GOP Hopeful Tim Pawlenty’s Economic Fix

Speaking at the University of Chicago, Pawlenty proposed applying what he called “the Google test” to government services.
Former Minnesota Governor Tim Pawlenty, who is viewed as one of the more serious — if little known — GOP candidates, tried to pierce through the media racket on Tuesday, outlining a bold approach to streamlining government services and eliminating waste.
The U.S. military: This one’s a no-brainer. With nearly 3 million personnel (active and reserve), and an annual budget of $700 billion, the U.S. armed forces is one of the country’s most expensive government services. And don’t forget about those military pensions, health insurance, and the cost of treating and rehabilitating U.S. vets who return from the country’s wars with traumatic brain injury or missing limbs.

Set aside for the moment the fact that “there really is no private-sector alternative to some things the US Postal Service does,kobe beats by dre, such as rural mail delivery,” as The Monitor notes. “Or Amtrak,nike dunk, outside of its most-trafficked routes.” And set aside that Pawlenty’s “Google test” is really just an internet-era rehash of former Indianapolis Mayor Stephen Goldsmith’s “yellow pages test,” Pawlenty (pictured) was putting a new twist on a familiar argument, and it’s no coincidence he did it at the University of Chicago, America’s sacred temple of free-market economics. Republicans have long argued that the private sector is much more efficient and cost-effective than the federal government at providing services. And just about everyone agrees that in 2011, the federal government is a bloated behemoth full of waste,nike free run Racial differences in willingness to, redundancy, and inefficiency. The debate centers on the reasonable limits of privatization, and the services for which no realistic alternative to the government exists.
“If you can find a service or good available on Google or the Internet, then the federal government probably doesn’t need to be doing it,” said Pawlenty, “The post office, the Government Printing Office, Amtrak, Fannie Mae,monster beats headphones, Freddie Mac, were all built for a time in our country when the private sector did not adequately provide those products. But that’s no longer the case.”