Back during a period when the U.S. was under intense pressure, there was a slogan “Is this trip really necessary?” to get civilians to not “waste” resources during WW2.
Here is my attempt at how to cut down the Federal government’s size:
“The Federal Government should only be involved in those things that only the Federal Government can do”
So the government should have the CDC – because infectious diseases don’t stop at State boundaries, and one state not controlling a disease problem will spread into its neighbors… but the federal government should not be funding free health care clinics in poor urban areas – that should be done by states and cities (although you might assert that unhealthy poor people are not that different than an infectious disease organism)
Do away with Medicaid and do away with the Federal mandates on states to provide it. (“But if one state has good health care for the poor, it will become a magnet for poor people!”)
Block grants for states are attractive because the Federal Governemt has the income tax and the ability to deficit spend. States can’t print dollars, and state legislatures find it harder to raise taxes. Block grants need to go (and their related strings). If states think the spending is important, they have to find a way to convince their citizens to fund it.
WIC – giving free milk to poor women should not be a federal program. neither should free school lunches and breakfasts. Price supports for farmers…. Should the government maintain emergency supplies of food? FEMA – should the Feederal government really be in the business or rebuilding things after a hurricane – isn’t that what private insurance is for? States should repair the damage to their own infrastructure.
So how is that looking as a guiding principle?
Sign me up!
How about flood control in the Mississippi River? If states each make their own levees, they would never choose to flood their own state, but push the flood downstream?
The Corps of Engineers has built levee after levee in the Midwest over the last 70 years to push flood waters down to Mississippi and Louisiana (where the votes aren’t worth as much.) Unfortunately the big muddy refused to cooperate and just kept rolling along.
Understood – but let’s pretend there was no federal role in building those – and Missouri just kept building leveees higher and higher – and stopped it at the State line.
Or the different problem out west – water rights. What if Colorado built a dam on the Colorado river, and didn’t allow most (or any) of the water to leave their state.
I’m pretty sure I’m going to come down on the side that managing rivers is a Federal responsibility. That’s not to say what the Army Corps has done is a good idea….