Small (Federal) Government

[Mark B]

Small Government is the holy grail for many.

What should small government look like at the Federal level?

Are you in favor of it or not?

[donquixote99]

Originally Posted by Mark B

Small Government is the holy grail for many.

What should small government look like at the Federal level?

Are you in favor of it or not?

Despite this article of conservative faith, the government of a big country needs to be big enough to do big things. BUT....it should look like a small business in terms of operational flexibility and procedure.

I used to work for the federal government, and in those days it would take the better part of a year for an office to buy a printer. I quit and got a private industry job. First day, my boss says 'We need a new printer. Go across the street and buy one.' So I went across the street, and came back with a printer.

Years later, I went back to work for government. I was given a desk, so I called the guys who set up computers. They said 'Are you sure you want your computer now? It's hard to move them.' I wanted to get to work, so I said do it. How hard can moving a computer be? When I got my permanent seat assignment I found out how hard. I had to get 5 signatures, including from bosses who who had nothing to do with me, to get the computer moved. When I joked with one that I was having a 'bureaucratic moment' as I sought his signature, he took umbrage!

I don't know how government might fix endless stuff like this, but I think it would surely help a lot if it could.

[Chicks]

Small Federal government would make the country look exactly what it looked like during the Great Depression, and how Ronny Ray-gun and his disgusting acolytes want it to be again. The rich would be very, very rich, and the rest would be hungry, cold, and unable to live a life with dignity, especially as they aged.

Heather Cox Richardson sums up how FDR reshaped the country after the Repubes had nearly destroyed it for the 99% (to their liking, of course).

When FDR entered the White House in 1933, he undertook to rebuild the nation after Republicans had run it into the ground.

Believing that businessmen were the engine that drove the economy and that any government regulations or taxes that hampered them would hurt growth, Republicans under presidents Warren G. Harding, Calvin Coolidge, and Herbert Hoover had slashed taxes and regulations. The superheated economy boomed, but real wages stagnated, and the profits from dramatically improved production all went to the top 1% of the economy.

When spokespeople tried to point out that the new economy shut farmers, immigrants, and minorities out, Republicans accused those groups of falling behind because they were lazy. But then, in October 1929, the stock market crashed and the Roaring Twenties stopped dead. People lost their jobs, their homes, and their hope.

In the presidential election of 1932, desperate voters threw the Republicans out of office and put in Democrats, led by former New York Governor Franklin Delano Roosevelt. FDR recognized that the economic crisis created by unfettered capitalism threatened to end democracy forever as starving Americans turned either to communism or to fascism, as Europeans were doing.

FDR understood that to preserve democracy and the economic system on which it rested, the government must regulate business, protect workers, and provide a basic social safety net. His "New Deal for the American people" did exactly that, and it helped Americans weather the Depression until the extraordinary deficit spending of WWII ended it altogether.

Ordinary Americans celebrated a government that worked for everyone, rather than just the rich. And on April 13, they mourned the man who had piloted the country through that transition.

[Oerets]

When I hear "Small Government" I take to mean "Price Tag" not "Services"!

Typical tax dollars out of pocket small, services to you large.....all "the" others have to make do!

[donquixote99]

Many problems stem not from the size of the government, but from bad management. I was just reading how Social Security still uses an obsolete "Dictionary of Occupational Titles,' from 1977, in adjudicating disability claims. If they can find some sedentary low-skill job in that that a claimant could supposedly do, they can deny the claim. They think they have to keep doing this until they get a comprehensive up-to-date list of jobs, even though there are now no jobs for things like 'pneumatic tube operator.' That is bad management. They have also spent years and years and over $100,000,000 without getting the new job list. They plan to take years more. That is bad management.

One does need big government to pay disability benefits to millions of people. However, why does big government have to mean stupid government?

[bobabode]

Originally Posted by Mark B

Small Government is the holy grail for many.

What should small government look like at the Federal level?

Are you in favor of it or not?

Nope. Libertarians have their screws loose.

[finnbow]

Having worked in the headquarters of 3 federal agencies and in the field for a couple more over a 38 year engineering and management career in federal service, it's highly dependent on which agency you work for and what kind of job you do within that agency.

Some agencies set the standard for how work is performed in certain field (the Corps of Engineers wrote the book on construction management and managed projects that nobody else in the world could have managed (the Manhattan Project, Panama Canal, Cape Canaveral, Al-Can Highway ...)). NASA and the NRC are a couple other agencies are pretty damned professional as well.

I think it comes down to whether the agency has a clearly defined, narrow and understood mission or if it's a big catch-all conglomeration of all sorts of disparate shit (DHS, DOE) and whether it's directly involved in doing stuff or just regulating it.

In any event, inefficiency grows with the size of an enterprise and government dwarfs all other enterprises in size. In some ways, it's the cost of doing business. And if you think our government is fucked up and overly bureaucratic (it is), spend some time in Italy.

[Rajoo]

Originally Posted by Mark B

Small Government is the holy grail for many.

What should small government look like at the Federal level?

Are you in favor of it or not?

If coming from Republicans, Small Government means de-funding agencies they do not like and IRS makes the top of the list and next is probably Department of the Interior. This is also why a Republican President leads with tax cut proposals which is to choke off the revenues to the government.

[icenine]

Originally Posted by donquixote99

Many problems stem not from the size of the government, but from bad management. I was just reading how Social Security still uses an obsolete "Dictionary of Occupational Titles,' from 1977, in adjudicating disability claims. If they can find some sedentary low-skill job in that that a claimant could supposedly do, they can deny the claim. They think they have to keep doing this until they get a comprehensive up-to-date list of jobs, even though there are now no jobs for things like 'pneumatic tube operator.' That is bad management. They have also spent years and years and over $100,000,000 without getting the new job list. They plan to take years more. That is bad management.

One does need big government to pay disability benefits to millions of people. However, why does big government have to mean stupid government?

The x-ray department at the Naval Medical Center Sand Diego still has the pneumatic tube delivery system. As late as 15 Years ago we would still get written requests from the wards via the tube. Of course now it is all done on the electronic medical record via the LAN.