Barely had I published my last entry, when the Washington Post came out with a story about how many Democrats are adding fiscal austerity pledges to their campaign platform. I'm unimpressed.
On one hand, it's good that politicians of both parties have finally come to understand that Americans are fed up with deficits and debt. On the other, Democrats in general and many Republicans are missing the bigger picture: the American people want a reevaluation of the proper role of government and how that role should be distributed among the levels of government.
It's not just about the money; it's about being accountability. And if private enterprise cannot successfully undertake some collective action and government can do better, it should be the most local government that can address it, which also happens to be the level most accountable to the people. Suggesting that a congressman from Ohio can be held accountable for education quality in Florida, or a senator from New York for road congestion in California, is simply preposterous.
It's also about being left alone. The decennial census is supposed to count inhabitants for the purpose of apportioning members of the House of Representatives, nothing more. Yet it has morphed into a vast treasure trove for social science researchers. It sounds benign, but besides the privacy issues, the conclusions of that research provide justification for any number of wasteful and often counterproductive interventions.
Americans want more than cheap talk about the federal budget. They want their national political representatives to fundamentally reconsider the role of the federal government, eliminating, privatizing, or transferring to the states those activities that are not within its proper scope.
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