My Domestic Spending Agenda

It might sound like the antithesis of conservatism to support increasing government spending on domestic issues, but before you start getting upset, hear me out. While compassionate conservatives (a group I am proud to call myself a member of) support some social programs, there are programs that fall outside the area of compassion that I support. Let me consider a few of these and state why I think big spending on these is not necessarily a bad thing.

What we should keep as our goal is not to minimize spending on these sectors, but instead to increase the revenue of the agency with the goal of reaching operating (a profit over the average variable cost or AVC of the organization) or even economic profits (a profit over the average total cost or ATC of the organization). These agencies do not receive enough money right now, I believe, to reach their full potential — the kind of potential that would make up for the opportunity cost of the tax dollars invested and, as I said, hopefully cause the agencies to get total revenue above total cost. If we tied funding to improved fiscal results but, at the same time, provided a large enough initial budget to allow the agencies to reform without cutting back on the services we want, the long term prospects look very good.

We support social programs because we see some benefit in lifting up those who have hit the bottom for two reasons. (1) For the humanitarian reason of simply caring for them and (2) for the economic and society benefits we gain from moving them back into productive employment. A good example here is job training programs for those who have seen their jobs outsourced or their factories close completely. This moves people out of unemployment helping them and the country as a whole. Not all programs accomplish this, but that ought to be the goal of them. Likewise, non-social programs should aim to achieve two goals: (1) to provide services presently impractical to do in the private sector and (2) transform those services so that they eventually could operate by private sector standards or, at the very least, stimulate private sector's economic growth beyond the costs of the program.

NASA — many people on both sides of the fence simply do not understand the critical importance of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. I guess liberals find it too close to the military and conservatives can't necessarily justify it as a necessary part of the military. Yet, in my opinion, NASA is one of the most important parts of the Federal government. Let's face it — yes, NASA is inefficient, bloated and has been thoroughly shamed by the St. Louis's own Ansari X-Prize, but private companies will never be able to accomplish what NASA can under proper direction.

Take Mars, for example. To reach Mars will require new technologies and massive projects beyond anything the agency has ever done before. While Scaled Composites was able to reach space for a relatively meager sum, they were doing so with the benefit of thousands of technologies that were driven ahead through NASA's early, innovative days. The technology to reach Mars with humans does not exist yet, meaning that only an entity with the funding power of the world's lone superpower can likely reach the goal of the first interplanetary human mission.

NASA has probably done more to advance technology than any other government agency and our world is better for it. President Bush's 2030 goal for a Mars mission deserves respect as a plan to re-ignite our imaginations and our common goals so that the stodgy modern NASA can again become the lean, mean organization that can revolutionize technology for us. We should take technologies that come out of NASA and pass them out through an effective technology licensing program that would encourage private sector companies to use and improve what the government created. This would pay back the costs of R&D and drive the push into the final frontier to new heights.

United States Postal Service — Many conservatives I know loathe a public entity dedicated to mail delivery. The privatization call has come for a long time and sounds good on the surface. The idea of privatization of USPS, in my opinion, is a flawed and dangerous plan. USPS does not turn a profit, like it would be required to do if it were in the private sector, but personally I care much more about seeing my mail come and go without a hitch than if USPS is bringing in cash (so long as it is not a complete money black hole). UPS, FedEx, DHL and others can and do accomplish amazing logistical service feats with a profit for a reason: it costs more to use them.

Take, for example, a 6 oz envelope to Paraguay. The cheapest way to get it there using any of the major private sector delivery companies will set you back nearly fifty bucks. For just seven bucks, I can upgrade to service that should get that letter there in less than a week via USPS. Now, I hear you screaming over there: “raise the rates! raise the rates!” Hold on a second. Is not the main goal here to facilitate communication? If USPS charged the same rate as UPS, it would be very impractical to send that envelope even though I would hate not to send it. Could it perhaps be that it is worth a few of my tax dollars each year to facilitate affordable, fast, reliable postal service for the dozens of letters, bills, rebates, CD's and other things I mail out? E-mail must become far more secure, reliable and just plain better before I would consider cutting loose our core way of distributing documents and packages.

There are lots of issues that come up if USPS was privatized. Daily deliveries to rural areas would become likely targets of cuts. Even first class letters would likely skyrocket in price to achieve pricing parity with UPS, et. al. I betcha the amount of money you would spend sending out your bills each month would go up enough that the meager tax savings would soon seem less than attractive.

I would add that I believe with a relatively meager investment in more efficient delivery solutions, including some of those used by UPS and FedEx, we could dramatically improve USPS's performance. We ought to look into solutions such as outsourcing certain extra deliveries to other carriers and promoting and improving high tech solutions (which USPS already offers) such as e-mail to mail gateways.

Amtrak — This is, by far, the most controversial of my three pet government projects. I believe it is in this nation's interest to not only keep Amtrak going, but also to start a one-time revitalization program that would upgrade the tracks across the nation to support bullet train capabilities. Amtrak, in its current state, could not survive as a private company. If Amtrak shutdown, the rails that made this country great would grow rusty and disappear into the murky fog of the past.

In a time of heightened security, we should have a strong transportation infrastructure beyond just air traffic. A healthy, revitalized Amtrak could, I believe, turn a profit eventually and would allow us to have a redundant high-speed transportation network. Think about the days after 9/11 when we were forced to shut down air traffic — such a high speed train system would have allowed for far more efficient traveling. We have no reason to believe 9/11 was the last time this could happen, and next time we could be ready (and that is just one of the many advantages to having more than one long distance mass transit system).

Moreover, if we implemented the improved Amtrak using electric trains, we would insure that no matter what future fuel technology eventually allows us to eliminate dependence on the Middle East, we would be able to convert it to work with trains. I don't think you can necessarily say that about our existing planes.

Each of these agencies needs major reform, I agree. I do not agree however that they should be ended or privatized. In the long run, I think everyone would benefit from improving these agencies and it is reasonable to expect that a serious upfront investment could yield a rosy financial situation for these agencies in the future.