I grew weary long ago of the effete discussions about the size of government. Although I have never heard a solitary soul say that government needs to be bigger, public discourse is rife with those who use hackneyed phrases about it needing to be smaller. Somehow their construction of the question often seemed wrong-headed, as if they were asking the wrong question and, perhaps often, deliberately so. Today President Barack Obama reframed the question in the way it needs to be asked:
Now, there are some who question the scale of our ambitions — who suggest that our system cannot tolerate too many big plans. Their memories are short. For they have forgotten what this country has already done; what free men and women can achieve when imagination is joined to common purpose, and necessity to courage.
What the cynics fail to understand is that the ground has shifted beneath them — that the stale political arguments that have consumed us for so long no longer apply. The question we ask today is not whether our government is too big or too small, but whether it works — whether it helps families find jobs at a decent wage, care they can afford, a retirement that is dignified. Where the answer is yes, we intend to move forward. Where the answer is no, programs will end. And those of us who manage the public's dollars will be held to account — to spend wisely, reform bad habits, and do our business in the light of day — because only then can we restore the vital trust between a people and their government.
That bears repeating: "The question we ask today is not whether our government is too big or too small, but whether it works — whether it helps families find jobs at a decent wage, care they can afford, a retirement that is dignified."
Obama has reframed the question away from size and asked the question in terms of government's function: Is government working to secure the well being of it citizens? Where it is, he says, move forward with it. Where it is not, cut it out. This is a pragmatist's approach to government or as this pragmatist likes to say: we shouldn't spend a penny more on government than is needed AND not a nickel less.
Those who will continue to ask the question about government merely in terms of it size are being left by the march of history. Good riddance.
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