Television and Planned Parenthood and all forms of welfare would be a good start. Let’s stand on our own feet and not our neighbors or Chinese financing.
No mention of the DEA? I’m sure you approve of their good work:
It is easier for a kid to get an illegal drug than a legal beer.
The DEA too. Their ilk have no problem with entering a house with a no-knock warrant like it’s Fallujah but over an ounce of weed.
Or so they say. (ahem)
And our concerned Republicans have found 63 billions to cut out of an annual budget that overspends its mandate by four times that number in only one month. By howdy, we are git’n it done now! The federal government is like a terminal cancer, it just keeps getting bigger no matter what we do.
We all know why these programs will never be cut: because the people love them. Everyone who gets a check from Uncle Sugar (or who works for him) wants the other guy’s budget zeroed out, but not his own. Why,without the services of [insert your constituents' largest employer here] America itself would grind to a halt!
Guarding your constituents’ rice bowls is what congressmen do — those that want to get elected, anyway. Nobody ever got sent to Washington for promising to do away with their district’s federal jobs. We all know what it looks like when fedgov leaves and takes its payroll away. Remember base closures? What happened to Hoochville when they closed Fort William Calley? Instant ghost town, that’s what…
The only way any of this will ever end is by collapse. The system will have to crash and be rebooted from scratch. (Note to would-be revolutionaries: any attempt to “crash” the system deliberately will create more problems than it solves.) No, I’m afraid that all we can do is hang on and wait for the Gods of the Copybook Headings to limp up and explain it again.
(Besides, can you imagine what would happen if the welfare checks and AFDC and WIC funding and grandma’s Social Security deposits just… stopped? We’d all find out real quick what “post-racial America” is really like. Tripoli would look like a toddler’s play date by comparison!)
Don’t forget the Crazy Checks!
Yet again makes the case for returning to the Founder’s intent to keep the Senate a body of DELEGATED representatives of each State and NOT directly elected by the populace.
Excellent presentation. Allow me to suggest Jabba the Hut as the accompanying visual.
d(^_^)b
http://libertyatstake.blogspot.com/
“Because the Only Good Progressive is a Failed Progressive”
This is a good attempt to cast light on the cancerous federal bureaucratic structure, although I suspect that it portrays only the top-most layers, and the further down you go the worse it gets. However, I believe a more primary consideration is missing…
The well known “ratchet effect” seems to be inextricably bound up in the process of writing laws, just as falling to the ground is inextricably linked to jumping from a height. Whatever the dynamic may be, it long ago should have proven to us that THERE IS NO STANDARDIZED PROCESS provided by the Constitution to eliminate pieces of government.
Any of the attempts made in the past such as defunding, ultimately amount to a game of whack-a-mole. In addition, none of them can keep pace with the concommitant perfidy of a lazy irresponsible Congress creating yet another agency to assume the role of unelected lawmaker. In terms of a legislative dynamic, there exists a feedback loop one way, but not the other.
As others have mentioned, much of this stems from the utter trashing of the Constitution by liberals/progressives over the last 100 years. The expanded Commerce Clause should be rolled back to before Wickard v. Filburn 1942. Next, the Incorporation Doctrine must be addressed, because it transformed the Bill of Rights from a strict limitation on the federal Congress’ power over the states, into an unlimited grant of power to the federal courts over the states. That misinterpretation must be thoroughly expunged. Next, Congress’ ability to foist off its legislative duties to some regulatory agency must be drastically curtailed. Finally, a fully explicated negating process is necessary to describe the act of eliminating a bureaucracy such that, once instigated it cannot be countermanded.
There really is no alternative… to do any or all of these things requires a new Constitutional amendment.
You have a good point. Politicians have evolved to be like bacteria. Their entire existance is dedicated to innoculating themselves from being recalled. So they have developed multiple layers of unconstitutional bureaucracy to insulate themselves from ever having, once upon a time, made a decision that a single voter might not like. Whack-the-mole, and he appears in a different place with an entirely different appearance.
But I still think it’s a secondary problem to the calculated attempt of a cabal of marxist thugs to take over the greatest country that ever existed. Defeating them is job 1. And I think they would be delighted if to have the Republicans futily rail about and bash their heads against the Labyrinth while the subversives merrily chop down the foundations of the country.
Excellent analysis. You realize, of course, that none of your suggestions will ever be realized. The nature of representative government guarantees bureaucratic bloat. The only way to avoid it is to avoid representative government.
As long as we’re dreaming, let’s get rid of Title II of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 as well.
Thank you for your comment. If true, then I suspect that working within the current milieu is insufficient, and that conservatives must instead wholeheartedly commit themselves to a strategy of total offense:
1) Organized civil disobedience.
2) Nullification at all governmental levels up to and including the state.
3) Secession without armed insurrection if (1) and (2) fail.
4) What is described by commenter #39 ‘Old Patriot’ if (1), (2), and (3) all fail.
The Founders pledged their lives, their fortunes, and their sacred honor… will we do any less?
Isn’t it ironic that conservatives and liberals (socialists) are working towards the same endstate…a collapse (the only way big government will ever be reduced and the only way socialists can come to power) of the US government?
Think about it.
Take a long, hard look at the Middle East. What you’re seeing there is what it will take in this nation to roll back the federal government – masses of people so fed up they’re willing to take their lives in their hands to force the change. Government will not EVER give up anything it’s gained, and will ALWAYS strive to grow. That’s what Jefferson meant when he said it’s in the nature of governments to grow and liberty to be decreased, and why he also said a little revolution now and then was essential to the health of the nation. It’s needed to prune the tree of government back to its essentials. I pray that, if this revolution is to come, it comes on my watch, rather than the watch of my children and grandchildren. I’m old enough a few more years won’t mean much, but most of them are young yet.
“Old Patriot”, I’ll either be in the foxhole with you, or in one nearby.
These parasites have been accommodated enough already. They’re getting to the pandemic stage. Fireworks seems to be the only antidote.
…Firearms
fireworksseems to be the only antidote. I fixed your last sentence for ya!Your hired! Got any reloading equipment?
(We just created a JOB!!)
I have preached on deaf ears for many years, advocating the amendment of the Constitutions Article I, Section 8 Commerce Clause.
If folks would wake up and come to understand that 99.999% of all government encroachments into States Rights, private sector commerce and citizens daily lives, comes through the abuse and revision of the constitutional ‘INTENT’ of the commerce clause.
Such an amendment is the ONLY absolute cure for all that ails this once great nation! It would automatically downsize the government to its original constitutional size and authority…returning to the States and the people their intended constitutional rights.
The efforts we have made in the Drug War have led to the fact that it is easier for a kid to get an illegal drug than a legal beer. We could do at least as well as that by spending nothing. At the Federal level costs are at least $25 bn a year.
In Seventeen Hundred and Seventy-Six
A group of American Mavericks
Renounced the Yoke of Tyranny,
The Tax on Paper,
The Tax on Tea.
Our forefathers thought that
We were Fit
To Tax Ourselves,
And, you will admit:
That we have been VERY good at it.
Oh, we could have a very small government, say one guy. …and we could call this guy, I don’t know, Emperor? Very cute and very wrong history of the DOT btw. Why have various administrations in the DOT? Do you want highway engineers designing airport runways? Do you want aeronautical engineers designing transit systems? Transit engineers designing pipelines? When the local pols line their pockets and steer projects to their wife’s kid brother, who do you propose be there to stop them? Do you want any of these systems to meet any kind of standards? Do you want the market to be responsible for outbreaks of salminela? Don’t be proud. Don’t even be thankful. Just be realistic.
Congratulations!
You have given us an excellent illustration of one of the favorite leftist responses to reason:
Miss the point entirely.
I was going to say, “PRETEND to miss the point.”, but over the years I’ve realized that most leftists really are as stupid as they seem to be.
“be realistic”
I’d settle for this guy writing something that makes some sense.
David,
This was a well timed article-and one that even opponents of the Tea Party ought to read. It’s a cold slap in the face and wake up call.
I don’t think anyone is against some sort of government helping to organize society-but in America we have built the bridge way too far. Going to cross post this to my blog.
A small addition.
The Commerce Department also is involved with food inspection, if it is seafood. Doesn’t that make you feel safe?
Excellent article David, this is the type of information we badly need in the debates we have with the left.
Seriously? Have any of you ever worked for a large company. Every large company in the world has an organizational structure that looks just like this. The company I work for has at least 10 different groups that answer the phone when a customer calls. We need all those groups, because they all specialize in different things, and have been trained a different way.
Again, all I see is a list of departments, with no suggestions on which programs to cut. Because it is much easier to say “we should cut” than to be specific. Yes, we could cut the “National Cemetery Administration”, but then some other group would have to hire people to do that job, unless you don’t want there to be a national cemetery. I kind of like the idea myself, and I don’t mind having something like $.000000000001 percent of my income go to fund it.
I cannot find a link at the moment, but not long ago, I saw a clip of an interview of Milton Friedman. He was asked what he would do (if he could) with certain Departments of the US government. His answer was to abolish 14 and a half of the 19! He said he would move Veterans Affairs into DoD, and would abolish a majority of the rest: HUD, gone; HEW, gone, Energy, gone (nuclear parts to DoD) etc. etc.
Most interesting, was that his reasoning was that these Departments have no constitutional basis.
For intellectual fun of a similar sort and a discussion of how this sort of battle might/should be waged, drop over to Sean Gabb’s site, (http://www.seangabb.co.uk/) click on ‘Books’ in the top row, and then download the free pdf of
Cultural Revolution, Culture War: How Conservatives Lost England and how to Get It Back
Blurb: “This book explains why England has become a foreign country to the majority of its inhabitants, and how, by a process of stern and unbending reaction, it can be restored as a free country.
Such a battle mainly involves defunding and abolishing the ‘permanent state’, meaning the permanent bureaucracy, quangos and enablers.
Excellent article, David. However, there are other little noticed problems; they have been around for years and there may be no simple or acceptable ways to fix them.
The administrative law processes are excruciatingly slow and cumbersome; they may also be necessary. I wrote about one problem here almost three years ago, recounting a twenty-year long experience I had with the system as an an attorney. This may be a problem without satisfactory solutions.
Is that sort of stuff good, aside from feeding attorneys and their dependents? Probably not. Is there a “fair” way to avoid it? Same response.
Another problem is that
There are lots of useless government agencies around and they should be eliminated. However, the only one I can immediately recall having been eliminated was the Civil Aeronautics Board which regulated the pricing and other non-safety related activities of the airlines. Now we have cheap seats, miserable or nonexistent airline “food” and inconvenient schedules; many gripe — the government should do something!
The overreaching and bloated nature of the federal government has lots to do with the size and complexity of the United States and with the desire of elected and appointed “public servants” to micromanage everything. Little if anything can be done about the size and complexity of the United States. Unless and until it is decided by our “public servants” – and by the rest of us to motivate them to that end – to eliminate such micromanaging, this farce will continue. Unread and voluminous legislation such as ObamaCare – with massive delegations to administrative agencies to decide what it means and how, therefore, to implement it, would be an abomination even if constitutional and actuated by something other than the desire to enhance government authority over all of us. Ditto the “Clean Air Act” and others.
The states should be proactive in doing much of what needs to be done, but federal preemption (See Arizona’s efforts to deal with the illegal immigration problem) and federal mandates, sometimes unfunded (ObamaCare, for example), are obstacles which are impossible to overcome unless and until the voters decide that it is necessary to keep the country from going down the swirl in the toilet – even if “ecologically sound” low water usage toilets don’t have swirls.
Dan…the crown jewel of your writing: [Despite the claimed desire for less government, and the complaints about how poorly it does just about everything, there are constant demands for the government to fix problems.]
You don’t have to go back to many decades to find the reverse position, though on a much smaller scale, it existed in narrow areas. Sixty years of socialist indoctrination and now it is commonplace for the majority to be reliant upon the government for everything.
Fantastic.
I heard we got a Navy and Marines to stop pirates under Thomas Jefferson.
Wish we had some now to stop piracy.
Maybe a department or bureau to stop piracy, sort of Winning The Future?
Foreign
Units
Camped
Kitted
Enduring
Deployed
United against
Piracy
What we are talking about is the bureaucracy. I mentioned that bureaucracy is the greatest evil ever created by mankind and that got Steven L. Taylor over at OTB animated.
Bureaucracy is, of course, a necessary evil. The form itself is not evil but as the 4th branch of government it amplifies and facilitates the basest natures of man. The very natures our 3 Constitutional branches were devised to thwart. Unfortunately, those branches abdicated their duty to oversee and control the 4th branch giving it vague authorities and independence of action.
Then just as robots in all the sci-fi books and movies, sometime in the 1920-1930s, the bureaucracy became self-aware, decided it knew what was best for the People and would save them from the messy freedoms that often caused the People to make less than optimal decisions. Since that time, bureaucracy has grown, self-replicated, and assumed more control in their efforts to create a utopia for the People.
We have now reached a point where our technocratic overlords have become a direct threat in their consumption of resources and we must fight to regain control.
All true. However, in addition to possibly well meaning but often maladroit efforts to do what they, sometimes uniquely, consider to be in the public interest, bureaucrats have another motivation.
There is no effective way to measure the economic output of federal agencies, and economic output is in any event rarely their purpose. However, one measure of bureaucratic effectiveness lies in finding new things to do, and this often leads to the hiring of additional bureaucrats and to the promotion of existing bureaucrats to supervise them.
To the extent that these things cannot be accomplished within agency functions as currently defined, they can often be accomplished by asking the Congress to amend the laws which authorize agencies or by getting the agencies themselves to modify their own rules to encompass the new stuff. Rule modifications are subject to challenge in court, but before the challenges are heard and decided much damage can be done. The FCC is trying to promote what it calls “Network Neutrality,” despite the absence of any congressional mandate to do so. It seems very unlikely that both houses of the Congress would agree to amendments to existing law to provide such a mandate. The EPA seems to be traveling a similar path in a similar forest.
Increases in power lead to increases in money and prestige, whether through promotion within an agency or through the enhancement of resumes for later employment in the private sector. There is usually a high demand for bureaucrats intimately familiar with how their agencies function, and with the appropriate contacts to exploit that familiarity.
Bravo Mr. Steinberg!
Where you been? One or two columns a year written like this are not going to keep me as a paid subscriber. Keep this up and I will be looking for your work like I do Hansen and some others (Whittle). Mr. Simon get this man an ergonomic keyboard he has work to do.
Sincerely.
Thank you Mr. Steinberg! I’m a somewhat left-leaning centrist, and this is honestly the first thing from the Right that I’ve read in years that doesn’t resort to fear-mongering, name-calling, character-assasination, guilt-by-association, or straw-man arguments. (Granted, I have to admit I haven’t looked very hard, and the Right certainly doesn’t have a monopoly on screed.) Nicely done. Can we please have more of this? Thanks.