Policy and process is paralyzing the US government

It's not just housing that we can't build in this country anymore

It's just about everything. We can't build housing fast enough. We can't build clean energy fast

enough. We can't build affordable transit. The most expensive mile of subway in the world is

in New York City. We can't build infrastructure. California authorizes $33 billion to build

a high-speed rail system that 15, 20 years later does not exist. We can't build skyscrapers as fast

as we used to. We can't build just about anything at the speed or affordability that we were once

able to just decades ago. And this isn't just about the fact that the physical world has been

entangled in rules and laws that make it hard for business to build. Often it's the government

getting in its own way. I'm Derek Thompson. I'm a journalist, and I'm the co-author of the book Abundance with Ezra Klein

Is Doge making the government more efficient? So now we have Doge, right

Department of Government Efficiency. And from a certain vantage point, you'd think, I'd be a huge fan of Doge, right

one of the major criticisms of this book is that government isn't efficient enough at achieving its

own ends. The problem with Doge, however, is that it might call itself a department of government

efficiency, but in practice, it's a department of government evisceration. It's a project to

destroy government as we understand it, not to help it work more efficiently. So what does that mean

well you look at what doge has done for example in the fda right the federal drug administration

is charged with approving for example phase three clinical trial drugs that are healthy and can help Americans lead longer and healthier lives But look at what Doge has done to the FDA They haven just laid

off dozens of people. They've laid off so-called probationary employees who are often highly

educated, young, upwardly mobile, recently promoted employees who are exactly the type of people you

would want to hire more of at the FDA in order to make that department more efficient. I think the

most parsimonious way to explain what Doge is doing is not working to make government more

efficient, but working to destroy the parts of government that it associates with the progressive

administrative state so that power in the executive branch can be fully centralized around

whatever Donald Trump wants to do. That's not my vision of government efficiency

But here's where I think it's really, really important for liberals to not be the simple

pro-institutionalists who always just defend the status quo when they see it attacked

We need to recognize that some institutions are being attacked in part because they're

blameworthy. I do think it's a huge problem that in the last few decades, liberals have associated

success with how much money they can authorize and spend rather than what they can build in the

world. That's how you get a world where, for example, Californians are proud to authorize

$33 billion to build a high-speed rail system, but no high-speed rail system exists. Or a world

where Biden is proud to announce $7.5 billion for electric vehicle charger stations

and practically none of it is built. So I am very interested in actual government efficiency I am interested in government getting out of its own way and making it easier to achieve what are often progressive ends Building high rail

connecting low-income Americans to the internet, building out a network of electric vehicle

charger stations to electrify and clean America's relationship to energy. These are all my goals

And these are all things that current progressive governance cannot do efficiently

So yes to government efficiency, no to doge. So in many cases, politics is fought along axes

Are you liberal or are you conservative? Do you believe in higher taxes or do you believe in lower taxes

And one of these axes that you hear about a lot is, should government be bigger or smaller

I'd prefer to think about a different axis, which is should government be more or less effective

Should government work faster or slower? For example, in June 2023, a bridge along I-95 collapsed in Pennsylvania

An absolute crisis for the region. Almost 200,000 cars pass over that bridge every single day

So we're talking about millions of trips being interrupted every single week

Under typical conditions, it would have taken about 12 to 24 months to rebuild that bridge

But instead, the governor of Pennsylvania, Josh Shapiro, declared an emergency. He said, we're not going to have normal processes to rebuild this bridge

We won't have environmental review. We won't go through the typical procurement process

We're not going to have a typical bidding process. I'm gonna point to two construction companies

that are already in the region and I'm going to award the contracts to them expeditiously

I gonna hire union labor and they gonna work 24 seven to build as fast as possible And they did And rather than this bridge getting built in 12 months it was rebuilt in 12 days Is that an example of big government Small government No

Big versus small is simply the wrong axis along which to evaluate this political success

this was about fast government, effective government. It was about prioritizing speed

and outcomes in the physical world. In a way, the story of the I-95 bridge is like the photo

negative of the story of the last 50 years of American governance and building in this country

Because what was prioritized here was the question, how do we do something that is absolutely

critical to the public good as fast as possible, rather than listen to as many different groups as

possible. Make this process as fair as possible, no matter how long it takes to complete it

Speed was prioritized over process. And the voters loved it. Josh Shapiro became like a minor

celebrity or maybe even major celebrity in American politics because of this achievement

And I want other people to recognize that this is possible. It's possible to choose speed. It's

possible to choose outcomes. And the problem of American governance and unfortunately liberal

governance over the last 50 years is that we haven't chosen outcomes and we haven't chosen

speed. We've chosen a particular system of listening to input in a way that made it impossible

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