VACostCutting

Friday, June 16, 2006

Creating a culture of change

Delegate Saxman wrote earlier this week about the importance of creating a “culture of change” in state government. He’s right on target, saying that we can’t just talk about what’s wrong, we have to actively search for ways to improve the way government does business.

This means thinking outside the box, challenging the status quo and working for substantial, meaningful reforms. It means not settling for “business as usual” and instead aggressively pursuing dynamic solutions for the 21st century.

One of our core principles at Americans for Prosperity is that our prosperity and our freedom will best be ensured through free-market, limited government policies. We believe that American ingenuity and entrepreneurship are the driving forces behind out economy, not bigger, costlier and more intrusive government.

Simply adding more layers of bureaucracy, or turning over more and more of our hard-earned money to the government is not a solution. And doing things the same way we always have is not going to create a better system.

Ted Balaker over at the Reason Foundation points this out in the area of transportation in his recent commentary, "Government Solutions From the 1950s Won't Fix Today's Traffic Problems." He notes that "we cannot create the economy of tomorrow with an interstate transportation system that's stuck in the 1950s." Instead,

It's time to transform our transportation system from a drag on commerce to a facilitator of innovation. We must borrow good ideas, both homegrown and foreign.

He goes on to point out, as we've noted on this blog before, that "more than $25 billion in private capital has already emerged for U.S. road projects in just a few states — and there's much more where that came from."

Active pursuit of these types of innovative partnerships and other creative solutions will help to develop a real "culture of change" and ensure our continued prosperity.

~whitney

1 Comments:

  • In the 1800's government took over the raod network because privately funded tollroads exhibited many problems such as bankruptcy and price gouging.

    Today, some advacte for returning to that system when we already have a system for collecting fuel taxes to support the road system.

    Legislators have refused to increase those taxes because they are so unpopular. Instead the current plan is to let faceless foreign companies do the dirty work of increasing the cost of travel.

    It won't work.

    By Blogger Hydra, at 6/16/2006 2:23 PM  

Post a Comment

<< Home