A challenge for congressional conservatives

“No government ever voluntarily reduces itself in size. Government programs, once launched, never disappear. Actually, a government bureau is the nearest thing to eternal life we’ll ever see on this earth!” —Ronald Reagan

President Trump presented his first budget to Congress today. It is, as The Washington Post points out, “historic” because if adopted it would be the biggest contraction in the federal government since the end of World War II. Predictably, a Post story focuses on the number of federal workers it estimates could lose their jobs, rather than on whether those jobs and the programs associated with them are needed.

The biggest drivers of debt remain entitlement programs, and true to his campaign promise, the president is not touching those, at least for now. His challenge will be to ask Congress to eliminate failed programs, because too many members rely on campaign contributions from lobbyists with an interest in maintaining the status quo.

But if Republicans start with failed programs and present them as failures that waste taxpayer money, the public might come to trust them when it comes to the bigger things.

Patrick Louis Knudsen, a consultant and visiting fellow at The Heritage Foundation, has authored a plan he says can save $42 billion just by eliminating bad government programs and spending reductions in existing ones that may still serve necessary functions.

Knudsen’s recommendations, made in 2013, do not take into account projected savings from changes in Obamacare, but they are a good start. Many programs could be managed as well, or better and at lower costs, by the private sector.

The U.S. government, notes Knudsen, contributes money to many international organizations, which could easily be financed by private capital, if anyone is interested in them. These include the International Coffee Organization, The International Copper Study Group, The International Cotton Advisory Committee, the International Grains Council, and my personal favorite, the International Lead and Zinc Study Group.

There are 18 Energy Department programs Knudsen says could be turned over to the private sector.

Familiar targets include privatizing Amtrak and killing all subsidies for the Public Broadcasting Service, which once served a valuable cultural purpose, but is, today, in an age of endless TV choices, as outdated as a VHS tape.

Predictably, any budget cuts at all will result in the left howling about starving children. I guess little has changed over the last half-century, as Ronald Reagan noted in 1964:

“Anytime you and I question the schemes of the do-gooders, we’re denounced as being against their humanitarian goals. They say we’re always against things, we’re never for anything. Well, the trouble with our liberal friends is not that they’re ignorant. It’s just that they know so much that isn’t so.”

Is there enough of our Puritan DNA left to eliminate waste? We’re about to find out. If a government headed by Republicans can’t, or won’t, live up to their philosophy of smaller government and more personal freedom, why do we need them? If Republicans can’t accomplish the needed entitlement reforms along with the slashing of unneeded spending, the debt will grow until the inevitable economic collapse.

Listen to Cal Thomas’ commentary on the March 16 edition of The World and Everything in It.