Seize the Moment and Do It Right : Building on the consensus for downsizing

What should be the priorities, goals and missions of the U.S. government? These are the formidable policy questions before the Clinton Administration and Congress now that the House and Senate have passed differing resolutions to balance the budget. For the first time since the New Deal, Washington has the opportunity to reorganize government in an epoch-making fashion.

To date, the budget balancing discussions have been oversimplified, couched in the political rhetoric of tax cuts and less government. Much of that talk has focused on Republican proposals to eliminate departments such as Commerce, Education and Energy.

FAT BUREAUCRACIES: Certainly, bloated federal bureaucracies are problematic. But indiscriminate slashing of federal spending may not necessarily result in better government. Rather it could further erode public confidence in Washington. What is needed is judicious downsizing and deficit reduction in a way that positions the United States as the world’s technological and environmental superpower in the 21st Century.

In the long run, would dismantling the Education Department be a setback to achieving a high-tech America? Is it more logical to drastically downsize Commerce rather than abolish it? Remember the calls going back to the Reagan Administration for elimination of the Department of Housing and Urban Development? They have vanished amid the agency’s own reorganization.

What we have now is a hodgepodge of proposed cuts in federal spending. There is no shortage of ideas. Some of the Republican proposals are similar to those recommended years ago by President Ronald Reagan’s Private Sector Survey on Cost Control, better known as the Grace Commission report. Now, the Clinton Administration’s ongoing National Performance Review, headed by Vice President Al Gore, is identifying ways to make the federal government more efficient and thrifty.

There is wide bipartisan consensus on three ways to save money: downsizing and streamlining government; privatizing services; shifting federal programs to states, or even counties and cities. Republicans and Democrats, of course, do not agree on which programs and services are worthy of such treatment.

SACRED COWS: Most in both parties have notably and deftly avoided the issue of corporate welfare. Any refashioning of government must include changes in most subsidies and loan programs. Without taking on business subsidies and tax breaks, Washington will never escape the perception and reality of being beholden to special interests. Besides, many of the subsidies underwrite commodity-based industries; the America of tomorrow lies in knowledge-based, high-technology industries.

Balancing the budget requires addressing all facets of spending. There should be no political sacred cows. There can’t be if deficit reduction is to be achieved in a credible, fair way. There are plenty of ideas that have bipartisan support. What’s needed now, at this historic turn, is bipartisan vision, not political one-upmanship.