What Good is Government?

By Rebecca Carroll

As Republican presidential candidates call for the elimination of as many federal agencies as they can remember, former president Bill Clinton has weighed in with a defense of Uncle Sam in his new book, Back to Work: Why We Need Smart Government for a Strong Economy (Alfred A. Knopf).

The book's third chapter is called Why We Need Government. Here's an excerpt:

I think the role of government is to give people the tools and create the conditions to make the most of our lives. Government should empower us to do things we need or want to do that we can only do together by pooling our resources and spending them in large enough amounts to achieve the desired objectives.

Here's a list of what that covers today:

1. National Security, including the military, intelligence agencies, diplomatic efforts and development assistance, homeland defense, federal law enforcement, border control, natural-disaster response, and the area most recently added to the list by the Pentagon and the CIA, combatting climate change.
2. Assistance to those otherwise unable to fully support themselves and to provide a decent retirement for seniors, including Medicaid, Medicare, and Social Security, aid for the disabled, food stamps, unemployment benefits, nutrition aid for newborns and mothers, and public housing.
3. Equal access to opportunity, including federal aid to education for low-income and disabled students, the HOPE Scholarship tax credits to college tuition costs, the student-loan program, Pell Grants, work-study payments, and job-training assistance.
4. Economic development, including trade agreements; financing for businesses to enter new markets; incentives to create new businesses and jobs in advance manufacturing, clean energy, energy efficiency, and other high-growth areas; investments in basic research and development and incentives for private research and development to be done in the United States; an adequeate minimum wage and support for work and childrearing, including the Family and Medical Leave law and the child tax credit; Small Business Administration - guaranteed, microcredit, and community development loans to promising businesses that would otherwise be shut out of credit markets; financing and toher support to help companies sell products made in America in other countries; and incentives to invest in areas of high unemployment and low incomes.
5. Oversight of financial markets and institutions to ensure transparency and honest dealing, competition, and consumer choice and to limit leverage to avoid future collapses and bailouts.
6. Protection and advancement of public interests the market can't fix, including clean air, clean water, safe food, safe transportation, safe workplaces, civil rights, access to affordable health care, and preservation of natural resources for the common good, including national parks, national monuments, and national forests.
7. Providing investments, through tax or fee revenue, for projects we all need when the costs are too great or the cost recovery period too long for the private sector to finance, including highways, airports, rails, accelerated broadband connections, a national electric grid, and critifcal research and development in areas from space to advanced materials to nanotechnology and biotechnology to clean energy.
8. A revenue collection system, to collect taxes and issue credits and deductions deemed by Congress to be in the national interest, including tax deductions for home-mortgage payments, charitable giving, health-care payments, children, and many business expenses and deductions.