REGO No Go

William D. Eggers & John O'Leary from the April 1994 issue

(Page 2 of 2)

But it also helpfully explains why its recommendations will never be adopted: "While the savings from killing a program may be large, they are spread over many taxpayers. In contrast, the benefits of keeping the program are concentrated in a few hands. So special interests often prevail over the general interest."

It would be a major achievement--though far short of a revolution--if most of the report's legislative proposals were adopted. Unfortunately, the Clinton administration has approached the implementation of reinvention with anything but revolutionary zeal.

The biggest flaw with the REGO report lies with what it doesn't say. The report states that it "focused primarily on how government should work, not on what it should do": efficiency as the goal of government. The cult of efficiency meshes well with Clinton's Roosevelt-like faith that government can solve all our problems.

When assessing any government activity, the first question that should be asked is: Is this activity necessary in the first place? By ignoring that question, the reinventing-government drive becomes a blueprint for better bureaucracy rather than a blueprint for revolutionary change in government.

Even such a liberal stalwart as Nobel- laureate economist Paul Samuelson recognizes that efficiency in government is a means, not an end. "The crucial steps in overhauling government involve political choices, not questions of managerial efficiency," writes Samuelson. If the surgeon general efficiently discourages smoking while the Department of Agriculture efficiently subsidizes tobacco growers, government still isn't working right.

After the initial media blitz, REGO, once a top priority (how many top priorities can one administration have?), faded from prominence. It will likely be resurrected any time the question, "How will we pay for it?" is raised by pesky naysayers. But anyone still paying attention knows that a lean, streamlined federal government is not in this administration's plans. Between ClintonCare and Labor Secretary Robert Reich's slew of programs designed to throw a warm government security blanket around America's helpless workers, the truth has become apparent: The Clinton administration isn't nearly as interested in reinventing government as it is in expanding government.

Last September, flashbulbs popped as Clinton and Gore stood on the White House lawn in front of a forklift loaded with federal regulations. "The government is broken, and we intend to fix it," the president solemnly intoned.

To get more money for planned spending projects, people had to be convinced the money would be well spent. REGO is intended to make taxpayers feel good about the federal government, allow- ing Clinton to spend real dollars now in exchange for phantom savings later. Pretty clever. As the report puts it: "Is government inherently incompetent? Absolutely not!"

Comments

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Apart from state-by-state differences, total school spending in the United States is routinely underestimated because of other measurement problems. As Lieberman and other analysts have pointed out, official school spending statistics leave out an awful lot. A partial list of expenditures excluded from federal data includes business and foundation donations, donated time, pension contributions, the cost of negotiating contracts, the cost of training teachers, remedial education in colleges, judicial costs, out-of-pocket parental expenses, and federal educational programs in departments other than Education (such as Head Start). Since real per-pupil spending even as currently measured shot up 62 percent from 1973 to 1993 (according to the ALEC study), an accurate analysis of total spending would no doubt find an even bigger jump.

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