How business, doctors and journalists prey on your food anxieties I

' jI L11J AJt1~
Cutting the budget
with a wet noodle
P
Ro^ert ~i . Nels2n is a
professor in the SchWi
of Public Affairs at the
Universityof Maryl<strong>and</strong>
<strong>and</strong> sen ior feJow of
the Cainpethive Enierorise
Instltute . His
latest book is Public
L<strong>and</strong>s <strong>and</strong> prNate
Rignts .
As aAR- of t.heir plans to eliminate the budget
deficit bv 2002, House Republicans ha%e proposed
to eliminate the Commerce, Education
<strong>and</strong> Energy departments . But that «as too
much for Senate Republicans . The\rould
eliminate onlv Commerce .
Even at that modest proposaL, the Clinton
Uministration complained nboutestremism .
Jud_w-nq fi-om my experience as a policy analast
in the office of the Secreranof the Intetior from
1975 to 1993, none of these measures is e treme
enough . To the House Republicans' lut 6st I
would add the Department of the Interior .
Formed in 1849, Intenor is today a collection
of ten di%erse agencies, induding the National
Park Senice, Bureau of I<strong>and</strong> il4anagement,
Bureau of Mines, Bureau of Reclanration,
Bureau of Indian Affairs <strong>and</strong> the Geological
Surrvey . We're talking ancient history here . The
current Bureau of L<strong>and</strong> .Ltunagement goes
back to the General L<strong>and</strong> Office, established in
1812 to oversee disposal of pubiic l<strong>and</strong>s . Interior's
Bureau of Reclamation ras created in
1902 to promote farming in the West, but
todav western water is much more valuable for
rapidly increasing urban populations . Recla-
When it comes to eliminating
western pork, the Republican
zeal for budget-cutting
seems to wane .
marion projects received large construction subsidies
<strong>and</strong> then the Department of Agriculture
had to turn around <strong>and</strong> subsidize crop production
on sonie of rhe % ety same l<strong>and</strong>s .
The Bureau of'vlines was created in 1910 to
oversee the safetv of miners follo%~ ing a series of
disastrous mining accidents, In the I 970s,
hou•ever, safery responsibiliries were transferred
to the Department of Labor, <strong>and</strong> mining todav plays a small part in the II
.S, economy .
The Bureau of Indian tltiairs has been steadile
transferring responsibilities to tribal governments
under its "self-determinarion" philosophv . But
the size of the nc~L bureaucracy has yet to decline .
Congress should recognize diat this is the
end of the 20th cemmn , not the middle of the
19th . These agencies ha% e long since outlived
their purposes . Thev survive chiefly because
dte}' Irare mastered the infamous °iron trianele
." That's a political science term to describe
the Iong-st<strong>and</strong>ing interaction of federal bureaucaacies
. Congress <strong>and</strong> interest groups .
In the 1970s Congress approved so many
nevtdoubtful park units f7ar the process became
known as the "park barrel ." Like the Bureau
of Reclamation <strong>and</strong> other water agencies, the
purpose was to subsidize local economies as
part of the political pavoff svstem in Congress .
Interior owr.s 26% of the l<strong>and</strong> in the 11
westernmost':ower 48 states . The U .S . Forest
Senice in the Department of 2.griculture
o vns an additional 19% . Congress seems to like
it this «a, v . If a rancher is unhappy about
having to reduce the size of his cattle herd grazing
on public l<strong>and</strong>s ., he goes to his congressman
for help . Helping constituents is what getting
reelected is all about . Nice svstem : First
vou create obstacles, then vou do people a favor
bv helping them through the obstacles .
Members of Congress are today more important
than state gocernors <strong>and</strong> legislators for
mam, critical l<strong>and</strong> <strong>and</strong> infrastructure decisions
in the rural West . The Interior Department
functions ehere as a local planning <strong>and</strong> zoning
board . Because the federal government picks up
the tab, the home folks are even more grateful
to their representatives .
Nocr you know svhv the House <strong>and</strong> Senate
budget plans for 2002 would eliminate onlyone
Interior agency, the National Biological Service
. You also know whp Senate Republicans
don't want to kill Energy or Education . Republicans
ma• be the majority party now, but
thehae to get reelected, too .
The writer Wallace Stegner once aptly described
the tppical western attitude to~rard the
federal government as "go away <strong>and</strong> send
more money .° The West exalts the indn-idualism
of the con•bov <strong>and</strong> miner, <strong>and</strong> then proceeds
to li e off the federal government . The
West can be counted upon to deplore government
interference while insisting that its representatives
lcecp the largesse flov~ing .
Washington cynics argue that Democrats
<strong>and</strong> Republicans differ less on ideology than on
constituencv . The politics in this 104th Congress
strengthens the cy'nics' case . Republicans
tend to be gung ho fbr cutting urban programs
but lukewarm about cutting rural programs
that serve mosdy Republicans : the Interior
Department, crop subsidies, the Rural Elecrr.ficarion
Administration <strong>and</strong> manp more .
The Republicans are going to look awfully
hypocritical if they cut urban programs for the
poor <strong>and</strong> leace their own pet giveaways intact .
To prove their sincerin theg ought to go back to
the House plan for eliminating agencies <strong>and</strong>
then add Interior to their list. ~
146
204CC73403
Forbes . August 14, 1995
http://legacy.library.ucsf.edu/tid/agf97d00/pdf