May

Government ROI vs Should Government Do It? (SGDI)

While reading through my latest Google Reader items, a post over on 538 caught my eye (shared by a friend) titled “Why Spending Cuts Aren’t the Answer“. It is a well written piece about how we shouldn’t be cutting government programs because, as Mr.Frank states:

“Each of these programs was delivering good value for the money.”

Boiled down to business terms, the author and many of my friends, believe the government should be run on ROI or Return on Investment. Many people who were pulling for Obama’s ridiculous bailout said we could actually earn money by bailing businesses like Chrysler (who has recently gone out of business and taken our billions of dollars with it… oops) because they treated it like an investment and these businesses or programs that we now had stock in could go up/succeed and earn us money.

I appreciate anyone considering the possibility of economic gain but, ROI can mean different things for different people. Value for me may not be value for you so, the return on investment for me may be nothing while it’s alot for you, despite the fact that you are using taxpayer money on the investment and many taxpayers are getting no return. In addition, the government has a long history of being a poor investor with taxpayer dollars, spending more and providing less of a return than private industry.

Here is my proposal: think not only about ROI but, about SGDI or Should Government Do It? We live in a country that is lead by Democrats (House, Senate and Obama) who never even consider what the government should or shouldn’t do. To them the answer to every SGDI answer is YES! More government! More programs! Millions of new government jobs!

As conservatives, we believe we should take a step back and think. More often then not, we consider SGDI and come to the conclusion that even if a small, short-term ROI can be gained by government interaction, private industry and charities are by far the most efficient way to gain ROI over the long term. As conservatives, our SGDI analysis is more often than not, no. This is because we believe America will be a better place with a smaller government. Our government is not what makes us great, it is our people and the businesses and charities they run.

Of course, if we had asked “Should government do it?” more often, we wouldn’t have to cut programs because they would have been left in the hands of private industry and charities from the beginning.

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