A Radical New Democratic Agenda: Kill the Bureaucrats!

Without mentioning Reagan by name, Digby describes the way he transformed American politics:

It's not that taxes were ever popular, any more than paying your electric bill is "popular" or buying a new furnace is "popular." But until the GOP hit on their free lunch propaganda they were just considered a fact of life ("death and taxes") as long as the rich weren't perceived to be getting off easy and the government was delivering services to the people. Republican campaign tactics and governance have pretty much destroyed that resigned acceptance by making people believe that taxes are inherently evil and if the government needs to do something it will magically find the money some other way.

Reagan introduced several conservative theories of government and society that have endured long past his descent into Alzheimer's:

1. The way to reduce federal deficits is to reduce tax rates on the rich, who will invest all of their tax savings in productivity-increasing businesses that will speed economic growth and produce more than enough tax revenues to make up for the cut in tax rates (a.k.a. "supply-side economics" and the "Laffer Curve")
2. Government can't solve problems, government is the problem because politicians and bureaucrats are lazy and corrupt
3. Citizens only need government services if they are losers, and the way to fix their problems is to cut off their services and force them to deal with their personal problems

Digby harkens back to an earlier era that believed government could provide many needed services efficiently if honest bureaucrats made their best efforts to implement well-designed programs. That ideology grew out of the New Deal and World War II, when government programs (and wars) run by Democrats were generally well run and produced positive results.

But Vietnam and Watergate badly eroded that ideology. Jimmy Carter tried to restore it through hands-on management, but he couldn't overcome the stagflation he inherited from the Vietnam War and the oil shocks, and Reagan beat him in 1980 by simply asking "are you better off than you were four years ago?"

Reagan and Bush I discovered supply-side economics isn't magic - cutting tax rates for the rich simply produced lower tax revenues and huge deficits. Bill Clinton set out to eliminate those deficits by raising tax rates ever so slightly for the rich and by trimming wasteful programs. Clinton's plan worked - he produced surpluses in his last two years and handed Bush II a project 5-year surplus of $6 trillion. But the rich were furious and funded a rightwing Republican takeover of Congress in 1994, and their first act was to shut down Clinton's government to force Medicare patients to pay higher co-payments.

The point I'm trying to make is Democrats will never get the opportunity to prove that a well-managed government can help the American people. Why? Because Republicans hate good government and will do everything in their power to destroy it.

So what can Democrats do about it?

I propose a radical new approach to government that can be reduced to a bumper sticker: kill the bureaucrats.

Of course I don't really mean kill the bureaucrats. But I do mean eliminate their jobs.

How? Not by contracting out government services to corrupt companies like Halliburton, which is what the Republicans did.

I believe many government services can be turned directly over to the people they are intended to help.

How? Through internet-enabled user groups.