What We’re Talking About When We Talk About Big Government

David Steinberg (not the comedian, I presume) examines the inevitable expansion, mission-creep, redundancy, etc... that accompanies every government endevour, so that even the few things that are actually arguably legitimate government functions soon become bloated behemoths that can no longer even accomplish their core functions.

Last week’s largest domestic, non-security focused storyline left the public consciousness without significant — or sufficient — spotlighting. The General Accountability Office, or GAO, found a massive amount of overlapping and even duplicative programs amongst federal agencies. The GAO did not release a figure regarding the total amount of such waste, but Senator Tom Coburn — who pushed for the report to be conducted — estimated that the report identified between $100 billion and $200 billion in redundancy. Coburn’s figure does not include spending that is neither duplicative nor overlapping but simply ridiculous, as judged by rational men, and as such the actual figure of federal program waste is quite more disgusting.

Conservatives — Originalists — speak of Big Government always: an aversion to it is deservedly the driving intellectual thesis behind conservatism. We despise Big Government, more than anything, and I can’t emphasize strongly enough that I don’t believe the left has any clue why. They have theories about guns and fear, psychological weakness, bigotry, and the like, and these are all weak arguments against Big Government, which makes them easy to dismiss and continue to be a leftist. They are not, of course, our arguments. There is a disconnect between what we say, what we mean when we protest Big Government and what we are thought to mean by our political opposition.

Fighting Big Government is not just about Don’t Tread on Me, although it is much about that; it is not just about national security, though it is fractionally about that. Perhaps we can transmit a better explanation via this GAO report and the below examination of the actual agencies of our current government, or I hope we can, and then I’d like to ask a question of the non-conservatives, because conservatives also do not understand a key plank of the left and the West would benefit from a clear answer.

The Federal Highway Administration

A healthy nation requires public roads for ease of commerce and the movement of the military — a truth acceptable even to most libertarians, and evidenced by a frequent PJM contributor who lives in Central America separated from the town by a private road he cannot use, requiring him to ride a horse through jungle to see the orthodontist.

So America requires a governmental agency funded by public dollars facilitating this essential public service, the movement of the military being the strongest argument for “essential.” How does such a thing get created? The elected representatives of the people, once realizing that such an agency is necessary, name the thing something sufficiently Washingtonian — let’s call it the “Department of Transportation” — and they craft a mission statement, a mini-Constitution, to ensure that the agency does not overstep its bounds and trample liberty: control of transportation puts an agency in position to violate the trust given it in the form of public wealth. Here it is, the DOT mission:

Serve the United States by ensuring a fast, safe, efficient, accessible and convenient transportation system that meets our vital national interests and enhances the quality of life of the American people, today and into the future.

Further: that agency should be held accountable to the public trust via an inspector general and freely available financial records and salary structure, its actions superbly documented and accessible.

If you are an American born after the publication of Das Kapital, you know this fine idea would derail at “Serve the United States” and go Alec Baldwin bats*** at “safe.”

“Enhance the quality of life of the American people”? Hide the silver, and hit up Stephen Green for the top-shelf stuff.

What actually transpired? The Department of Transportation was so established in 1966, by an order of Congress, presumably because there was nothing else at the time fulfilling this necessity. Right?

Sigh.

The Federal Highway Administration was founded in 1893, as the Office of Road Inquiry. The ORI begat the Office of Public Roads, which fell under the purview of the Department of Agriculture, because that made perfect sense at the time, but in 1915, the Office of Public Roads became the Bureau of Public Roads, as bureaus were fashionable in the teens.

The Bureau of Public Roads became the Public Roads Administration under FDR — he was fond of the words “public” and “administration” — but FDR then became enamored of the word “federal”: you can’t spell “federal” without FDR. He placed the Public Roads Administration under the rule of the Federal Works Agency, which was responsible for, amongst other things, “works.”

Ironically, or not at all, the Federal Works Agency was created to combat perceived inefficiency in the executive branch, so it was preordained that the Federal Works Agency would disband ten years later.

The PRA then became the Bureau of Public Roads again (it sounded “Mid-Century Modern”), and it was put under the supervision of the Department of Commerce, which was mildly less silly than putting it in the Department of Agriculture.

Eventually, the Bureau of Public Roads became the Federal Highway Administration, known as the FHWA, because there was already an FHA elsewhere in the government, which wasn’t really fair because that FHA had already acquired the cool nickname “HUD.”

The FHWA, now under the newly created Department of Transportation, adopted the following mission statement:

Improve Mobility on our Nation’s Highways Through National Leadership, Innovation, and Program Delivery.

Which I can’t much distinguish from the DOT mission.

Point being, the FHWA had been around long before the Department of Transportation was created to swallow it up, even though the FHWA mission seemed to be the same as that of the DOT, and the FHWA was not disbanded, and hold your nose because Big Government was just getting started.

Heard of the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration? I had not, but being a rube, I was also not aware of the Federal Transit Administration. I had definitely heard of the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, though I cannot distinguish its purpose from the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration. Baffled, I put in a call to the National Transportation Safety Board, whence I was transferred to the Surface Transportation Board. They suggested I take a long walk off a short pier — an unauthorized threat which most properly fell under the authority of the DOT’s Maritime Administration — prior to informing me of the existence of the Research and Innovative Technology Administration of the Department of Transportation (a rube twice over, I thought “innovation” was part of the FHWA’s responsibilities). Here, at the administration requiring greater security due to the innovative and necessary asphalt blends, I was handed over to the Transportation Security Administration, whence I turned down a full body scan and with whom I am no longer “just friends.”

Read the whole thing here.