Voters Want Less Government--and More Services

The headlines after last week’s elections in New Jersey, New York and elsewhere around the country told of taxpayer revolts against growth of government. Apparently, a simple bold message was being sent to the politicians.

But reality seems to contradict the rhetoric. Americans are getting more government, not less. Statistics show that one of the fastest growing occupations in the United States is government work, at federal, state and local levels. More than 18.8 million Americans work in government today, and that’s more than work in manufacturing.

What’s going on? The American people are participating in a great debate over the country’s future direction. On one side are those who say today’s world is so “complex” that government is needed to help and to regulate. On the other side are those who say the government that governs least, governs best.

It’s a debate about important issues. The outcome could well affect the success of health care reform, the regulation of business, global competitiveness and prosperity at home.

Voters can seem contradictory in their choices. Last year, they elected a President who believes in the power of government, as does First Lady Hillary Clinton. President Clinton said recently that the basis of all his programs is that government help make Americans “secure” so they can accommodate change in the world; his health care program would vastly increase the power of government.

Yet New Jersey voters, who helped elect Clinton, turned around on Tuesday and rejected Gov. Jim Florio, whom the Clintons backed strongly because he raised taxes to reduce the state’s deficit and to pay for schooling in poor urban areas. “Tax and mend,” the Clintons called Florio’s policy, but voters called it spinach and said they were having none of it.

Voters in fact are in an entrepreneurial mood, indicating they want a business-like direction for the country, with relatively less government and low taxes.

But to see what that may mean specifically, we need to be aware of a few realities behind the rhetoric:

* New Jersey will be a test of whether voters are hypocrites, merely wanting more government than they’re willing to pay for. One reason Florio raised state income taxes was to pay for better schools for inner-city children. But suburban voters didn’t like the taxes and have now opted for the tax-cut plan of Gov.-elect Christine Todd Whitman, whose economic program was drawn up by former Reagan Administration economist Lawrence Kudlow and Forbes Magazine President Malcolm S. Forbes Jr.

Watch New Jersey to see if the tax cut produces economic growth sufficient to finance education for New Jersey’s kids.

* See if federal hypocrisy is corrected. A big reason for state and local budget problems is that the federal government has set down requirements for environmental clean-up, prison improvement and all sorts of social work but neglected to send money to pay for such programs. “It’s fend-for-yourself-federalism,” quips economist Mark Levinson of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees union.

* See if privatization of public services reverses a pattern of voters asking more from government. In recent years working families have demanded that public schools become afternoon day-care centers; in every city, the cry is for more police to walk the streets, keep the peace, help neighborhood youngsters.

Small wonder that the state and municipal employees union has grown to 1.3 million members and government work has become a preferred occupation--paying about as much as the private sector, but with more job security and better health and pension benefits.

What’s ahead? The Clinton Administration wants to make government more efficient so it can bring security to the American people through a universal health care system, a stepped-up crime prevention effort and renewed job training programs to ease adjustments to the global economy.

There’s reason in Clinton’s ideas: Global change is unsettling, and Americans are anxious about many things.

But there is also a flaw in Clinton’s reasoning. The trouble is, government can’t really deliver security. The more it tries, the more it runs into difficulty, either because it creates bureaucracies, or raises taxes or sees its programs become terminally afflicted with politics. With every interest group grabbing for its share, progress is prevented for anyone.

In that respect, a new book called “The Cost of Talent,” by Derek Bok, former president of Harvard, makes a revealing entry to the debate. Bok argues that American society pays business executives, neurosurgeons and top lawyers too much money but pays too little to public servants and teachers.

Bok, the grandson of entrepreneur Edward Bok, who started Ladies Home Journal and helped build Curtis Publishing, doesn’t trust entrepreneurs or market economics. He would tax business salaries heavily to finance more pay for the professional civil service. His book epitomizes the government-is necessary-in-complex-times approach.

But the American voter is going in the opposite direction. In this and recent elections voters have opted for a different idea, a new breed of entrepreneurial mayors. Rudolph Giuliani in New York last week, Richard Riordan in Los Angeles this year, Bob Lanier in Houston, Michael White in Cleveland, Edward Rendell in Philadelphia, Bret Schundler in Jersey City.

The common denominator of all those mayors is a fresh, results-oriented approach to city problems and a move away from from allocating political benefits along racial or interest group lines. Such an entrepreneurial approach has to be the most intelligent one for American cities--or the whole nation--that now include so many different interest groups that trying to divide economic benefits among them only empties the pot for all.

And it’s also the most intelligent approach for a well-informed electorate--more than half New Jersey’s voters have some college education--that last week said at the polls it doesn’t want “nanny” government, looking to make it secure. Now let’s see if voters really like what they asked for.