No Easy Answers

James Q. Wilson on bureaucracy, crime, and community

William D. Eggers & John O'Leary from the February 1995 issue

(Page 2 of 6)

I'm not sure how important this last point is because, if you ask which government in the world has been the boldest in the last 15 years in reconsidering the past courses of action, the United States has to be at the top of the list. We started the move toward cutting taxes and we started the effort to begin deregulation. Then again, you can say other countries have provided, for example, more parental choice in schooling.

Reason: You have criticized the Gore report for only recommending the elimination of a few programs. What things does government do now that it shouldn't be doing at all? Is the failure to ask this question--what should government do?--the main weakness of reinventing government?

Wilson: Yes, that is the biggest weakness of the reinventing government movement and of virtually every other effort to think about the problems of government. I don't want to say that Mr. Gore has failed more conspicuously than other people, but he fails in precisely the same way.

Where should we look for things that government ought not to be doing? At the national level, I would begin with Social Security. We can no longer tolerate a governmental system which guarantees that people of relatively young age will be impoverished in order to support people of relatively old age, a system where you have almost no chance of earning a positive rate of return on your Social Security payments. We know that there are systems--not only in the private sector in this country but also in nationally privatized systems in places such as Chile and Singapore--where you can have better retirement benefits without taxing the young to pay for the old.

Medicare and Medicaid are close seconds in answer to your question. I believe we ought to subsidize some health care for the poor, but Medicare subsidizes everyone's health care. In terms of other functions, we are making a mistake about insisting on a public school monopoly.

Reason: Is the answer to devolve federal government activity to the state and local levels?

Wilson: I can give a theoretical answer to that question, but the theory has nothing to do with how those decisions get made. On economic grounds, you can say that the federal government has a responsibility for only those problems that cannot be handled at the state and local level, such as issues dealt with by the State Department. You have to have certain environmental questions dealt with at the federal level and also income redistribution, if that is something you favor.

But I don't think there is much hope for the idea of devolving authority. Once we have sold the idea (which we didn't succeed in selling until 1965) that the federal government is responsible for everything, the idea of state and local control doesn't make political sense. I'm not very optimistic about devolving control. It is just too easy for Congress to pass a law that imposes costs on others--unfunded mandates, etc. It is even difficult to define what an unfunded mandate is. If a radical devolution of powers was possible, it would have been done before. The assumption of states' rights is gone. There's no support for it in the Supreme Court and there's no support for it in public opinion.

Reason: Are you concerned that the crime bill federalizes law enforcement?

Wilson: I am indeed. I have a lot of trouble with the federal government asserting that it now has authority over enforcement of criminal issues. That's a big mistake.

I like building more prisons. I like the drug courts. I think the most interesting aspect of the bill is one that hasn't been talked about, and that's the ban on semi-automatic pistols whose magazines have more than 10 rounds. That would, in effect, make it illegal for Americans to buy virtually any semi-automatic pistol on the market.

This includes Barettas, Glocks, Colts, and Brownings, all of which have magazines ranging from 12 to 16 rounds. Those guns will all become illegal to manufacture. Nobody has even mentioned that. They talk as though the debate is on assault weapons. I don't care if they ban AR-15s and AK-47s because I'm absolutely confident that there's no way Congress will move much beyond that. I don't buy the National Rifle Association's argument that this puts the camel's nose under the tent. There is no way the American public will sit still for the banning of or putting any significant restrictions on the kinds of guns they want. The ban is mostly symbolic arm waving, apart from the magazine issue, which is why I am amazed that no one has ever talked about it. This is as close to a ban on a certain kind of handgun as we've even considered. Doubtless, manufacturers can alter their models so that they hold no more than 10 rounds, but that's rather silly.

Reason: What about the funds for more police?

Wilson: Well, first of all, the much-discussed 100,000 cops are nowhere mentioned in the bill. The bill calls for a series of appropriations scaled over a certain period. That money would permit you, making certain assumptions, perhaps to get up to 100,000 five or six years from now. Possibly. It depends on how much you think it costs to put a cop on the street, and I think it costs a lot more than they think. They are considering only salary, when in fact you have training, cars, equipment, and administrative support. Moreover, the cities have to pay part of the price tag, and some cities are not going to do it.

Then half [of the cops] are reserved for cities under 150,000. What that means is that we'll have federally funded cops in places like Bangor, Maine, and Walnut Grove, California. So now we're down to 50,000 cops--again, possibly--to spread around to cities with over 150,000. Well, every state and every congressional district has to get some. There will be some margin to reward those states, such as California, that Mr. Clinton needs to get reelected.