usatoday.com - fix washington by carving it up

usatoday.com - fix washington by carving it up  classifieds:   |   |   |  home   news   travel   money   sports   life   tech   weather   wash/politics   washington home   washington briefs   government guide   health&behavior   h&b home   medical resources   health information   opinion   opinion home   columnists   cartoons   more news   top news briefs   nation briefs   world briefs   states   lotteries   by the numbers   special reports   day in pictures   snapshots   offbeat   video   talk today   marketplace   real estate   arcade   newspaper classifieds   posted 2/1/2005 8:16 pm today's top news stories•1 dead, 2 hurt in mich. office shooting; police say suspect had worked there - 6:04 pm•ap poll: congress' approval hits high point  - 5:35 pm•katrina claims stagger corps - 4:22 pm•national guard tapped for iraq tour - 3:04 pm•edwards scared of 'rabid republican' neighbor - 2:00 pm•add usatoday.com rss feeds  e-mail newsletters sign up to receive our free daily briefing e-newsletter and get the top news of the day in your inbox. e-mail:    select one:  html text breaking news e-mail alerts  • get breaking news in your inbox as it happens fix washington by carving it upby james p. gannon the start of a president's second term, when he no longer has to worry about running for re-election, is a great opportunity for thinking radical thoughts. as president bush prepares to deliver his state of the union address wednesday, it's a good time to take on entrenched political interests and truly shake up the way the government works. the white house is touting the president's second-term agenda as one of bold reform — reshaping social security, simplifying the income tax, restraining damage lawsuits and the like. this is all fine, but it ignores a more fundamental problem: the concentration of power in washington and the country's widespread feeling of alienation from its seat of government. the reason official washington seems so out of touch and distant from the american people is that the government is, well, out of touch and distant. for years, i have believed that there is a simple solution to this problem: bust up and disperse the federal government. a new home on the range for example, there is no particularly compelling reason why the department of agriculture should remain in washington. the thousands of bureaucrats who run the nation's farm and food programs don't really need to be a stone's throw from the white house. they ought to be out in the country, where they might actually encounter a farmer, a cow or a meat-packing plant once in a while. it would make sense to move the agriculture department — lock, stock and pork barrel — to des moines or omaha or kansas city. these bureaucrats would then be surrounded by the people and the economic interests that their decisions so vitally affect. when the secretary of agriculture got up each morning, he or she would read the des moines register or the omaha world-herald, full of real-world stories about the price of corn or the problem of meat imports, instead of the washington post, where the hot item is gossip from the georgetown party circuit. over time, this would affect the way the secretary and his or her minions viewed the world around them. it would put them in touch with real people, instead of just lobbyists for special interests. the same argument can be made for moving other bureaucracies out of the nation's capital. the department of transportation ought to be relocated to chicago, the nation's central hub for airlines and railroads. the department of housing and urban development could go to detroit or cleveland or newark, n.j., where more of its clients live. obviously, the interior department ought to be somewhere in the interior. considering its vast land holdings in the west, phoenix or denver or salt lake city might make sense. the energy department certainly doesn't need to be in washington. move it to houston or new orleans, nearer the gas and oil, or sioux falls, s.d., where the wind always blows. nasa, the space agency, could go to its launching pad in florida or to mission control in houston. the department of education, which has taken up bribing journalists to get the favorable publicity that it can't earn on its own, seems to have no logical home base. maybe that's because education is a state and local responsibility, not a federal one. rather than move it, we ought to abolish it, or at least divide its annual appropriation proportionately and simply mail out checks to the state education departments. at home in washington some functions, such as national security agencies, need to stay in washington. defense, state, the intelligence agencies, the justice department and treasury are the core of the federal functions and belong in the nation's capital. but there would be many benefits for the country, for good government, and even for washington, in dispersing much of the bureaucracy. besides getting government officials in touch with the real america, scattering hundreds of thousands of high-paying federal jobs would do wonders for the economies of the new headquarters cities. if this were approached in the way major league baseball moves teams, cities could bid to win one of the government franchises. washington itself had to promise a new $440-million, taxpayer-financed ballpark to win the old montreal expos team, now called the nationals. i bet des moines would offer to build, at local taxpayer expense, a swell new headquarters for the agriculture department. and wouldn't houston or denver or phoenix do the same to win a piece of the federal pie? of course, washington's mayor and local business interests would object to moving out chunks of the federal government. but it could actually improve the quality of life in a region that has become too congested, with impossible traffic jams, overpriced housing and too much development. in time, washington could return to what it long was — a pleasant, slower-paced, southern city, where it didn't take a million bucks to get a nice house, or two hours to get to work. returning the government to the people is an idea whose time has come. once you bring it up close to ordinary americans, they might actually notice how little needed much of it is. then we could start the ultimate reform. but that's probably for another president's second term. james p. gannon is a former reporter for the wall street journal and former editor of the des moines register. newspaper home delivery - subscribe today usatoday.com partners: usa weekend sports weekly education space.com home travel news money sports life tech weather resources: mobile news site map faq contact us e-mail news jobs with us internships terms of service privacy policy/your california privacy right media kit media lounge press room electronic print edition reprints and permissions add usatoday.com rss feeds  the nation's homepage copyright 2007 usa today, a division of 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