The Founders, Spending, and Pig Poop

Recently, a colleague of mine wrote an article entitled America Is Too Large And Cumbersome To Be Effective. Her title sums up her position accurately. She proposes the founding fathers didn't want a large amount of land or poeple, the U.S. government cannot effectively provide for all the people in our country, and that the cost of taking care of such a large population contributed to the economic recession.

The Founding Father's Concerns

I would be interested to see where the founding fathers said the size of our nation would inhibit effective governance. If anything, we can see support for a government with a large electorate. In Federalist #10, Madison argues that if there is a large electorate, an unworthy candidate is less likely to be able to trick people into electing him by using "vicious arts"--such as bribery. There will also be a larger group of potential candidates, which means a higher potential for "fit characters"--those who will best represent the people's voice. In addition,  a large amount of people will make it harder for a majority to infringe on the rights of the minority. Specifically,  he said: "Extend the sphere, and you take in a greater variety of parties and interests; you make it less probable that a majority of the whole will have a common motive to invade the rights of other citizens". Therefore, the more citizens and land in a government, the smaller the chance of faction.


If the founding fathers were concerned about the size of the land inhibiting the government, they took action to address these concerns. They created the Senate (in addition to the House of Representatives) in order to ensure that minorities and smaller states were represented. Also, back then it was harder to have a national campaign for president because travel was much more time consuming. Therefore, they created the electoral college. The founders took action on the concerns they had about size. Not to mention the use of the internet has made the size of the country almost negligible when it comes to communication.


Government Spending

The government is weighed down by unnecessary spending, not by a large population. According to a 2009 Washington Bureau article entitled When Pigs Fly: The Ruckus Over Earmarks, on the $410 billion spending bill passed in 2009, there were more than 8,500 earmarks. Specifically, $1.8 million went to research "swine odor and manure management" in Ames, Iowa. Almost $2 million on researching pig poop! This shows how wasteful congress can be! According to a 2011 video, Spending Cuts in Perspective, by reporter John Stossel, Congress has increased spending by about 60% over the last decade. The massive trillion dollar debt the government has accumulated is not because of too many people, it's because of wasteful spending.


Economic Recession

The recession was not from the government running out of money, it was because of a housing bubble: lots of people bought loans because of the low interest rates several years ago. However, the interest rates of these loans were adjustable such that, after a few years, the loan companies increased the interest rates to the point that many couldn't afford them, and consequently many went bankrupt. Professor of Economic Geography Ron Martin put it simply in 2010: "The recent financial crisis, [had] its origins in the collapse of the sub-prime mortgage boom and house price bubble in the USA".

In conclusion, the government's size problem is with it's budget, not with it's citizens. The founders actually favored a large electorate, and put provisions in the government that would protect individual rights as population grew. In addition, the internet has bridged many gaps in travels and communication that were present at the time of the founders. Next, if we look at spending, we see a government that is not bogged down with providing basic needs, but is actually wastefully spending extra on projects like pig odor research. Finally, the economic recession is a complex issue that had many contributors--it cannot be attributed to one negligible factor such as population.