The magazine REASON ran a great article on why government is too big. The unfortunate part is that it focused on too few of the variables as much research often does. To read this article, click here.
In typical Republican form, a 'Unionectomy' was decided as a solution, starting with Gov. Walker in Wisconsin and fanning out through out several other states.
From an article in the Free Enterprise Magazine on 7-25-11 as the fight against unions spreads to the States: "As unions push the federal government to grant them more power and influence over the economy, the opposite is happening in the states. Many states have worked on legislation to promote job growth, new business formation, and fiscal solvency by reining in both public sector and private sector unions. The U.S. Chamber’s Workforce Freedom Initiative (WFI) has partnered with several state chambers on this effort."
Like most of our collective problems, few are simple. Freshman Representatives should not think they are qualified to slash budgets of programs about which they cannot be truly informed as to whether they are will run, necessary to their recipients, and what the fall out would be if they were underfunded. If legislators were to form a task force with each member taking one program with financial support from the government and do an in-depth study as to its finances, how spent, and what the results of those expenditures have achieved.
Instead, the bunch wants to slash and burn in ignorance.
1 comment:
One minor correction: the video was not produced by Reason, it was just on its list of recommended videos. This is just a minor quibble, however, for there are Reason articles and videos that have made similar points.
All in all, I like your idea of creating a commission to study and eliminate government waste. This idea has been successfully taken by both parties in the past. In 1982, President Reagan created the Grace Commission to study public sector inefficiencies. During the Clinton administration, Al Gore's "Reinventing Government" initiative cut through a lot of the bureaucratic kudzu in the nation's regulatory system. Canada went through a major governmental restructuring about a decade ago after going through a financial crisis similar to ours, and emerged as a stronger nation. New Zealand suffered a similar crisis in the early 1980's, and prospered quite well after performing a top to bottom review of their government and eliminating programs that did not work. So it can be done, and should be done again.
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