The Era of Small Government Over?
Posted by Joshua Claybourn on 8 September 2005 | 11 responses
As I was doing my daily chores today, thinking of the backlash toward the government’s perceived inaction in the wake of Hurricane Katrina, I wondered about the effect it would have on the nation’s view of the proper role of government.
It seems I was not alone in those musings. “The era of small government is over. Sept. 11 challenged it. Katrina killed it.” So writes David Wessel in the Wall Street Journal today. His column concludes:
The horror of New Orleans, the photos of Americans on rooftops waving “Help Us” signs, the squalor of the Louisiana Superdome and the convention center, the failure to heed well-publicized warnings about the inadequacy of the levees — all are provoking loud attacks on local, state and federal governments. But those aren’t cries for less government. Government spending over the next five years will be bigger, perhaps significantly bigger, because of Katrina and its aftereffects.
That poses a formidable challenge to the president and Congress. Today’s combination of small-government tax rates and big-government spending plans is pleasant and popular. It isn’t sustainable.
11 Responses to “The Era of Small Government Over?”
Someone please let Grover Norquist know…
Era of Small Government? When? In our lifetimes? Thank you for a nice laugh. I think Lincoln challenged small government, FDR killed it, and every president since has spat upon the corpse.
Yeah, I’m with Chuck. Small government took its last breath with the New Deal court, which abstracted the bill of powers beyond all recognition. It’s been dead far longer than any of us have been alive.
I think Wessel’s quote (and, thus, Josh’s title) is a reference to President Clinton’s declaration of “The era of big government is over.”
I think I agree with Yglesias on this one more than this writer…the Hurricane will not spell the end of the idea of creating a smaller government…however, it may very well give a much deserved death to the “Starve the beast” mentality…which says that cutting taxes will force the government to cut spending to make up the difference.
The problem with this specific approach is that it is things like levee repair, earthquake retrofitting, infrastructure maintenance, help for the poor…items that don’t exactly make headlines in local districts…which suffer the most under these policies. When you start looking to cut back because you’ve given huge tax cuts and now you have to make up for them somewhere…it becomes the items which don’t get headlines which suffer the most…while big ticket items like Medi-care end up being spared from cuts or even getting expanded.
If smaller-government conservatism is going to work, this hurricane shows that the “Starve the beast model” just can’t work – it eventually kills people. If you want smaller government, you have to actually go after the entitlements. There is no other way to do it.
Small government as the libertarian and semi-libertarian idealists envision it in an age that depends on infrastructure and the stability that allows it to be maintained was never anything but a bigger hallucination than anything anyone on the “best” LSD ever made could have. Let’s face it, their ideal is little to no government functions once you get past defense and law enforcement. They think that everything can be left to the states even while they take over the states and say that states should have about the same level of responsibility, which is to say none. How they expect the enlightened self interest of over a quarter of a billion people and the numerous legal entities that are our corporations to just magically produce a liveable society has never been explained well enough to persuade any but fellow true believers. Now if you want to view it as nothing but rationalization for tax cuts then that’s another matter. Anyone else notice that if the more conservative members of the GOP got their way many billionaires and multimillionaires wouldn’t pay a penny in federal taxes?
Big government or small government, the real issue is accountability and whether or not the government identifies, encourages, and promotes talent and skill while weeding out the incompetents. I’ll know Bush (or anyone else) is a conservative when they start to push accountability and goals in government agencies and programs. There are tasks the government can do more efficiently for less money than the private sector but you got squat without accountability.
I’d also humbly suggest the story of Hurricane Katrina lies in the contrast between the government response to Katrina this year and the government response last year to four Florida hurricanes during an election year. It’s more about politics motivating government actions instead of people doing the best job they can all the time. These guys were caught asleep at the switch because they lacked the motivation they had last year.
I didn’t vote for Bush either time so I can’t say that I got the government I deserved.
To convince most people in the ideal of small government you have to concentrate on a very few essential services, but when those services are needed or called for, thus must work with extreme efficiency. Because FEMA didn’t work efficiently, calls will be for it to be expanded a lot quicker perhaps than an examination of its lack of efficiency.
Thus, those who say that the federal or state government should only be involved in the essentials of maintaining public order — police, fire, etc., have to demonstrate that those services can be relied on.
In the case of Katrina, it seems that there were colossal failures, both of planning and reaction, at both the federal and state level. Although I agree that local officials are primarily responsible in “run of the mill” emergencies, the federal government will always be expected by the public, including by most conservatives though excluding some or even most libertarians, to take a decisive and leading role in catastrophic emergency management.
If government doesn’t work efficiently at its “policing” essentials, instead of convincing a lot of people that government doesn’t work or that it should improve the essentials, it just leads them to believe that there should be a wider net of programs, hoping that the net will hold here and there and that some program that does work will “catch” for one that doesn’t.
Of course, no one who watched Governor Bush in action in Texas would ever have seriously believed that he was a “small government” conservative. The differneces between Bush and many liberal Democrats doesn’t have to do nearly as much with the power or size of federal government as with how that size and power are used.
Oklahoma is a “conservative” state where much of its “conservative” leadership constantly pushes for tax-payer funded or subsidized business. Look, for instance at Oklahoma history alone and the massive push of many Republicans for tax payer funded “Bass Pro” stores. In one Oklahoma City deal, taxpayers would foot the $18 million Bass Pro construction cost and then Bass Pro would rent the building for $600,000 a year. Studies showed that nearby businesses selling similar goods would be negatively impacted — free enterprise? But in the minds of these “pro-business” people, they are genuine conservatives, because conservatism is whether you 1) favor a strong military 2) are pro-business by whatever route you get there, and at least sometimes 3) conservative on social values.
The reason I’m not enthused about Democrats in general is that they have moved from providing opportunites and protections for the poor and marginalized to making themselves “needed” through unneccessary programs for the (upper?) middle class.
I’d rather see an end to predatory lendig practices, support for higher minimum wages, etc. I do not, however, see a benefit to providing universal prescription coverage.
Okay, here is my 4 letter word … well acronym … in response to the sentiment that bigger bureaucratic govenment is better:
FEMA
Sorry for those who are shocked by my disregard for the innocent eyes of any readers under the age of 13.
Small government is a nice idea, but will never work with a population as large as ours.We should, however, scrap our current version and start over with systems more relevant to our culture as it exists.Eleminate the preferential treatment given to corporations and wealth and create a genuine democratic republic.
Well, now that was easy!