TRR: What Kind of Government Are We Building?

Ronald Reagan once joked that the nine most terrifying words in the English language were, "I'm from the government, and I'm here to help."

Conservatives laughed because we understood the principle behind the joke. Government has an important role, but it also has limits. Strong families, local communities and accountable local government have long been viewed as the foundation of a healthy America. Government should do what only government can do, and it should remain accountable to the people it serves.

That old idea came to mind several times this week.

One education story raised questions about what state agencies owe elected officials—and ultimately the public—when major decisions are made. Another revealed taxpayers would foot an $8 million bill correcting mistakes in the state's adopted curriculum. At the Capitol, I spent nearly ten hours listening to county judges, commissioners, landowners and rural Texans testify about data centers, water, energy and the future of their communities. Beneath the varied topics ran a common thread: local officials repeatedly described carrying responsibility without having the authority to shape decisions that will affect their communities for decades.

Individually, these are education stories and rural development stories. Together, they tell us something about the kind of government we're building.

For the past year, I've traveled across Texas covering the issues shaping rural communities—public education, health care, data centers, water, land use and economic development. Increasingly, I hear the same concern expressed in different ways. Decisions once made closer to home are gradually moving farther away from the people who must live with the consequences. Local communities still shoulder the responsibility, but the authority increasingly rests elsewhere.

None of this is meant to suggest that every decision belongs at the local level. Texas is too large and too complex for that. Some issues demand statewide leadership, and some challenges are simply beyond the capacity of any one county or school district. But that doesn't mean we should stop asking where the balance belongs.

Years ago, former Comptroller Carole Keeton Rylander Strayhorn often spoke about what she called the "phone book test." If you could find a service in the phone book, government probably didn't need to be doing it. The phone books have disappeared, but the principle still deserves consideration. It was never really about the phone book. It was about restraint. Before government assumed another responsibility, conservatives first asked whether it was truly a function that belonged to government.

I'm not sure we ask that question as often anymore.

Instead, I suspect we've become more willing to use government to accomplish objectives we believe are worthwhile. Success has a way of changing movements. After governing for a generation, it's easy to focus on what government can accomplish and spend less time asking what government should accomplish.

Education, economic development and even data center policy reveal the same tendency. Faced with complicated problems, we increasingly look to centralized systems, statewide programs and administrative agencies to produce the outcomes we want. Many of those goals are worthwhile. My concern isn't the goals. It's what happens to the structure of government while we're pursuing them.

Conservatism was never defined solely by the policies it supported. It was also defined by how government should be organized. Limited government wasn't simply about spending less money; it was about limiting the concentration of power. Local control reflected the belief that government is most accountable when it remains close to the people. Transparency mattered because authority should always answer to citizens.

Those principles seem worth revisiting.

The institutions we build today will outlast today's officeholders and today's political victories. Programs created to solve one problem often become permanent. Authority, once centralized, rarely returns to the local level on its own.

Perhaps that's why this week's stories stayed with me. They weren't really about education, data centers or rural development. They were reminders that every policy debate is also a debate about governance.

Every time we ask government to solve another problem, we should also ask where that authority belongs and how the people affected by those decisions will hold it accountable. That's not a Republican question or a Democratic question. It's an American question—and a Texas question.

As America prepares to celebrate its 250th birthday, perhaps there is no better time to revisit the first principles that shaped this Republic. Not simply what government should do, but where power should reside, how it should be exercised and to whom it should answer. Those questions are as old as the nation itself, and they remain worth asking. Because if we stop asking them, we may eventually find ourselves living under a government none of us intended to build.