Is modernization the answer?
No less than Newt Gingrich thinks so, but there are questions worth asking.
I’m not gonna lie…I’ve been a big fan of Newt Gingrich since he was Speaker of the House. And it’s not necessarily because of the Contract With America or the fact I got to see him when he ran for President and appeared here in Salisbury in an effort to fan the dying embers of his 2012 campaign.
Instead, as I’m re-reading the previous piece and reliving the memories, I come back to my contention back then: Newt is for a more nimble federal government that does big things like space exploration and Alzheimer’s research - but is all of that a proper function of the federal government? I love how Newt thinks in terms of generations and not election cycles, but there’s a part of me that says if we took off the shackles imposed (ironically) by Uncle Sam we could accomplish what he seeks, and much, much more.
Last week Newt came out with a thought piece called “Modernization, Not Money, is the Key to America’s Survival.” It opens with this assertion:
We are missing some fundamental realities that threaten American survival.
Our national security systems are obsolete. Our domestic systems are bloated and self-serving. Our bureaucracies are slow, cumbersome, and avoid accountability.
Bureaucratism has replaced professionalism. Process and activity have replaced achievement and success.
Because our systems cannot succeed, they become expert at avoiding responsibility and denying the reality of failure. They self-protect. Between the bureaucracies, ideologies, and lobbyists, it is virtually impossible to seriously challenge the decay and dishonesty which pervades all our key institutions of survival.
Simply shoring up inefficiencies in the budget is putting a Band-aid on a gaping wound. When systems are broken, dumping more money into them only leads to more expensive failures. The current bureaucratic structures are not up to the task. We’re flooding money into sieves. Money runs in, and money runs out. We are no safer as our opponents begin to push ahead.
We must ensure every taxpayer dollar is spent on achieving results or yielding a return on investment. But it is even more important that we are seeking the right results – and investing in the future, not the past.
Newt has diagnosed the problem, but has he come up with a solution?
My issue with the federal government is that they practice mission creep instead of solving problems. It would be like someone finding a cure for cancer but instead of being hailed as a hero, the person ends up being chastised for putting a bunch of oncologists and drug company employees out of work.
Of course, that’s assuming such a cure would ever see the light of day as the powers-that-be who have figured out a way to milk that golden goose try and protect their fiefdoms by demonizing the one who made the discovery as someone who shouldn’t be trusted. It’s sort of like the urban legend (?) of the oil companies buying up the patent for the carburetor that allowed an average car to get 100 miles to the gallon to maintain demand for their product rather than advance technology.
A good example is government collecting a telephone tax initially intended for fighting the Spanish-American War for decades afterward; even after it was repealed (twice) the government brought it back from the dead just to keep a few tax collectors employed. Another example: we had a bureau devoted to rural electrification back in the Depression that accomplished its initial aim by 1952, so instead of being sunsetted it turned its attention to extending telephone service and eventually became involved in other infrastructure improvements, the latest being broadband expansion - although that has morphed into other agencies as well.
(Full disclosure: the author’s area is scheduled for a broadband upgrade beginning this year, as Delaware ceded what was once its goal of using state money to connect rural areas to broadband to instead place Uncle Sam in charge in various far-flung locales like mine. This is how I know the idea has morphed. So what was supposed to be a 2-to-3 year process run by the state of Delaware with money they initially received as part of the COVID recovery from the feds may anywhere from 3 to 8 years instead, depending on how the contract is implemented - but some pencil-pushers stay employed.)
Anyway, I can go on and on about governmental mission creep but those are enough examples for now.
Sadly, we have turned the pyramid of government on its head in this country. The largest part was supposed to be the people themselves, then their local or county governments as the next layer, then the states, and at the very tippy-top taking care of a select few issues was the federal government. Now that pyramid is upside down and We the People are the bottom tip being pushed into the dirt under the crushing weight of competing and/or colluding bureaucracies. Many of Newt’s ideas use the federal government as a starting point, which, given human nature, will just grind us into the dust some more.
Even though I have my issues with Newt, there is one thing he did well while in office: working with Democrats to find a way to slow down the growth of government. I don’t think Joe Biden and Kevin McCarthy will ever balance a budget like Bill Clinton and Newt Gingrich did, and as I recall things were pretty good in the late 1990s aside from the gathering national security storm clouds which (of course) eventually dictated another big-government response.
So I don’t want to reject Newt’s ideas out of hand, but I think we need to think a little further out of the box than he does. Let’s not stop with innovation but continue on a path to peace and prosperity by rightsizing government.