Apparently, big government isn’t always bad
By Jim Surber 

When some things leave you scratching your head, you can usually learn from them. One of our nation’s largest continuing debates has been whether government involvement in business is good or bad. 

At the risk of oversimplification, one side professes to limit government’s role for the benefit of the people, while the other side maintains that the same objective is accomplished with more government involvement. 

An event of the past week seems to turn the political conventional wisdom on its head. President Obama’s 2014 budget contained the statement, "Reducing or eliminating the Federal Government's role in programs such as TVA, which have achieved their original objectives and no longer require federal participation, can help put the nation on a sustainable fiscal path." 

Privatizing the Tennessee Valley Authority is an idea so rooted in limited government that the Right's beloved freedom fighter, Barry Goldwater, was the first to propose it. 

Longtime Republican distaste for the TVA has led many in the Southeast to assume that any proposal to sell it would come from the GOP – not a Democratic president fresh off winning a second term. The surprise from the proposal and who made it was bettered by the reactions of those who quickly spoke to oppose it. 

"It's one more bad idea in a budget full of bad ideas," said Sen. Lamar Alexander, R-Tenn., a longtime TVA champion. 

"There is no assurance that selling TVA to a profit-making entity would reduce electric bills in the Tennessee Valley, and it could lead to higher electricity rates" for customers in Alabama, Georgia, Kentucky, Mississippi, North Carolina, Tennessee and Virginia.” 

Sen. Richard Shelby, R-Ala., vowed to "carefully study any proposals to restructure TVA to ensure it continues to deliver affordable electricity throughout the region.” 

Rep. John Duncan, R-Tenn. said that privatizing the TVA has been proposed before, "and been determined to be a very bad idea."

Proposals to sell TVA do indeed date back to soon after the agency was created in 1933 to reduce the risk of flooding in the region and bring electricity to rural communities in poor areas of Appalachia. 

This icon of the New Deal has long been described by conservatives as an example of government overreach. It is the nation's largest public utility with 9 million customers in seven states from Virginia to Mississippi. 

President Dwight Eisenhower called TVA "creeping socialism," while President Ronald Reagan criticized it as an example of big government. 

Republicans from Barry Goldwater to Newt Gingrich have pointed to the TVA as an example of where the private sector could provide services more cheaply and effectively than bureaucrats. 

There is little doubt that TVA's "original objectives" of providing "navigation, flood control, electricity generation, fertilizer manufacturing, and economic development in the Tennessee Valley" were achieved a very long time ago. It also succeeded in its underlying goal of bringing electricity to poor rural areas in the South, while improving farming practices and eliminating malaria. Now electricity is cheap and easily available, and malaria is a distant memory in the region. 

There would also seem to be little doubt that, given TVA's crippling $25 billion debt load, a public profit from privatization, and the agency's ability to avoid paying taxes, the divestiture of TVA would certainly "help put the nation on a sustainable fiscal path." 

The downsides of privatizing the TVA are much harder to find. The only real arguments for keeping the assets in government hands are, "people like the TVA how it is" and "that's how we've always done it." 

Has this mindset overtaken area Republican lawmakers who claim to oppose government control and socialist programs, or is it just another double standard? 

Although well-aged Southerners who grew up respecting New Deal policies, and TVA employees, who have a vested self-interest in protecting the clumsy, inefficient government-owned utility monopoly may all scowl in opposition, privatizing TVA would seem to be the right move. 

Curiously, Tennessee voters must have forgotten what the conditions were and what happened in 1933 when TVA was begun under FDR's "New Deal." 

They have changed over to elect leaders on both the State and National level who profess to be against the US Government taking on any role to help workers or people needing help. But, of course, many people like to have their cake and eat it too, while voting against their own interests.

Lawmakers contend that there are no federal taxpayer subsidies for the TVA. This is true, but only if one ignores the many $millions of taxes that it does not have to pay. 

One media policy analyst pointed out that even though TVA is "clearly an element of socialism that put the government directly into the economic development, the regional development and the electricity producing business, conservative lawmakers in TVA areas might not be so quick to dismantle socialism in their home districts." 

And therein lies the lesson. A huge government-owned energy authority is socialistic if it is in someone else's district, but a proper function of US government if we benefit from it here at home. The hypocrisy is laughable. 

But don’t bigger questions still remain? Can government involvement in private business be sometimes good and sometimes bad? When privatization is proposed by a liberal, and derided by conservatives, are both the proposal and the reactions disingenuous? 

Or, arguably closer to the truth, will most of us selfishly take advantage of any situation, provided that we can get by with it?