On his Sunday morning show, CNN host Fareed Zakaria opened with a commentary in which he blamed President Ronald Reagan for the U.S. government's failure to minimize the COVID-19 death toll as he argued that giving more funding to government agencies would have led to fewer deaths.
Beginning his Fareed Zakaria GPS show, the CNN host recalled that several prominent advanced countries have managed to reduce their number of new infections in contrast with the U.S. which is currently seeing a resurgence in new cases, as he blamed the situation on an insufficient contact tracing program.
After noting that much federal spending has been devoted in recent years to entitlement programs for an aging population, he then complained that, by contrast, "most of the agencies of the federal government have been starved of resources while being given more tasks and mandates."
He soon took aim at right-leaning opponents of big government:
You see, for almost half a century, politicians on the right have pursued a strategy of starving the beast. Anti-tax campaigner Grover Norquist explained, "I don't want to abolish government. I simply want to reduce it to the size where I can drag it into the bathroom and drown it in the bathtub."
After listing several countries in Europe and East Asia that have had more success in holding down coronavirus infections than the U.S., Zakaria added:
But in all of these cases, government bureaucracies are well-funded, enjoy considerable autonomy, are not burdened with excessive rules and mandates, and they recruit intelligent people who are afforded respect for working in the public sector.
He then implicated President Reagan:
FAREED ZAKARIA: In the United States, we have a culture set by Ronald Reagan who, as head of the federal bureaucracy, joked:
PRESIDENT RONALD REAGAN: The nine most terrifying words in the English language are "I'm from the government, and I'm here to help."
Calling the current bureaucracy in the U.S. "stupid," he then concluded:
COVID-19 should be a wakeup call. America needs to rebuild its government capacity. The goal is not a big state or a small state, but a smart state. For now, what we have is just stupid.
It was not mentioned that there is an argument that there was too much government domination in the early pandemic response that did not allow private companies to have a role in helping develop a COVID-19 testing system.
Additionally, much of the spreading of the virus appears to have come from people being allowed to gather publicly in large numbers without masks, rather than the state's failure to have a substantial testing capacity.
This episode of Fareed Zakaria GPS was sponsored by PhRMA and Hewlett Packard Enterprise. Their contact information is linked.
Below is a transcript of the relevant portion of the Sunday, July 12, Fareed Zakaria GPS on CNN:
Fareed Zakaria GPS
7/12/2020
10:04 a.m. Eastern
FAREED ZAKARIA: Is this about money? Well, federal spending as a percentage of GDP is where it was 40 years ago, but that statistic conceals more than it reveals. Spending on entitlement programs -- Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid -- has gone up massively as the population ages and health care costs soar.
But most of the agencies of the federal government have been starved of resources while being given more tasks and mandates. Even the writing of the checks proved hard this time. Countries like Germany and Canada sent out funds faster and more directly than the U.S., providing quick relief to their citizens, while Americans had to wait anxiously, navigating websites that didn't work, and apply again and again to get a response.
The number of federal employees is smaller per capita than in the 1950s, despite the fact that real U.S. GDP is seven times larger. The government barely hires new recruits anymore. As a Brookings report notes, "one-third of the federal workforce will be eligible to retire between now and 2025, and only six percent of federal employees are under 30 years old."
You see, for almost half a century, politicians on the right have pursued a strategy of starving the beast. Anti-tax campaigner Grover Norquist explained, "I don't want to abolish government. I simply want to reduce it to the size where I can drag it into the bathroom and drown it in the bathtub."
Steve Bannon -- the ideologist of the Trump revolution -- made clear that his goal was the deconstruction of the administrative state. Guess what: It was already happening.
Winning the fight against COVID doesn't require a huge bureaucratic apparatus. Hong Kong, Singapore, Taiwan and South Korea have relatively small governments measured by government spending as a share of GDP. On the other hand, Denmark, Norway and Germany have also done very wall, and they have relatively large states. But in all of these cases, government bureaucracies are well-funded, enjoy considerable autonomy, are not burdened with excessive rules and mandates, and they recruit intelligent people who are afforded respect for working in the public sector.
In the United States, we have a culture set by Ronald Reagan who, as head of the federal bureaucracy, joked:
PRESIDENT RONALD REAGAN: The nine most terrifying words in the English language are "I'm from the government, and I'm here to help."
ZAKARIA: COVID-19 should be a wakeup call. America needs to rebuild its government capacity. The goal is not a big state or a small state, but a smart state. For now, what we have is just stupid.
