Patterson: Is this the golden age for government reform?
Tom Patterson is a retired physician and former Arizona state senator who lives in Paradise Valley, Arizona.
America’s friends of limited government have had a rough go lately. Government bureaucrats and spenders of all stripes have been living it up.
Since 2001, the last time the federal budget was balanced, federal revenues have shown healthy growth of 3.9% annually, while inflation averaged only 2.5%. These figures would normally signify a sound, sustainable economy. But spending has grown at a rate of 5.5%, so instead, we have a destabilizing gross federal debt of $36 trillion.
The response of the Biden-Harris administration to this looming catastrophe was to double down on spending. In an era of relative peace and prosperity, they kept mindlessly passing out money to win political points.
The hope now is that the Trump-Vance administration can reverse this madness. If so, the Department of Education would be a good place to start. It is a prototype bureaucracy that has grown and prospered despite a complete lack of mission success.
The department was created in the 1970s, ostensibly to improve the chronically ailing achievement scores in government schools. But, in spite of the hundreds of billions spent, it has totally failed. Instead, it has provided steady employment for thousands of education bureaucrats who administer federal grants and programs, and write jargon-laden academic papers yet have made no discernible difference in the quality of American education.
Remember Goals 2000, Every Student Succeeds or No Child Left Behind? What about the Office of Safe and Healthy Students, the Education Facilities Clearinghouse or offices dedicated to Asian Americans, Native Hawaiians, American Indians, Hispanics, African Americans and other groups singled out for special treatment? Of course you don’t, unless you are one of the lucky recipients of their largess.
But the Department of Education has been worse than useless. It provides a platform for the teacher unions, by far the most influential protector of the status quo and obstruction to school choice. The damaging COVID-19 shutdown was the latest blow to union-run public schools delivered by the DOE-unions dynamic duo.
Many private schools and charters, with access to the same medical information, kept their facilities mostly open. Their students didn’t suffer the crippling learning loss that the unfortunate wards of the Education Department did.
Ronald Reagan was the first of many leaders to advocate for DOE’s elimination. But, like bureaucracies everywhere, the agency is dedicated above all else to its own preservation, which is the one goal in which it has succeeded. It won’t be easy, but returning education policy to the states would be a great service to future generations of students.
The Department of Housing and Urban Development has a similar failed history. When it was created in 1964, the U.S. homeownership rate was 64%. After six decades of its stewardship, the rate is still 64%.
It’s not like they haven’t tried. HUD’s mortgage companies — Ginnie Mae, Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae — manage multiple housing programs with federal finance agencies, all with the goal of controlling costs and boosting homeownership.
Yet, under HUD’s “leadership,” home prices have far outstripped inflation. When it was created, the average home price was $22,000, about three times the average family income. Today, the average home costs $500,000, seven times the average income. Meanwhile, European households without a comparable bureaucracy average 69% homeownership.
Housing and Urban Development has spent about $4 trillion since its inception, with little to show for it. The housing market would function at least as well if government simply got out of the way.
As these and other bureaucracies have grown and prospered, we have developed a very centralized form of government. In the land of the free, we have grown comfortable sending our tax money to Washington for faceless bureaucrats to return to us, always with strings attached.
We get the health care, the education, roads and other goodies that government decrees. Government buys or subsidizes everything, from unpopular electric cars and trains, state and local government public safety departments, “climate initiatives” and much more.
Reforming an entrenched bureaucracy, much less eliminating it, is extraordinarily difficult. Yet the present could be a rare opportunity to repair this destruction to our way of life. We must be fearless and strategic in reducing government excess and providing a successful economic future for our descendants.
Reader reactions, pro or con, are welcomed at civiltalk@iniusa.org.
