Running Government Like a Business

I have to admit upfront that I really don’t like John Boehner.  I’m sure that he is not an evil man, but he allowed himself to be pushed around by a bunch of Tea Party ideologue bullies, stood in front of a microphone on national TV the other night, verbally insulted the President of the United State, lied about the President wanting a blank check (which isn’t possible since Congress controls the purse strings), and Boehner didn’t even cry about it. 

The main subject of this blog, however, is something else Boehner talked about.  He told about the small business he ran before he was elected, and how distressed he was when he got to Washington because government isn’t run like a business.  Well, of course not.  Government is not a business; it is government.  Basically, a business is concerned with making money.  Government is concerned with spending it.  If government can be likened to any occupation, it would be that of someone involved in keeping house.  Think about this for a moment.  Usually there is a specific amount of money coming into the household.  All bills need to be paid from that, and also the various needs and wants of household members.  During times of stress, credit can be used judiciously, making sure that credit never exceeds the ability to repay it.  Imagine trying to function as a household without ever taking on debt.  No house and no car until the family had saved enough to pay cash.  Not likely!  Not in these times of living paycheck to paycheck.

It was about the time Ronald Reagan (Ronnie Baby) became involved in politics that we began to hear the mantra that we have to run government like a business.  It was in 1986 when I first was a candidate for county supervisor that I began to hear, “If you haven’t made a payroll, you don’t know anything”. This, of course, made no sense to me whatsoever, since making a payroll had nothing to do with philosophy, politics, music, literature, at least rudimentary economics, and most other subjects which I believed were necessary to be in government.  These subjects give one an idea at the very least, of the mistakes that have been made by governments, secular and religious, over the millennia.  One needs to study the mistakes of others to make sure one does not repeat them.

But we still have this mantra of “running government like a business”.  Refer to my blog, Unholy Alliance, for a moment or two.  In there I discuss why I believe that forces are in play to actually bring down our government – on purpose – so the corporations, or business, can actually run Washington, D.C., instead of hiding behind some paid legislators.  I also quote somewhere the infamous line, “If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it.”  The repetition of this lie, running government like a business, is to get the idea into the minds of the American people that if government should be run like a business, then why not have a business running it?

Your friendly Chamber of Commerce Koch Machine in action.