Romney Will Gut, Not Streamline Government

David Brooks had the most ridiculous column last week. In the column, he claimed it was people like Romney - private equity folks - that took an inefficient American business system and turned companies around and made them and the system more streamlined. Brooks then claims Romney plans to do the same thing with the federal government.

Paul Krugman takes Brooks to task on his point about private equity making America more efficient. I don't know who is right about the history, but I don't think that is the main point.

Even if we can accept that Romeny and the rest of private equity vastly improved efficiency in American business, it is clear that this isn't Romney's goal with government.

Actually, I don't know what Romney's real goal is, other than to be president for the sake of being president. But anyway, if we look at his policy and budget proposals and his support for Paul Ryan's budget, it is clear he doesn't want to streamline government. Mitt Romney wants to gut government. Read this post by the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, or almost any recent post by Ezra Klien on the Ryan / Romney budget. The cuts necessary to meet all of his goals are draconian.

But the worst part about Brooks' column is that he attributes something to Romney that I have never heard Romney say. In other words, Brooks is trying to soften Romeny's plans in a way that Romeny isn't trying. Romney has never said his cuts will streamline and improve service provision. Instead, Romney makes it clear he wants a smaller government that does a lot less - less for veterans; less for low income seniors, families and children; and less for public education and investment.

What makes this particularly disappointing is that Brooks had in the past criticized Republican's budget plans that are hurting our future by disinvesting in our youth while investing too much in our seniors. I think we should be doing both (taking care of seniors and investing in our future), but the point is that there was a time that Brooks understood how bad at least part of the Republicans plans were. For some reason, Brooks is no longer talking about that and worse, is pretending that somehow these draconian cuts will actually make things better. So disappointing.