One of the big changes that have come about in political campaigns in the last ten years is the practice of polling the voters to find out what issues they are concerned about. On the surface, this seems like a waste of good campaign contributions because, if the candidate is out meeting his constituents, he can find out himself what worries them.
I’m now ready to concede that voter surveys can be useful. Jimmy Carter’s own polls have taught him something he hadn’t learned in a year of campaigning, namely, that government spending and the oppressive Federal bureaucracy are important issues with the voters.
That is the explanation for his sudden announcement of a promise to balance the Federal budget “before the end” of his term as President. This pledge is wholly incompatible with his other promises to start expensive new spending programs. Nevertheless, it is significant that Jimmy Carter now recognizes that the American people know they are being ripped off by the Federal bureaucracy and are ready to show their anger on November second.
The anti-Washington tide that has been sweeping the country this year is even more a reaction to the excessive cost of the Federal Government than to the corruption that causes a stream of sensational headlines. People are just plain fed up with paying the price of the bloated bureaucracy.
Here are a few figures to stagger your imagination. The Federal Government employs 2.9 million civilian workers, issues 45 million “entitlement” checks every month, owns one-third of the country’s land, holds title to 405,000 buildings, rents another 54,000 buildings, and collects 4,504 different types of Federal forms.
Beginning with Franklin D. Roosevelt, every President has promised to reduce the ballooning bureaucracy and cut Federal spending, but it continues to grow at an accelerating pace. Even under Gerald Ford, ten of the eleven Cabinet-level departments and all the regulatory agencies have increased their number of employees.
The attempt to substitute government regulation for private enterprise accounts for the large number of professionals on the payrolls. There are now about 4,800 economists tinkering with our economy, graduates of universities where they acquired the arrogance to believe they can spend our money and direct our economy better than the free market.
Disillusionment with the Federal bureaucracy’s ability to solve our economic and social problems started years ago with the businessmen because they were the first targets of regulation and controls. This disillusionment has long since spread to the general public, a fact which the politicians, thanks to voter surveys, are now starting to recognize.
It is an encouraging sign that this disillusionment has even spread to the academic community. Harvard President Derek Bok is one of a growing number of academicians who voice the concern that universities are now caught in a spider web of unnecessary, confusing, and expensive Federal red tape. Mr. Bok has finally realized that the universities are losing their academic freedom because of Federal interference in record-keeping, hiring, and other faculty decisions.
Now that the overburdened taxpayers have finally gotten their message through to the liberal politicians and the liberal professors — the same ones who have been promoting a bigger Federal bureaucracy all these years -— we may at last see the end of the tunnel of Federal expansion.
