Opinion: As Washington gives us ‘more,’ Americans want ‘better’
Paul Light, a scholar at the Brookings Institution, writes that while a small majority of Americans prefer that government shrink, what they want more is reform. He reports that public demand for “very major” government reform is up to 60% from 37% in 1997, when the Pew Research Center first asked this question. Meanwhile, those who believe the government is “basically sound and need only some reform” is down to 28% from 58%.
In that context, it makes sense that so many policy proposals from both parties are met with skepticism about the ability of a bloated and debt-burdened government to deliver. The good news is that scholars and policy people have plenty of sound reform ideas. In the 1980s and ’90s, Republicans, for instance, talked about getting rid of various agencies or stopping the federal government’s accumulation of power by devolving functions back to the states and the private sector.
None of that is being proposed today. Republicans and conservatives are now more interested in expanding rather than reforming the government with programs straight out of the Democrats’ agenda .First, I would end all forms of government-granted privileges, whether these are subsidies, guaranteed loans, tax credits or bailouts. Each type of handout is unfair not only to the taxpayers who foot the bill, but also to the many companies that do not receive them.
This reform might require a constitutional amendment forbidding Congress from producing any law or regulation that discriminates among firms that are similarly situated. Such an amendment would require that taxes, regulations and subsidies apply to all firms, and not just a few, of a certain type. Ideally, this nondiscrimination clause should apply also to individuals.
But our world isn’t ideal, so I’ll reduce the scope of my second reform to the tax code. Indeed, this code now unfairly treats individuals who make the same income differently. Depending on whether they have kids or paid for their homes with mortgages or not, how they earn their incomes and how much they save or invest, two people making the exact same amount can face very different tax burdens.
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