by Ken Vincent, Featured Contributor
Debate continues to rage about the size of government. Is it too big, or does it need to be bigger to expand it’s role? The questions isn’t, or shouldn’t be, about politics. It is about defining where we want government to start and stop involving itself in our lives and the future of our country.
I think before we can debate that issue we must first fix what government should do.
Create and maintain a national superstructure? Interstates, airports, rail system, and such. Probably can agree on that.- Maintain a financial and medical safety net for the disabled? While we can certainly agree on the principle, there seems to be little agreement on the level of that support and exactly who should be covered by that safety net.
- National security? Certainly, and that would encompass not only military and terrorist threats to our country but also boarder control and standards of immigration.
- Establish rules of interstate commerce. Probably needed.
- Maintain a required minimal level definition for education. Certainly.
- Pass laws that provide for internal safety. Again we can agree on the theory, but the details and extent of that is very undefined. Invasion of privacy, gun control, etc. is far from a consensus of opinion.
- Establish broad rules of commerce. Yes, but where those rules start and stop are open to a wide variation of opinion. Rules and regulations can become very burdensome if too detailed and too extensive.
In any case, you see the issue. We can only define the size of government if we first agree on what government is going to do and the extent of that. Trying to define or debate the size of government without defining it’s role is an upside down effort and doomed to failure.
With our elected officials barely talking to each other I don’t hold out a lot of hope that this is going to get resolved in the near future. If that is the case, then we are doomed to sink deeper into national debt, failed foreign policy, wild swings in the economy, and regional unrest.
