THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, January 15, 1995 TAG: 9501120160
SECTION: CAROLINA COAST PAGE: 05 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: Ford Reid
LENGTH: Medium: 60 lines
If you watch television, and especially if you listen to the radio, you begin to believe that there is no problem facing this country that would not go away immediately if only the government would disappear.
Everyone - Republicans, Democrats, Perotistas and independents - screams for less government.
Sometimes it is easy to see why. Walk down a street in Washington, or Raleigh, and you begin to wonder what all of those people in all of those government office buildings are doing all day long.
The government doesn't look so good when it takes a first class letter, even at the new 32-cent price, eight days to travel 80 miles. Or when the Pentagon buys another load of $500 toilet seats. Or when a pot hole goes unpatched for a year or so.
The problem is, everyone has his or her own idea of what a smaller government should look like.
Recently, while driving, I listened to a radio broadcast of a state public hearing on budget concerns.
It was fascinating. One by one, dozens of people stood at the microphone and explained why various programs should not be cut.
Some of the people had obvious vested interests. That is, their salaries are paid with tax money.
But a lot of them were just folks, extolling the virtues of all kinds of government services.
One person talked about library services for the handicapped, another about research facilities for the seafood industry, another about substance abuse programs and another about protection for battered women.
There were people pleading for education, programs for the elderly, nutrition programs, while others cried to save public radio, public television and the National Endowments for the arts and the humanities.
Each and every one of them had great arguments. All of the programs sounded worthy.
And there is the rub.
Almost everybody wants less government and lower taxes. But nobody can agree on what ought to stay and what ought to go.
Someone living in Kansas might think it would be a good idea to privatize Cape Hatteras National Seashore and charge admission.
A taxpayer in land-locked West Virginia might be sick of all of the money he thinks is wasted on the Coast Guard while someone in Nevada might resent his tax dollars being spent on hurricane relief.
Even the loudest voices against government might want to keep some programs.
Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich, House Majority Leader Richard Armey and Senator Phil Gramm have something in common besides being conservatives who think that government is too big and tries to do too much.
Before they were elected to Congress, all of them were professors at state-supported colleges. Which means that for many years each of them had been drawing a paycheck from, that's right, the government. by CNB