Conservatives Need a Positive Governing Vision

When Ronald Reagan said, “the nine most terrifying words in the English language are ‘I’m from the government, and I’m here to help,’” he articulated perhaps the core Republican philosophy of governance. It’s a negative philosophy, one based on what government shouldn’t do rather than what it should.

It’s an almost odd promise, if you think about it: vote for me and I won’t do anything for you. Or: vote for me and I’ll make government do less. I’ll reduce the size of government, cut your taxes, cut regulation, get the government off your back.

Putting aside whether the Republican Party has actually done these things at the national level, it’s clearly a popular and often necessary message. While coming up with specific things to cut is hard, it’s hard to argue that our government is not bloated and in need of pairing back. As Ruchir Sharma noted, for example, in the last 30 years the federal government eliminated a grand total of 20 regulatory rules, while adding 3,000 new ones every single year. Trends like this must be having a negative effect on economic growth, such as by incentivizing companies to offshore production.

While there’s some virtue in this negative approach, American conservatism and the Republican Party are in desperate need of a positive governance vision to complement it. They need to be able not just to tell voters what they won’t do, but what they will do to address the very serious problems facing our country. Three timely and addressable issues come to mind: health care, energy, and defense production.

Start with health care. One of my favorite questions to ask is, “what is the Republican health care plan?” There isn’t one. That’s why repealing and replacing Obamacare was never going to happen. Republicans had nothing to replace it with.

With Obamacare or without it, America has the highest health care costs in the entire world. Our per-capita health care expenditures are more than 50% higher than the next highest country. But life expectancy in the United States has been in decline. The media abound with reports of various scams and scandals in the industry. The Wall Street Journal reported that Medicare Advantage providers were promoting home nursing visits, not to provide any care but merely to gin up diagnosis codes that would let them bill Medicare for more money. The New York Times reported on how middlemen called pharmacy benefit managers are raising the price of drugs. The list goes on and on.

Americans used to make fun of long lines to see a doctor in Canada’s socialized medicine system. But Americans now face waits for care, too. And even upper-middle-class families with good corporate-provided health insurance now worry about high bills and denied claims.

What’s the Republican plan to bring health care costs down, improve availability, and reduce the number of scams?

Our electric grid is another system under strain. Regional grid operators are projecting power shortfalls in the coming years. This at the same time that power demand for things like new data centers to power the artificial intelligence industry is only going to grow. The reliability of electric service is also in decline. The share of homes with backup generators has increased by almost ten fold in the last decade, which shows that people have noticed power is becoming unreliable. Severe blackouts have affected blue states like California, where poorly maintained transmission lines have also sparked large fires, but also red states like Texas. Some Texas customers have also seen wild price fluctuations.

Large amounts of new green energy systems such as solar and wind are being installed, but there can be long delays in getting permission to connect them to the grid. Constructing new transmission lines is also a lengthy and controversial process.

What is the Republican plan to ensure energy supplies, grid reliability, predictable pricing, and enable more green energy to come online?

Defense production is another area with serious problems. The Russian invasion of Ukraine exposed the inability of the U.S. to produce enough munitions to support the Ukrainian war effort. Although Russia and Belarus only have 3.3% of the GDP of the U.S. and its allies, we are being out-produced in artillery shells. We also have limited supplies and production capacity for key missiles and other munitions. And the Ukrainian war has revealed the criticality of low-cost drones to the contemporary battlefield, with the United States woefully behind China in this technology. Our ability to construct and repair ships for the Navy is far below the need.  Add to these production issues a manpower one. The military is falling far below its recruitment targets.

What’s the Republican plan for addressing defense production issues and recruitment shortages?

Health care. Electricity. National defense. These are just three of the areas where America has serious and substantive problems. In each case, there’s a government role to play to address them. And there’s a long list of other problems that could be added to this list, such as the opioid crisis.

Do Republicans have an agenda for these? For the most part, no.

Republicans and conservative think tanks certainly have some positive ideas. The CHIPS Act, designed to start reshoring semiconductor manufacturing, was heavily promoted by Republican Sen. Todd Young, for example.

But there’s not nearly enough. The Democrats’ plans, like Obamacare, are thus the only ones around to fill the vacuum by giving voters an actual proposal to address their concerns, regardless of whether it will work or not. No wonder they are often what ends up getting adopted.

Conservatives need to develop a positive governance vision, one with real, substantive answers to the very serious challenges facing the country. Until they do, even if they manage to win elections, America will still be the loser as these problems continue festering in our society.