In his inaugural address yesterday, President Obama tried to step around the central question of whether the federal government has grown too big and powerful:
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.
Even in skirting the question, President Obama has in effect come down on the side of bigger government. His statement assumes that government programs will be central to creating jobs and providing health care and retirement security. For every problem confronting American families, it is just a question of finding the right program that “works.” He leaves off the table the very real possibility that government intervention has made each of those problems more difficult for Americans to solve, and that the answer really is a smaller role for government.
The other open question is who decides if a government program “works.” President Obama has wrapped himself in the mantle of change, yet as a candidate he endorsed the 2008 farm bill. The existing U.S. policy of production subsidies and import tariffs, a policy that has remained essentially unchanged for 75 years, arguably “works” for a small number of relatively well-off sugar, dairy, corn, rice, and cotton farmers. But for the vast majority of Americans, the farm bill delivers higher and more volatile prices at the store, billions of dollars a year in additional government spending, higher cost for U.S. businesses, a degraded environment, and a harder slog out of poverty for millions of farmers in less developed countries. [You can go here to find Cato research on how farm programs have failed to work in our national interest.]
If Senator and candidate Obama could not see the need to end our failed farm policies, it is hard to imagine many if any other programs that will come to an end under his administration.
For more on how scrapping farm subsidies would be a good first step toward removing failed government programs, watch this video:
