Tim Pawlenty's Brilliant "Google Test"

It’s the rare politician who has a brain. That may be hard to believe as politicians tend to appear highly educated and articulate, and they theoretically immerse themselves in policy of all sorts. But in my experience, most politicians simply mimic what they are told by their handlers. That’s why so many are so bad at debates. Pawlenty impresses me as something different. Indeed, his platform is full of original and significant ideas. And he just added a doozy.

Let me start with a disclaimer. I am not endorsing Tim Pawlenty, nor have I made up my mind about who I will support. To quote Ian Holm from Alien, I’m still collating. But what Pawlenty said is worth discussing. Indeed, it’s something the entire party should adopt.

What did Pawlenty say? He said that if a service can be found through a search on Google, then the government should not be doing it. He called this a “Google Test.” The Google Test may sound esoteric, but it’s not. To the contrary, it’s actually a fundamental statement about what government should or should not be doing, and it’s a really good one.

Since the age of Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher, privatizing government has been all the rage. But there’s been a fundamental flaw in privatization -- there was no real test for what should be privatized? By the 1990s, privatization was being done under an Office of Management and Budget policy (Circular A-76) which required agencies to find potential services for privatization and then let contractors bid on those services. The bidding was done with “FTEs” -- full time equivalents. In other words, you look at how many full time people it takes the government to provide the service. If a contractor can provide the same services with fewer FTEs (usually at least a 20% discount is required) then the government agency is supposed to privatize that service. But this is a haphazard and unprincipled approach because it leaves it up to the government to decide which services to put up for bid. What Pawlenty is suggesting is an actual framework for what the government should and should not be doing, i.e. the government should privatize or eliminate the things it does that are already commercially available.

This test shows that Pawlenty more than any other candidate since Ronald Reagan fundamentally understands the proper role of government. When the private sector is capable of providing a service, there is no justification whatsoever for the government to also provide that service. His Google Test is a clever way to say that and to say it in a way that people can understand. What’s more, if this policy is put into place effectively, it will result in a drastic trimming of government down to only the “core functions” that the private sector simply cannot provide because of cost or liability (sorry CATO institute, there are some thing the private sector can’t do).

Leftist journalists jumped on this immediately, calling it a gimmick and pretending they couldn’t understand what it means. For example, one hack said, “if I can find ‘veteran’ and ‘hospital’ on Google, does that mean he wants to close VA hospitals?” Actually, that would be a good idea, but no, that’s not what he means because you can’t find “veteran services” in Google. But it could potentially mean farming out some VA services to private hospitals.

To give you a further sense of how smart this is, compare this with the generic “eliminate pork” that all politicians promise. This is actually the same promise, only Pawlenty has told you exactly what he considers pork, the other haven’t. When Romney or Gingrich or Obama promise to cut pork, they haven’t told you anything because pork is in the eye of the beholder and the word is so vague as to be meaningless. But what Pawlenty is saying is that anything the government does that is also being done commercially should be seen as pork and eliminated. That’s meaningful. Indeed, this is such a great idea the party as a whole should adopt it: the government simply should not be doing things that people are doing for themselves.

The one question I have at this point is whether Pawlenty is merely talking about privatization or if he’s talking about ending the government’s role in providing the service completely, i.e. no longer providing them even through private contractors. I don’t know that yet, but either interpretation would be a huge step toward shrinking the government.

Finally, to keep things fair and show that I’m not pimping Pawlenty, I will also give you an idea Romney had in 2008 that the party should adopt (sadly, he seems to have dropped the idea). His plan was to eliminate payroll taxes for seniors with the intent of getting them back into the work force, reducing the cost of labor for companies, improving the quality of labor available, and spurring employment. This is another idea the party should adopt as a whole, only they should add minors to the list to get them into the workforce and learning the kinds of skills and discipline they need to become successful later in life.

When and if the other candidates have similarly good ideas, I’ll point them out. In the meantime, ask yourself if you know a better way to define which services are essential and which aren’t than the Google Test.


(As an aside, before anyone says “the Constitution,” I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but things like the Commerce Clause are so expansive that saying “stick to the Constitution” is not a useful limitation. That’s where a formula like the Google Test comes in -- it seeks to return the government to its properly limited role through other means.)