February
9, 2001
Time For Republican REGO
By Tom Bevan
For years we listened to Al Gore tout his "Reinventing Government"
(REGO) initiative. The idea of reinventing government certainly
sounded good, even though nobody ever really knew exactly what
the heck Gore was talking about and the press never bothered to
explain it. Ironically, despite Gore's self-declared passion for
producing a "smaller, more effective" government, one
of the issues Bush exploited brilliantly during the campaign was
pegging the Vice President as a "big government" inside-the-beltway
liberal.
Indeed, if Gore's success at "reinventing government" was any
indication of his potential prowess as president, it's a good
thing he's now tucked away teaching journalism at Columbia. As
we learned during the campaign, it turns out the only government
jobs Al Gore was good at "reinventing" were those in
the United States military, where he proudly took credit for slashing
nearly 300,000 positions from the U.S. Armed Forces.
In November, 1999, Senator Fred Thompson (R-TN), Chairman of
the Senate Governmental Affairs Committee, released a report in
conjunction with the GAO documenting the inexcusable waste, fraud
and abuse that seems to be part of government's DNA: $35 billion
wasted by the government in 1998 including $13.5 billion in Medicare
payments to dead people, $10 billion in uncompleted Department
of Energy projects, and $900 million in excess subsidy payments
by HUD.
Overall, Senator Thompson's committee documented more than $220
billion in government waste. Four months later, in March of last
year, 13 of 24 major federal agencies were unable to complete
a standard audit as required by law. The Department of Defense
had to make $7.6 trillion in accounting adjustments to
balance its books. In other words, our government is so badly
mismanaged that more than 50 percent of the agencies in charge
of our tax dollars can't tell whether the money is going to build
roads or buy pizzas.
Which brings us to the present administration. One of the nice
(almost forgotten) things about a Republican White House is that
"the trains run on time." Simply translated: efficiency
matters. In general, Republican administrations are hierarchical
to the point of being rigid, and they tend to place a high value
on efficiency with regard to time, money, labor, and political
capital.
George W. Bush is no exception to this rule. In fact, by most
appearances he is even more attentive to detail and obsessed by
efficiency than the average Republican. He is, after all, our
first MBA President and the CEO in Chief. Which is why Bush's
corporate mentality and his philosophical desire for smaller government
represents a such a stunning opportunity to truly "reinvent
government."
Streamlining government is serious business and must be approached
with considerable finesse - just ask Newt Gingrich. Gingrich's
enthusiasm for whacking away at the federal bureaucracy in 1994
was easily caricatured by Democrats and did irreparable harm to
his image - as well as the party's. Newt and the GOP became the
mean spirited crusaders intent on doing away with the government
funding for Sesame Street and taking school lunches right out
of the hands of America's public school students.
Just this week, Bush received his first lesson on the political
dangers of streamlining government when he tried to shut down
the White House offices devoted to race relations and AIDS. Stung
by criticism, the Bush team reversed its position in less than
48 hours.
But President Bush can avoid similar pitfalls in the future by
forcing Democrats to be defenders of government waste instead
of "protectors" of popular bureaucratic institutions
like the Department of Education. Bush should appoint a REGO czar
to work with Thompson's Governmental Affairs Committee and the
GAO to ferret out waste of taxpayer dollars.
In short, Bush should start the process of running the government
like a business, complete with accountability for results and
consequences for failure. Americans always respond positively
to these values and Bush can reap huge political gains and positive
results - as he did in the campaign - by leveraging the public's
cynicism for government.
So when Democrats yelp that Bush's budget priorities are out
of line, the President should remind them that there is at least
$220 billion of taxpayer money to be saved - and probably a lot
more - just by reforming the current government. Just so Mr. Daschle
and Mr. Gephardt can relate to that number, it's roughly equivalent
to 4,782,608 Lexuses.
Tom Bevan writes for RealClearPolitics
