“Government cannot solve our problems, it can’t set our goals, it cannot define our vision. Government cannot eliminate poverty or provide a bountiful economy or reduce inflation or save our cities or cure illiteracy or provide energy. And government cannot mandate goodness.”
No, those aren’t the words of President Ronald Reagan. Those are the words of probably the last truly fiscally responsible democratic president the United States has seen. Worse is that he rarely gets credit for being so. Those were the words of President Jimmy Carter, and they represent the defining attitude his administration took toward the budget, the economy and government as a whole.
Credit: Handout
Credit: Handout
Carter met my grandfather under an old oak tree on the campus of Berry College in Rome, Georgia, in 1966. Carter, a young state senator at the time, was running for governor and faced the problem most politicians struggle to overcome: a lack of name recognition outside his district. “Mr. Carter, my name is Bert Lance. I want you to know that I like what you’ve been saying about the state and it’s future,” my grandfather said. Granddad was the chief executive of a community bank at the time — the youngest in the country, in fact — and those words were the start of a political and personal friendship that would last until my grandad’s dying day. Bert served Carter in Georgia as the state highway director and in Washington as head of the Office of Management and Budget, where he tried to wrestle the federal bureaucracy into submission.
Executives of industry keep a pulse on who is rising, who is falling, and who represents their industry and themselves best. Granddad believed Carter was rising and would represent the banking industry well. He believed wholeheartedly in Carter’s mantra for government: Government ought to be as good as the people it serves.
Carter, as governor, took that message from heart to practice, being the face of the government he truly believed the people wanted — one that was kind but firm. During the gas crisis of his governorship, Carter decided to replace all the government SUVs with small four-door sedans because they consumed much less gas. Much to the chagrin of my 6′5″ 290-pound grandfather, who would teased Carter that the real reason he made the change was because he just didn’t like riding with Bert. Carter’s zeal for good government wasn’t just restricted to the lives of civil servants however, but to private citizens as well. On more than one occasion, my grandfather told me of how after instituting a 55 mph speed limit, Carter would instruct his personal State Patrol assigned to driving him to pull over someone speeding past them. The governor would then get out of the car and give the violator a stern talking to, explaining how “we all need to do our part as Georgians to combat the gas shortage” by following the agreed rules of the road, including the speed limit.
Carter brought his fiscal discipline and unique idea of government’s role with him to the Governor’s Mansion. Through his “Goals for Georgia,” he brought together senior business executives from the business community to examine the state government and advise on how to make it better. Each department head had several corporate executives assigned to their department — these were executives from Georgia Power, Coca-Cola and the like. Serving without compensation, they were able to advise on how to best reorganize each department, starting with my grandad’s department, the GDOT.
Together, my grandfather and Jimmy Carter reorganized the state Department of Transportation. They accomplished this through many ways, but started it off by reducing the department’s payroll from 9,500 employees to 6,500 through attrition. When someone resigned or retired, they tried to get along without filling the position. They implemented zero-based budgeting, requiring every agency to justify every penny of their budget, every year — forcing them to defend current and proposed programs, expenditures and staffing. They surrendered control of hundreds of millions of dollars previously controlled by the commissioner of highways, putting it back in the state’s general treasury.
When Carter became governor, the state’s administrative side had swelled to more than 300 agencies, sinking beneath the weight of duplication, archaic activities and bureaucratic procedures that took too long, cost too much and produced too little. Carter and my grandfather put together a “Reorganization Plan” to solve this by enabling Carter and future governors to make changes they wanted, subject to reversal by the state legislature. This plan was approved and adopted by the margin of a single vote on a roll call. Four years later, Carter knocked those 300 agencies to 22, sending a clear message to the state and the legislature that the era of bloated government was over.
This amazing feat wasn’t without its challenges, nor its many crises. One day, when granddad and Carter were in a helicopter over the Atlanta skyline, Carter told my grandfather how he wanted to make his mark on Georgia and its future — saying “you and I are going to have a lot of fun doing these things.” My granddad, ever the banker, would needle him right back whenever they were in a crisis with a quick retort of “you’re going to have to define what ‘fun’ is because I don’t believe we share the same definition.”
I believe Carter’s definition of “fun” was simple: Bring the most good to the most people you possibly can — then add one more. My grandfather shared this idea, even to the detriment of his political career. He resigned from OMB when he realized he’d become political deadweight to Carter.
My grandfather died in 2013, and Carter delivered the eulogy. During it, Carter mentioned his journals had been digitized and was able to search for specific meetings, people, events, etc. Carter noted that only his wife, Rosalynn, was mentioned more than my grandfather.
Carter was a loving man and a devoted friend. Not just to my grandfather but to this country.
Harrison Lance, an Atlanta native, is an entrepreneur and specialist in international trade and economic development. He ran for the state Senate in 2020 as the Republican nominee and became the Chairman of the Georgia Republican Foundation.
