Making Government Work 

Phillip Howard, government efficiency advocate:

     "The real waste in government stems from red tape. Building a transmission line to a city takes 10 years of permits and hearings. In healthcare, administration eats up 30% of every dollar of spending. That's a trillion and a half dollars per year. 

     "Government is like a household that never throws anything away. Get rid of obsolete programs and thick rulebooks. Create a framework where one official makes the decisions, and another official oversees it. An act in 2021 includes the goal of no more than two years for permitting of major projects. And it limits environmental impact statements to 200 pages.

     "In the 1960s avoiding human error and responsibility resulted in 1,000-page rulebooks. Teachers lost control of their classrooms. Every public dollar is a moral choice. If you waste it here, it's not available there. The Dept. of Education just created red tape. 

     "Washington today protects the status quo. Interest groups make sure nothing changes. Some of the worst actors are public employee unions. There are probably 15 levels of approval in government. Give an authority to decide and another person authority to oversee. Now you know where to shine the spotlight.  

     "Leaders must have the spine to consider the hard trade-offs. Democrats, the party of the status quo, have no vision of how to govern effectively. Republicans don't know how to fix it. Both sides fail. 

     "We need to re-empower the spirit of each American. Give people back the freedom to speak freely, live by their values, and lead with accountability. That's the spirit that can make America great again."

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