What's Wrong With Big Government?

On Saturday, Sen. Bob Bennett's senatorial career came to what seems to be a rather ignominious end, when the conservative Utah Republican placed third at the GOP state convention picking the party's Senate nominee. A businessman named Tim Bridgewater and Tea Party favorite Mike Lee finished, respectively, first and second, and they will subsequently slug it out in a primary on June 22. (Under state law, Bennett, who has been in the Senate for almost 18 years, can run in the November election as a write-in, but not as an independent.) Bennett's ouster is a shocker for the politerati, a punch in the gut of the establishment. And it is being portrayed as a game-changing triumph for the Tea Party movement and a you-better-watch-out blow delivered by the forces of anti-big-governmentism. Here's how the BBC put it: "It is the first major victory for the grassroots movement that objects to big government and opposes high spending."

But this is a rather odd week to be decrying big government. Look at the recent headlines: an eco-disaster in the Gulf of Mexico due to the BP oil spill, an irrational roller coaster ride on Wall Street, and an attempted terrorist attack in Times Square (courtesy, it appears, of the Pakistani Taliban). Don't we need big government to deal with all this?

The Gulf nightmare is partly due to the never-ending war on government safety standards. Corporations and their political allies are always screaming about intrusive government whenever there's an effort to establish regulations to protect consumers and the environment. Last year, BP and other offshore drillers fought a proposed rule that would have set up tighter safety and environmental standards and would have established more frequent inspections. BP asked the federal agency in charge, the Minerals Management Service of the Interior Department, to butt out and allow energy companies to figure out the best steps to take. MMS also permitted operators to decide for themselves what sort of blow-out preventer (BOP) system to use. (The operators of BP's drilling rig could not control the BOP, and this seems to be one reason for the spill.)

Might we have had a better outcome if big government had forced BP and others to use the best systems available? If oil companies are going to drill in such dangerous and unforgiving spots -- such as a mile below the water's surface -- it would make sense for government to oversee the operations rather vigorously. How else can we protect our communal resources from corporate error and overreach? Have Tea Partiers rent boats and go out to rigs and inspect the facilities on their own?

While 5,000 or so barrels of oil continued to gush daily into the Gulf, Wall Street took the rest of us on another ride. In a matter of moments, the Dow Jones plummeted 900 points before stabilizing and bouncing back partially. In the meantime, a bunch of automatic traders using algorithms you (and I) cannot understand made a bundle. Though there was no crash, this was yet another reminder that our economy is held hostage by the casino-schemers of Wall Street. After the financial apocalypse of 2008 -- which was caused in part by subprime loans, opaque derivatives trading, and other too-complex-to-comprehend funny-money scams -- triggered an economic disaster, over 8 million Americans lost their jobs. Now the Dow has recovered -- and the Big Finance CEOs still have their second homes in the Hamptons -- but many, if not most, of those jobless Americans are still in the dumps.

Isn't big government required to keep track of the Wall Street connivers and their connivances, to make sure they don't once again grab the wheel and drive our economy off a cliff?

Average citizens need protection from the corporatists and the polluters. And that protection isn't going to come from a band of mad-as-hell pensioners waving a "Don't Tread on Me" banner. Ditto regarding violent extremist groups. The failed Times Square terror plot shows how easy it is for a would-be terrorist to come damn close to killing Americans. It takes quite a large government to find and connect the dots -- and then do something about actual threats (while minding long-standing civil liberties and associated rights).

Tea Partiers and others certainly have real gripes regarding Bennett. His vote for the TARP bailout was fair game -- as was his support for earmarks (funding provisions that don't go through the routine appropriations process). But when there's trouble afoot (and we got plenty), the responsible discussion is not about the size of government, but how best to use it to keep Americans safe from threats, whether they're posed by foes abroad, Wall Street con artists, or enviro demo squads. Reducing real political disputes into a simplistic debate about "big government" is no act of patriotism.

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