During an appearance on O’Neill Speaks, the official podcast of the O’Neill School, Helmke said the cuts suggested by the new Department of Government Efficiency are doing more harm than good and will not ultimately solve the problem.
“I’ve always mistrusted radical solutions to complex problems,” said Helmke, a former three-term Republican mayor of Ft. Wayne, Indiana. “If somebody has a leg that is bothering them, you don’t just go in with a saw and cut off the leg. You figure out why the leg is hurting. Is there a little thing we can do with the knee or the hip? We don’t cut the whole thing off first. It’s too radical. And what we’re seeing right now is a radical approach to things.”
Another concern with extreme measures, particularly in government reform, is that they can have unintended and potentially dangerous consequences.
“We’re taking, I’m afraid, the lazy way out, and that’s oftentimes the reckless, sloppy way out,” Helmke said. “It’s when you say, ‘Oh, gee, we didn’t mean to cut those folks who oversee our nuclear weapons,’ that makes me nervous.”
Helmke also said it’s beyond time for Congress to do its job for the American people.
“If there’s one area of the government that concerns me the most, it is not the bureaucracy,” Helmke said. “It’s Congress. Both parties are at fault for this sort of thing. Congress is the one who wrote these laws, created these agencies, and has oversight responsibility for them. Congress, every year, is supposed to do a budget. They’re supposed to have committees that hold hearings and ask questions. ‘Why are you doing this? Are you doing this efficiently? Could you do better?’ That’s called normal order. We haven’t done that in years.”
Helmke also points to situations where spending more money will lead to better results.
“If you’d be more efficient by hiring more people, which is a strong argument you can make at the IRS that for every person you hire, for every dollar you spend, you’re going to bring more back in terms of cracking down on people that are cheating the rest of us by cheating on their taxes,” Helmke said. “You need to go through that agency by agency, department by department.”
O’Neill Speaks can be found on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or your favorite podcast service.
