Why Less Government is Better

Don’t let politicians take credit for the things business owners and communities build.

For a while, we were a nation that believed government was the problem, not the solution. It’s why our founding fathers decentralized power across three branches. 

We were a nation that believed government should move slowly, intentionally, toward making things better for people. We understood the responsibility for caring for one another, for securing the means of our own prosperity, and protecting children and the elderly fell on our community. 

Then Ronald Reagan asked, during his 1980 campaign, “Are you better off now than you were four years ago?”

And with Reagan’s question, we started to think of government as problem solvers. Politicians leaned in. In campaign cycle after cycle, they gave key metrics to demonstrate how they were responsible for more jobs, reduced crime, and a better economy. It was the number of new homeowners, the number of people attending college, the number of people receiving lifesaving healthcare.

All of it from government.

Sort of.

Government has expanded. In the late seventies, the federal government spent about $6500 per citizen in inflation-adjusted numbers. In 2025, that price tag was $20,831. Most of it is not in budget-controlled discretionary spending, but mandatory spending on Social Security and Medicare. The size of the federal workforce has actually stayed about the same, but the added expenses are federal contractors, software implementations, and benefits payments.

Putting aside the persistent budget deficits (we bring in about $5 trillion annually and spend about $7 trillion annually, a deficit of between $1.9 and $2 trillion), why is big government a bad thing?

Government is a blunt instrument. It standardizes programs and services to ensure fair and equal treatment. Standardized services don’t work for everyone. Individuals have diverse and dynamic needs, circumstances vary radically from state to state, county to county, and household to household. But government stays the same.

Government is a bureaucratic maze. The bigger the program, the more requirements it has. Operations of government agencies include hundreds of procedures, forms, and approvals. Government operations are slow, meticulous, and prone to rejection under error.

Government does not have incentives to act swiftly, to customize services, or to provide transparency to citizens. In fact, it has the opposite incentives: slow means accurate, standard means fair, and opaque means the agency cannot be scrutinized for failures.

And government fails. It fails to meet objectives. It fails to meet key performance indicators. If there even are any KPIs identified. It fails in the hiring process and in the firing process. It fails to perform. 

And yet, there are no consequences for government failure. There may be some bad publicity. Or an official or two might resign in disgrace. But on the whole, the bureaucracy survives most assaults. 

Consider the case of South Carolina’s $1.8 billion in phantom funds that were an accounting software error – duplicate reporting that three state offices failed to identify. The mess cost us $12.5 million in forensic audits, consulting fees, and legal expenses. 

Bigger, and maybe more importantly, the incident revealed that as many as 70 municipalities are delinquent in their financial reporting. That’s almost 1 in 4, or 25% of South Carolina municipalities that are just noncompliant with state law. 

So another risk of big government? Rampant noncompliance because of the lack of resources to enforce the law. In the Federal government this looks like a tax code that’s so complex it can be scammed in two dozen ways and an IRS that cannot, and does not investigate every fraudulent filing.

There are individual contributors who are doing their very best in government jobs and this indictment of big government is not a personal attack on individuals. Not even career bureaucrats who get a bad rap. I’m sure we all know many fine people who are toiling away for the good of our state and our nation in a colorless room with their federal holidays and government pension to keep them docile.

But systemically, government is broken.

The incentives are bad. Just take the fact that government programs that fail have no accountability for those failures. The federal government is loaded with zombie programs that were built to meet a specific, finite need but persist long after their relevance. These programs are protected by the lawmakers whose constituents rely upon them.

Where in corporate life would you find a failing or obsolete program still funded just because someone’s kid or sister worked for that team? 

Military spending is often chock full of antiquated weapons purchases or maintenance that benefit various congressional districts but are useless in terms of readiness. Billions of dollars wasted on weapons we will never use is just the tip of the iceberg in cost overruns that Congress has lost sight of. 

Government rarely provides specific services, usually it pays someone else to administer them. That creates a network of government contractors that is both broad and deep. This complex web of businesses who sell to the government is propped up and perpetuated by the Small Business Administration and the GovCon community, professional associations and lobbyists who perpetuate and calcify the elaborate procurement process.

When it’s not hiring contractors, it’s subsidizing key providers. In just the education vertical market, we have subsidies for lenders who provide the tuition dollars needed for college. Those loans are backed by federal assurances they will be repaid, so lenders give them more freely. Colleges up tuition rates, students are told they must attend college for a prosperous future, and the lenders offer them money, knowing the students don’t need to graduate or be successful to ensure the debt is repaid. It’s a self-licking ice cream cone and taxpayers are paying for it.

When it’s not making college possible through subsidies, government is issuing block grants to encourage academic enrichment, get veterans educated, and build pipelines of college-bound high schoolers. The College Board makes over $500 million annually just off its AP curriculum sold to state and local school districts. It’s a grift: a moneymaking scheme with the government as the chump.

Businesses have learned government pays and they lobby heavily to maintain the robust infrastructure of government market intervention that gives those select contractors advantages over competitors. 

Government has three sources of revenue: taxes, fines, and borrowing. Taxes and fines are both extracted from citizens, and borrowing extracts from our future. The third biggest expense every year is interest on the national debt. That’s money we’re just putting in the pockets of the lenders who financed the reckless spending Congress will not reign in.

Less government is better because it’s cheaper.

Less government is better because it does not interfere with free markets.

Less government is better because it does not interfere with personal freedom.

Less government is better because it does not put regulatory and administrative burdens on the businesses we need to provide healthcare, technology, and security.

As your US Senator, I will ask, repeatedly, can we solve this problem with less government?

But you only know the answer if you get to the root of the problem. If you investigate, ask hard questions, and understand complex systems. That’s the experience I bring into this job. 

We have big problems in this country. Many of which have been caused by big government. You cannot solve those problems with more government.

Government is not a problem solver.

I will put problem solvers over government. I will put entrepreneurs, community organizations, and citizens doing the right thing for one another over government.

I will put South Carolinians over government.

We can do this. We can ensure prosperity for ourselves and our families. We just have to vote better.

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