I suspect that Will Marshall is barking up the wrong tree in his piece at The Hill urging Democrats to formulate their own plan for making government more effective and efficient:
But before Democrats dismiss the DOGE as just more MAGA trollery, it’s fair to ask — where’s their plan for making government more efficient and effective?
Inexplicably, that plank is missing from the platform of the party that believes in active government.
It’s not exactly breaking news that Americans have very low confidence in the government’s problem-solving abilities. Such low esteem grows out of a myriad of frustrating citizen interactions with public institutions of all kinds — schools, social service providers, public health systems; police and courts; local licensing and permitting boards as well as distant federal bureaucracies.
Especially skeptical are non-college voters. They believe Washington serves the interests and ideological passions of highly educated elites, not ordinary working people like them.
This helps to explain why Bidenomics failed to land with working Americans. In fact, White House bragging about “delivering” big spending bills likely intensified their skepticism, since tangible benefits were slow to materialize while soaring prices cut deeply into family budgets.
Democrats would be wise to resurrect one of Bill Clinton’s best ideas — reinventing government — and make it a centerpiece of a new strategy for winning back working Americans.
I doubt that the Democratic leadership will rise to Mr. Marshall’s challenge for a simple reason: they don’t see government in the same way as he does.
There are lots of different ways of viewing the role of government. You can see it through a Keynesian prism—the spender of last resort or you can see it as a device for accomplishing things that the private sector can’t or won’t do—my preferred outlook.
I think the Democratic leadership sees government as an employer. Consider the Government Accounting Office’s (GAO) assessment of grant recipients under Biden:
The numbers of federal contractors and federal employees have similarly soared. Further evidence is the way the average federal wage has outstripped the average private sector wage.
Judged by that yardstick the Biden presidency has been a roaring success.
Yup, we spent a lot of money on covid. Note that the chart has a steady upward slope except for when there is a crisis of sorts regardless of party in office.
It’s actually not that unusual for a president to say they will increase govt efficiency. Obama named Sunstein to do that. The problem lies mostly in Congress where cutting taxes wins you votes and increasing spending wins you votes. Cutting spending does not.
OT- Trump/ICE announced a big upcoming raid in Chicago. Looks like my prediction will come true.
Steve
Covid was just helicopter money, and way more than needed. We got inflation. And so-called infrastructure pork, er, bills were not covid.
Its the nature of government, of bureaucracies, to grow and spend. Glad you figured that out finally.