Peter Schuck, a professor emeritus at Yale Law School, has written a book called Why Government Fails So Often: And How It Can Do Better. Not surprisingly, the book has received a lot of attention on the right, much of it from the “government-is-bad-and-this-proves-it” school, and very from the left.
Both of these are unfortunate. On the right, even if you think government shouldn’t be doing very much, you should still want the government to do what it does do as efficiently as possible. Mitch Daniels put it this way:
“As practitioners of limited by active government, we try not to let our skepticism about Big Government become contempt for all government.”*
There are things government needs to do, and there is no reason why it shouldn’t do those efficiently and effectively.
While one can see why some on the left might instinctively dislike a book with the title of Professor Schuck’s book, it is actually the left who should be most interested in what the book says. If you believe in government and if you want it to do more, then you ought to want government to be effective. When government fails at something, it gives government a bad name, which makes it easier for the right to argue that government should do less. If you think government can be a force for good, why wouldn’t you want to figure out how government can succeed more and fail less?
Which brings up a new idea/approach to governing that I have been reading about in New Zealand. Colin James, a New Zealand journalist, explains the point:
“New and existing law must achieve the purported objectives. That requires rigorous, you might say ruthless, assessment before and after new legislation and regulation. This is the subject of an extensive report issued by the Productivity Commission two weeks back and will be a focus of the Key-English government if it gets a third term.** … In brief the commission found, as I said in my Otago Daily Times column last week, fragmented work, misplaced resources, fuzzy focus, poor communication, disruptive restructures, inadequate quality and quantity of staff and over-detailed primary legislation (acts) which Parliament can’t find the time to fix. Two-thirds of ‘regulator chief executives reported they often work with outdated or not fit-for-purpose law.’” (bold in original)
Mr. James also described the idea as “the beginnings of an attempt to assess laws against what they are supposed to achieve.”
This is a concept that both right and left should be able to unite behind: “[A]ssess[ing] laws against what they are supposed to achieve.” Too often Congress passes a law and thinks its job is done. They pass a law to do “X”, assume everything will work fine, and go on to the next problem. It’s the same way with the president. He signs the bill and figures the problem is solved. But it doesn’t work that way.
Many programs aren’t achieving what they are supposed to. Some are accomplishing part of what they were passed to do. Others accomplish virtually nothing. Some are making things worse. Sometimes it’s the law of unintended consequences. Other times the implementation is bad. And sometimes the programs just don’t work.
Initially, this is the executive branch’s responsibility. They see the programs on a daily basis. They should know what is working and what isn’t. If programs aren’t working, or aren’t working well enough, and if changes in the law or program are needed, the executive branch should go to Congress for those changes.
Congress must do its part, too. In addition to passing laws, Congress has the responsibility for legislative oversight, seeing which programs are working and which ones aren’t. If a law isn’t doing what it was passed to do, then Congress needs to change the law.***
The purpose of Congress’s oversight role, however, is not a giant game of political “gotcha”. The purpose is to help government run better. Everybody has a role in doing this. The president has to pay attention to how programs are working. Congress, in its oversight role, can help identify things that need to be fixed.
Here is something else both parties ought to be able to agree on: If government is going to spend “X” dollars, then we ought to get as much value as possible out of those “X” dollars. The left and the right may disagree on how much government should do or how much government should spend, but they should be able to agree that, if government is doing something, it ought to do it as efficiently and effectively as possible.
While the right may not want government to do as much as the left does, shouldn’t the right want to see that whatever money they do give to the government is spent well?
The left sees lots of things for government to do. If that is true, and if they think government does not have enough money to do everything that needs to be done, then shouldn’t they want government to accomplish as much as possible with the money it has? It’s not just a matter of saying we need more money. Shouldn’t their approach be to get as much as possible done with the money government has and then accomplish even more if/when government gets more money?
I have had Democratic friends accuse me of being hard-hearted because I am always talking about cost-benefit analyses. We need to focus on helping people, they say; not just how much it costs. Some things can’t be measured in dollars, they tell me. I understand the passion behind that view. What I don’t understand is why they don’t want to make sure we do things as efficiently as possible so that government can get as much good done as possible out of the money it spends. The best way to address all the needs we have is to first accomplish as much as possible with the resources we have. If government can do more with what it has now, then government can do even more with any additional money it gets in the future.
Finally, as Mr. James says, it is not just whether laws are accomplishing what they are supposed to; it’s also whether laws need to be rewritten so they can work better. Is there a problem with the way the law is written? Could more be accomplished if the law is changed? Has experience showed that there is a better way to do something (i.e., to solve the problem). Does the law need to be changed to do that?
This kind of work and analysis is not easy. It is hard work, and the political rewards aren’t big. It is more fun, and better publicity, to pass and approve new programs instead of trying to figure out if programs previously adopted are actually doing what they were supposed to do. But this is how you actually make sure government works.
It is also something both sides should be interested in doing. If you want government to be small, then you should want government to be as efficient as possible because the better it works, the smaller it can be. If you think government needs to do more, then you should want government to be effective in what it is already doing, so people will trust it to do more.
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* Mitch Daniels, Keeping the Republic, p.146 (2011, 2102).
** The National Party in New Zealand, with John Key as Prime Minister and Bill English as Finance Minister, did win a third term in the election held on September 20. I commented on one of the National Party’s campaign commercials back in September.
*** Since New Zealand has a parliamentary form of government, it is the government that is pushing the idea there.
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