The Need for Bigger Government

National news (ABC in this case) is or is about to do a big story on abuses against insurance companies and fraud in welfare programs. The amount I believe it is in the billions. We’re missing the news this evening, but I think that will be reported.

Now the knee jerk response to such stories is to say the damned government is screwed up and those evil people who receive aid are a worthless bunch of crooks that ought to be hung out to dry or just hung. So end the stupid programs. Lots of righteous indignations will spill forth. But that is an irrational response.

We don’t get the stories about all the good these programs do for lots and lots of people because it doesn’t make good news; meaning bad news is what the media likes to report because it is more profitable. This is not to say that these issues should not be brought to the attention of the public and public evils that need to be addressed.

What the story, it seems to me, should suggest to us that regulating these programs and making sure guidelines are properly following and catching folk who break the law and abuse the system need to be identified, caught, and prosecuted.

So how do you do that? You have to hire an adequate staff to make sure the programs operate as they should. You need more government employees to make these programs work as they are intended. If you are a social worker with too many caseloads to care for, more abuse will take place.

Folk who think this means we should reduce government are like who finding a particular city and a particular section that has a high crime rate and thing the solution is to reduce the number of police in the area. It is irrational; to confront the crime you obviously need additional police and programs to rehabilitate the area.

I don’t believe we have to go back to the levels of government employees of the Reagan era which if I recall was about a third more than we have now, but we need increased government employees to get the job done properly.

Or, don’t throw the baby out with the bathwater.