Can we stop big government?

• Author: Weinberger, Caspar W.

AMERICANS share a common problem that threatens not only their future, but the future of their children. It is not the size of the Federal deficit, the burden of overtaxation, or the shrinking purchasing power of their income. Nor is it the skyrocketing cost of health care, breakdown of public education, or explosion of regulation. These are all symptoms of the real problem--big government.

During the 1980s, Pres. Ronald Reagan attempted to take on big government and roll back its power over the lives of Americans. Whatever one's opinion may be about Reagan's success in fulfilling his self-appointed mission, one thing is clear: He made the phrase, "Government is the problem, not the solution," a call to arms for millions who, until then, had given up hope of redirecting, let alone reforming, the political process.

This revolutionary transformation, a sea change in the political agenda, was supported by Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher in Great Britain. It was so profound, so powerful, that even many of its opponents admitted that it was the major intellectual and political event of the last half-century and, combined with a strong defense policy, had more to do with destroying communism in Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union than any other cause.

Reagan made a compelling case that the entire approach to government since the days of Progressivism and the New Deal was wrong. Government, he argued, does not have the ability to meet more than a very narrow range of responsibilities, and there are real risks in using the Federal bureaucracy as an instrument of change.

The more people turn to government and the more government takes on, the more it costs and the more it takes from them, for government has no resources it has not extracted first from its citizens. So, it is inevitable that, as governmental power expands, individual freedom contracts.

Under the Clinton Administration, the nation is seeing a deliberate repudiation of the sea change of the 1980s. The President urges turning once again to Washington as the ultimate problem-solver. Of course, Clinton does not share the same political mandate as Reagan. His is a minority government, having received only slightly more than 40% of the popular vote. Nevertheless, Clinton has sufficient power to undo much of what Reagan accomplished.

The U.S. already is suffering from a return to unchecked Federal expansion and Federal spending. There are more and more instances in which individuals'...