Carpenter: FSSA Privatization comes down to faith

Dan Carpenter has a good column on the subject of welfare privatization entitled Show ’em it’s not the money.

Can the profit model enshrined by Gov. Mitch Daniels work for the most sensitive task of state government when part of the team of operators has a history of failing to get it right, ethically, legally and practically?
It can and will, say Daniels and his welfare chief and rehabber, Mitch Roob, because Indiana has learned from mistakes elsewhere, has kept a public core to its privatization project, has demanded and gotten concessions and protections and goodies galore from its contractor, and has thrust public and private partner alike into the glare of a show-me situation.

Plus, they care. They will prove the caricatures wrong. Government by business will do the business of the people, better and faster, from the fattest taxpayer to the poorest candidate for vital services. And the people who get paid to help the needy will not be caricatured, or cast out, either. Bureaucracy, not bureaucrats, is the target.

Never mind the history of failures and fraud carved through several states by consortium-member and former Roob employer, ACS. Carpenter concludes that social services professionals and people with disabled loved ones, along with the Democrats and the unions, remain at best agnostic about the deal. If they are to be converted, Carpenter suggests, “the gospel may have to become less reverent toward the moneychangers.”