If the basic services provided by the federal government are unlikely to change significantly in coming years, their delivery and design promise to be more contested turfs. The Republican dream of transitioning Medicare to a \u201cpremium support\u201d voucher system is one example of the new battleground. The Democratic desire to add a public option to Obamacare is another.<\/p>\n
Some of the best thinking on these issues is being done at Washington\u2019s New America Foundation, which has produced three recent papers that deserve attention. In \u201cKludgeocracy: The American Way of Policy,\u201d Steven Teles, a political scientist at Johns Hopkins University, takes aim at the political system\u2019s tendency to address problems with \u201cthe most gerry-rigged, opaque and complicated response.\u201d Think clunky Obamacare versus streamlined single-payer health care, or government\u2019s tendency to deliver benefits via the tax code, through deductions, credits and exclusions, rather than by direct payments.<\/p>\n
Our drift toward kludgeocracy has many causes, Teles argues. They range from the irresolvable tension between the public\u2019s desire for a small, inexpensive government and generous, expansive public services, to the realization by special interests that they can commandeer more of the public purse through programs that are too opaque for the public to notice and too complex for even members of Congress to understand. The result is an inefficient state that citizens find unaccountable, expensive, untrustworthy and impervious to reform efforts.<\/p>\n
The paper \u201cNo Discount: Comparing the Public Option to the Coupon Welfare State,\u201d by Roosevelt Institute fellow Mike Konczal, is a useful companion to Teles\u2019 tale of kludgeocracy. While Teles surveys a broad trend in governance, Konczal drills deep into a single policy dilemma that we confront repeatedly: Whether to provision public services directly, through government-run programs, or to use government as \u201ca giant coupon machine, whose primary responsibility is passing out coupons to discount and subsidize private education, health-care, old-age pensions and a wide variety of other primary goods.\u201d<\/p>\n
In recent years, the \u201ccoupon machine\u201d theory of American governance \u2014 exemplified by vouchers and tax subsidies \u2014 has been ascendant. That\u2019s how most of Obamacare works. It\u2019s also the foundation of Republican efforts to reform Medicare and education.<\/p>\n
As Konczal argues, \u201cThe advantages associated with vouchers are ones of choice, efficiency, competition, budget control and incentive management.\u201d But there are disadvantages, too. For instance, because a privatized welfare state is more opaque and complex than a public one, it creates \u201cnew coalitions of business interests, providers, middlemen\u201d who profit from it. The result is not only less democratic control and accountability, but also less efficiency. Understanding when to choose a direct public provision and when to opt for coupons is a crucial task. Konczal\u2019s paper provides an excellent basis for devising a general theory.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
\u00a0<\/p><\/div>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Washington Post columnist Ezra Klein\u00a0 says that \u201cHow government is run, more than what exactly it does, seems set to be the main battleground of American politics in coming years.\u201d\u00a0 He then cites articles from the New America Foundation that say the government\u2019s approach is to build a\u00a0 kludge (\u201ca clumsy, inelegant, difficult to extend, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1281,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[19],"tags":[351,553,4344],"class_list":["post-14404","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-government","tag-bureaucracy","tag-congress","tag-government"],"yoast_head":"\n
The government efficiency argument<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Washington Post columnist Ezra Klein\u00a0 says that "How government is run, more than what exactly it does, seems set to be the main battleground of American\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/geneveith\/2013\/01\/the-government-efficiency-argument\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"The government efficiency argument\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Washington Post columnist Ezra Klein\u00a0 says that "How government is run, more than what exactly it does, seems set to be the main battleground of American\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/geneveith\/2013\/01\/the-government-efficiency-argument\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Cranach\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:author\" content=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/cranachblog\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2013-01-31T10:45:36+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2013-01-31T02:47:14+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Gene Veith\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"Gene Veith\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"3 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/geneveith\/2013\/01\/the-government-efficiency-argument\/\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/geneveith\/2013\/01\/the-government-efficiency-argument\/\",\"name\":\"The government efficiency argument\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/geneveith\/#website\"},\"datePublished\":\"2013-01-31T10:45:36+00:00\",\"dateModified\":\"2013-01-31T02:47:14+00:00\",\"author\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/geneveith\/#\/schema\/person\/f9ca8670bcc51908a78994c0484dbfa1\"},\"description\":\"Washington Post columnist Ezra Klein\u00a0 says that \\\"How government is run, more than what exactly it does, seems set to be the main battleground of American\",\"breadcrumb\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/geneveith\/2013\/01\/the-government-efficiency-argument\/#breadcrumb\"},\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"ReadAction\",\"target\":[\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/geneveith\/2013\/01\/the-government-efficiency-argument\/\"]}]},{\"@type\":\"BreadcrumbList\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/geneveith\/2013\/01\/the-government-efficiency-argument\/#breadcrumb\",\"itemListElement\":[{\"@type\":\"ListItem\",\"position\":1,\"name\":\"Home\",\"item\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/geneveith\/\"},{\"@type\":\"ListItem\",\"position\":2,\"name\":\"The government efficiency argument\"}]},{\"@type\":\"WebSite\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/geneveith\/#website\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/geneveith\/\",\"name\":\"Cranach\",\"description\":\"\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"SearchAction\",\"target\":{\"@type\":\"EntryPoint\",\"urlTemplate\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/geneveith\/?s={search_term_string}\"},\"query-input\":\"required name=search_term_string\"}],\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\"},{\"@type\":\"Person\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/geneveith\/#\/schema\/person\/f9ca8670bcc51908a78994c0484dbfa1\",\"name\":\"Gene Veith\",\"image\":{\"@type\":\"ImageObject\",\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/geneveith\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/054d79faea5d476edd8f99e5f14fb17f?s=96&d=mm&r=g\",\"contentUrl\":\"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/054d79faea5d476edd8f99e5f14fb17f?s=96&d=mm&r=g\",\"caption\":\"Gene Veith\"},\"description\":\"Gene Edward Veith, Jr. is a writer and retired literature professor, serving as Provost Emeritus at Patrick Henry College. 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