Following his blistering critique in last week’s debate in Iowa, former House speaker Newt Gingrich still thinks the newly established deficit “supercommittee” is one of the worst ideas ever conceived in Washington. In a speech at the Heritage Foundation today, the embattled presidential candidate put forward a host of ideas that he believes will yield far better results. “I’m going to say things that are very bold,” Gingrich warned the audience at the onset. “Boldness is sometimes exactly what we need.”
Indeed, Gingrich went after what he described as Washington’s “intellectual” deficiencies, meaning the inability to embrace sweeping changes that are desperately needed. In particular, he wants the federal government to adopt the waste-cutting “Lean Six Sigma” management philosophy embraced by many of the world’s leading companies, such as IBM.
While doing so would require a lot of intellectual groundwork, not to mention a near-complete overhaul of the federal workforce to maximize flexibility and productivity, Gingrich cited proponents’ estimates that properly implementing a Lean Six Sigma approach to the federal government could save up to $500 billion per year, or close to $5 trillion over ten years. That would be far greater than the $1.5 trillion (over ten years) that the supercommittee will be asked to come up with over the next several months. Even if those estimates are off by half, Gingrich pointed out, it would still be a far more effective approach than letting 12 members of Congress rehash stale ideological arguments over taxes and entitlements.
“An intelligent Congress in a city that wanted to be intelligent would hold hearings, bring in the experts, figure out how to fundamentally change the government,” Gingrich said, noting that he will be hosting a conference call later this week with other Six Sigma devotees to get more input on how to effectively reform government.
As for the supercommitee, he called it a “truly bad idea” that embodies everything that is wrong with the culture in Washington. In particular, he decried the built-in fallback trigger, which calls for $1.2 trillion in spending cuts, evenly divided between the defense and discretionary budgets, as “disgusting.”
“When Congress has to attach a suicide mechanism in order to pass something, you have a total breakdown of the legislative process,” he said, comparing it to a question of: “Cut off your right leg or shoot you in the head, which do you prefer?”
Newt is absolutely correct, IMO at least. There are also plenty of highly qualified Six Sigmas around do to the job.
I know Newt has too much baggage to win, but I have to say he has come up with so very good ideas. More than spending or lack of more taxes (which only contribute to bigger government), our biggest fiscal problem is waste.
OK, so Newt wants to fire a bunch of federal employees (the costs he is cutting must necessarily be mostly labor costs). I’m all for that. Does he expect the affected agencies to go along quietly with these budget-cutting, headcount-reducing measures? I wouldn’t. In fact I expect that the only way to reduce the budget of most of them is by just having Congress… reduce their budget. Of course, I come at this from the perspective of someone who doesn’t think most of these people are doing anything useful anyway, so that a proposal that they do useless activities far more effectively is obviously lost on me.
As an aside, six sigma was originally a manufacturing methodology. While I’m sure it proponents have expanded its purview to include pretty much all human activity, I’m kind of curious how something that was created to deal with widget manufacture applies to the activities of government.
NEWT GINGRISH IS called as being bold,
It will take a lot of bold decisions to return AMERICA TO A GOVERNMENT FOR THE PEOPLE,
And a GOVERNMENT THAT CAN BE BELIEVED, and a GOVERNMENT
that will attract the run away COMPANIES to settle back in AMERICA and provide jobs on their own term of policies to the unemployed,
IT WILL TAKE A LOT OF BOLDNESS TO CUT OUT THE TIES WITH THE WORLD ORGANISATION
THE UN, which role is not protecting the world but drawing the FREE WORLD
INTO NEVER ENDING WARS THAT KILL THE DEEP ROOTED BRAVES OF AMERICA, EVEN BEFORE THEY CAN ESTABLISH THEIR FAMILY’S , TO PERPETUATE THE FUTURE ROOTS, TO THE AMERICA’S ONCE SO STRONG TREE OF LIFE
I will take boldness to close the borders, and scrutiny the abuser of social benefits,
IT WILL TAKE BOLDNESS TO GET THE CHILDREN TO RECITE THE CONSTITUTION AND PRAY GOD AND HIS BELOVED SON,
IN THE SCHOOLS, and CARRY THE FLAG ON THEIR CHEST,
WITHOUT BEING ATTACK BY OTHER FOREIGNER NEW IMMIGRANTS OR REFUGYES TRYING TO PROPAGANDiSE THEIR POLITICAL RELIGIOUS VIEW.
IT sure will take bold decisions , FOR A PRESIDENT TO TAKE THE THE POSITION AFTER SO MUCH DESTRUCTION, SUCH DEPRESS AMERICAN, SUCH NEGATIVES LIES DONE BY
THE CRUMBLING PARTY IN POWER NOW
A PARTY THAT LEAVES THEIR TRASH FOR OTHER TO CLEAN, WHEN THEY COME OUT TO SPEAK THEIR LIES TO THE PEOPLE
OF AMERICA. ONLY TO GET THE VOTES AND MONEY
TO BUY VOTES