Contracting Our Government

I suppose one of the things that identifies me as a liberal is that I don’t get the joke “I’m from the government and I’m here to help.”

The anti-government logic of many conservatives baffles me. It seems self-hating. After all, aren’t “we the people” the government of the United States of America? If you don’t like what your government is doing you have the right to vote, to organize, to run for office.

That doesn’t mean that government is directly responsive to the people, or that influence-peddling doesn’t exist, or that the people’s interests aren’t often subsumed under special interests of corporate America, but it does mean that these elements of our society don’t have to exist forever. It is possible for you to do something about it.

But, for the last quarter century the federal government (and many local governments as well) have been outsourcing their responsibilities. Reagan kicked off this move to free-market governance with the Grace Commission, and the hyper-competent Al Gore (with the assistance of Bill Clinton) continued these neoconservative policies with his Re-inventing Government project (aka the National Performance Review).

Bush, the MBA president, was going to carry this to its logical conclusion and radically shrink the government, save money, and cut taxes.

The logic as to why this should work seems pretty straightforward. The US government is a non-competitive bureaucracy. Investigations revealed waste, incompetence, and bureaucratic hurdles that increased the cost of services. Out-sourcing those services would subject them to the competition of the market, and more efficient companies would make bids to do the job cheaper than it cost the government. The competition would lower prices, which in turn would lower taxes. Outsourcing would shrink government, which would mean fewer employees (and benefits) which would lower taxes. Sounds pretty good, right?

The problem is, it hasn’t worked.

Ok, I’ll concede immediately that in some cases it did work. Good! Being a liberal doesn’t mean I automatically choose government control over private control, or that I object to competition and free markets. What it does mean is that I think there many cases when it is critical for the citizens to have oversight into the organizations engaged in governing. If these services remain under the civil structure, then there are mechanisms in place to provide review and oversight. Intelligence collection and military supplies are examples of services and goods that should have some federal government oversight. It is critical that we get good intelligence and not waste money (or lives) on shoddy military gear and weapons.

The lower taxes, and smaller number of government employees promised by neoconservative philosophy has never materialized over the last quarter century, despite having four presidents who are sympathetic, and multiple Congresses working towards these ends. Government is larger, more expensive, and has abandoned much of its oversight responsibility to… well, to no one. They simply abandoned their responsibilities.

Seventy percent of the US intelligence budget now goes to private contractors. We the people have no mechanism for oversight into these private companies. How do we know we’re getting what we pay for?

It’s time we stopped giving our government away to private industry. The government is us, and it’s time we stopped shirking our responsibilities, and start participating in that government.

(For more about government contracting see the op-ed that prompted this post – Government by Contractor is a Disgrace by Thomas Frank in the Wall Street Journal.)