#government #GovernmentCuts #GovernmentEfficiency #GoodGovernment
“They paved paradise, put up a parking lot.”
That Joni Mitchell lyric rings true as certain government programs that many cherish get chopped.
We all think of government as too big, spending too much and we, as citizens, don’t really know what all those people do.
But, we learn all too well when we go to a government office for, say, Social Security information, a driver’s license or to mail a package.
When staff at those places get cut, the wait is much longer. In some places, you can wait hours to see a Social Security counselor, or to renew a driver’s license.
When government affects us, we feel the cuts.
MSNBC news anchor Ali Velshi pointed out that some of the government agencies we don’t know much about, or don’t hear about regularly, are working well BECAUSE we don’t hear much about them.
In other words, if they were full of fraud and waste, we would know it because a journalist, inspector general or other watchdog would find out and point it out.
By the way, oversight personnel are among the priority cuts in this milieu, BECAUSE those doing the cutting do not want people to know what they are doing, or how they are doing it, until it’s too late.
The cutting of government agencies and personnel that’s being done today seems haphazard, at best. The chainsaw approach will lead to some mistakes, Elon Musk says, and his Department of Government Efficiency will fix those mistakes as they occur, he said.
Everyone wants government to be as efficient as it can be. No one wants government, or those in it, to commit fraud.
But, throwing the baby out with the bathwater will lead to a dead, or badly hurt, baby. We may not know that until we actually have to wait hours for badly needed service, or, when benefits we are entitled to suddenly stop coming.
Government has a function in all of our lives. We don’t often hear about, or realize, those functions until they stop. As another Joni Mitchell lyric in the same song says: “You don’t know what you’ve got till it’s gone.”
The best way to make government more efficient is to first look for the good that government does, and either let it be or enhance it.
If services are duplicated between or among agencies, consolidate those tasks in one place.
If tasks can be accomplished with fewer people, or if machines can replace people more efficiently, by all means make those changes.
People have said that government should be run like a business. But, government is different from business, in that the process of how things get done can be as important, or even more so, than the result.
Not all government work can be easily quantified. The service one might get from a good government employee who meets an individual’s need can be as important as the number of needs that person may meet in a given day, week, month or year.
And, if that person meets YOUR need properly, you won’t really care how much that person costs.
We all need government. We all need good government. We all should be willing to pay for good government that is as efficient and corruption-free as possible.
Peter