Government isn't a business.

It seems to me many Republicans have this delusion that Government can be run the same way you run a business.

In business the single goal is to make money.  All other considerations give way to that goal.  So the successful business people are the most ruthless about laying off employees, or paying employee's as little as they can get away with.  They see no responsibility to their employees, or their customers, beyond what they must do to make the business successful.  The survival of the business trumps all other considerations.  To a large degree business rewards selfish behavior.

Mitt Romney and Herman Cain have both been successful in the business world and their campaign promises demonstrate they believe the same techniques that brought them business success will allow them to turn Government into a more successful enterprise.  Their "business" Republican mantra is cutting taxes, cutting regulation and reducing the size of government.

The problem is government is not a business.  It doesn't have a single easy to grasp goal like making money.  In the United States survival of the government doesn't trump the welfare of the people.   Government has responsibility for all their citizens, a simple fact Republicans often seem to have a difficult time grasping.

When "business" Republicans have been in control of the Republican party they have crippled the country.  The two biggest economic collapses in the last 100 years both followed spells of "business" Republicans controlling the Government.  Business Republicans controlled the party in the 1920's - it was the only time in the last 100 years we had two business men as President back to back - Calvin Coolidge and Herbert Hoover.  They had Republican majorities in the House and Senate.  When they took over the country the had balanced budgets and a healthy economy.  They ran the country like a business and by the time the people ushered them out of office in 1933 unemployment was at 25%, millions of houses had been foreclosed upon and we were staggering along in the Great Depression.

The "business" Republicans lost influence for decades after that.  The next three Republican Presidents were Ike, a career military man, Reagan an actor (and ironically the head of a labor union), and George H.W. Bush, who  had lots of business experience but also lots of Government experience and never embraced the "business" Republican mantra.  Then came the next real "business" Republican President, George W. Bush.  We are probably all old enough to remember Mr. Bush promising to cut taxes, cut regulations and cut government.

George W. came into office in 2001 with a balanced budget, a pretty healthy economy, like minded Republican majorities in the House and Senate and ran the country like a CEO.  By the time he left office world financial markets were frozen, we were bailing out Wall Street and unemployment and the deficit were skyrocketing.

We the voters need to tell Republicans the country is not a business and we can't afford to let them run it like one.

Some facts about elections in the US

Factoid - Corporations that spend the most money on lobbying make more money than Corporations that don't lobby.  The study- a research service created a stock index based on the amount corporations spend on lobbying.  Since 1998 companies that spend the most on lobbying, as a percentage of their total revenues, outperformed other companies.  The "lobby" index outperformed the S&P 500 by 11% a year since 2002.    In one specific example that the researchers looked at in 2004 the lobbying produced a $224 payoff for every dollar spent in lobbying.   Source:  Article in Economist, Oct.1.2011, p.82


Factoid - Voters subliminally exposed to a flag are more likely to vote Republican.  A study found in the US that subliminal exposure to a flag made people more likely to vote Republican.  The study involved 3 sets of questions about political preference, each person filled out a form asking a series of questions on 3 different occasions over the course of a couple months before and after the 2008 election.  The first two asked for preferences before the election.  Some of the forms had a small American flag decorating it, others were undecorated.  There was a statisically significant greater preference for McCain and Republicans over Obama and the Democrats in the answers on the form with the flag on it.  The questionaire after the election revealed that people who saw the flag on a questionaire were slightly over 10% less likely to have voted for Obama.  The result was then confirmed by another study in the spring of 2010, which again found exposure to an image of the flag changed responses to favor Republicans.   An earlier study in Israel had also found showing the national flag impacted voters perceptions of a particular political issue.   Source - Economist, Aug 6, 2011. p70.

What if - we voted for Federal programs on our tax return?

All my life Washington has been spending enormous amounts of time and money fighting over which programs get funded by the Government.   Hundreds of programs live on in the Federal budget because Washington is to busy to pay attention to it, or, more likely, happy to take money from special interests who support a low profile program that is so low profile protecting the program won't come back to bite them in the butt.

An example - I just learned there are lots of little tiny airports around the country that get hundreds of millions of dollars in Federal subsidies - based on a program from decades ago to mitigate the impact of airline deregulation.  That program was supposed to expire after 10 years, but special interests and local politicians seeking to bring home some bacon to get reelected have kept it going for decades.
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What if on our Federal income tax filing we got to check on which programs we support or don't support.

Some core programs would have to be exempt, like defense.

But taxpayers could choose to allocate a percentage of their taxes among programs that give away government funds to individuals or businesses.  School lunch programs, subsidies for farmers, or oil companies or airports.

Whatever percentage of taxpayers support the program determines the amount of money they get.  Below a certain threshhold, say 10% of voters, the program is eliminated.

So programs could plan you wouldn't have every program listed every year, maybe every 8 years.  And to keep the tax form short there would be ways you could vote for whole catagories of programs.