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January 30

Another View: GOP should take Obama up on streamline pledge

Republicans should not get in the way of a president who says he wants smaller government.

The Dallas Morning News

We hope President Obama is serious about making the federal government work more efficiently. We call on Congress to give him the power to make good on his -- and their -- pledge.

click image to enlarge

President Barack Obama delivers his State of the Union address on Capitol Hill in Washington last week. Listening in back are Vice President Joe Biden and House Speaker John Boehner, right.

The Associated Press

In a surprise move earlier this month, the president asked Congress to give him fast-track authority to merge federal agencies, specifically to eliminate the Commerce Department and fold the Small Business Administration and five other trade and business agencies into a single agency. The savings, he said, would be $3 billion over 10 years. He called it the first step toward other money-saving consolidations of federal agencies.

Americans want better, smarter government, and efficiency is the true standard of whether government is lean and mean or simply producing more of the same in a different guise. Even if the president has opened this door to smaller government for political reasons, the GOP should be quick to walk through it. Give the president what he's requested. Remind him that he floated a similar leaner government trial balloon during last year's State of the Union address, yet sat on this initiative until now. Then relentlessly push the president to follow through on those reforms before the November elections.

Conservatives should understand that there is merit to restoring this authority to the White House. Ronald Reagan was the last president who had the authority to bypass a Senate filibuster by showing that proposed consolidations would save taxpayer dollars and improve efficiency. Restoring this fast-track authority would force the House and Senate to cast an up-or-down vote within 90 days of receiving a proposal. The timetable would force Congress and the White House to govern instead of jawboning.

What a novel idea - a hiatus from gridlock. It's not exactly the way we envisioned Congress and the president to find common ground. But hey, we'll take progress any way we can get it.

 

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