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Smaller or Larger government, common sense rules. October 29, 2008

Republican or Democrat there are common sense rules that apply to all spheres. They apply to the Federal Government, State Government, and private enterprise. There are branches of the government that have the responsibility to see that the American people have safe drugs, sanitary foods, and on the job safety. If you left the responsibility up to private enterprise they must make a sufficient profit to stay in business. Quality control departments are not usually the largest part of the drug company. That is left for the chemists, and other scientists; their salary and benefits are the major costs to the drug company. Quality control eats into profits. The FDA is underfunded and understaffed, they cannot inspect any drug company thoroughly, let alone all of them. If we make government smaller by trimming staff at the FDA we will have less safe drugs, end of sentence.

We have carnivores in this country, and herbivores, and omnivores; I'm an omnivore. We eat meat, and that meat is to be inspected by the USDA. There are still cases of food poisoning from meat, poultry, produce, even with the USDA. The problem is again, there is not enough staff to actually inspect shipments of outgoing meat from the packing plants. All you get is a statement that the facility was inspected by the USDA; not that cow, not that package of meat, just the plant itself. They make spot checks, and facility inspections. You decrease the staff and it becomes much more unsafe.

OSHA studies on the job injuries, and I assume that they check out safety equipment, i.e., scaffolding and company practices. Again, you reduce staff and you reduce safety. There is no other way to run things; enough people and experts of the field involved or the job is not done correctly. People are always talking out reducing government, and they don't seem to think about any of the above obvious common sense statement. Smaller is cheaper, cheaper is good, let's get smaller! That's it, it's all about money.

There are one or two departments in the US government that actually make money for the government. The US Postal Service has turned a profit, on more than one occasion. The biggest money maker is the Department of Commerce. The revenue that comes in due to import taxation; i.e., duties and port fees brings in a great deal of money. I assume nobody is for this department to get smaller; there would be less profit to the country without them.

The FBI, the CIA, the NSA are very well thought of today. We live in the era of international terrorism and if you cut back on staff you would save a lot of money. However the country would be a great deal more vulnerable to attack by nefarious groups both foreign and domestic. Again, I assume, nobody is for that.

Can there be thrift created through better management of the government, both state and federal: Of course. Is the answer to make government smaller? There is always that statistic that actually matters; your family is injured. Now you care that there were insufficient safeguards, now you become a bleeding heart liberal as you have suffered. It is not always true that smaller is smarter, or safer.

Learn more about this author, Larry McNerney.
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