In his latest column, Washington Examiner senior political analyst Michael Barone notes that government ? despite getting bigger ? seems less capable of completing big projects quickly.

Today government takes longer to do things. The Obama Democrats’ stimulus package was passed by Congress in February 2009. Of the $140 billion authorized for infrastructure spending, less than $20 billion had been disbursed 12 months later.

The $8 billion of stimulus money set aside for high-speed rail won’t be used for years in the Northeast Corridor, the busiest passenger rail artery in the nation, because the Obama administration ordered a strict environmental review.

[Pentagon construction supervisor Gen. Brehon] Somervell and his WPA boss Harry Hopkins would have had things moving a lot faster than that. Of course they didn’t have to deal with the intricacies and incrustations of federal procurement policy that have been built up over the years.

They didn’t have to get clearance from environmental agencies and then prepare for the lawsuits that in our time area are inevitably launched by environmental advocacy groups (part of the Pentagon was built on mud flats; any endangered species there?).

They didn’t have to engage in endless negotiations with state and local agencies. In New York, Somervell settled his disagreements with Mayor Fiorello La Guardia in brief shouting matches, after which everyone quickly went to work.

A case can be made that some of these changes are beneficial. Recent reconstruction of the Pentagon showed that some of the cement that was supposed to be poured never was. A nearby semi-shanty town inhabited by blacks was ruthlessly torn down. We do want to protect the environment more than Americans did in the 1940s.

But even those conservatives who don’t want government to do much do want government to do the things it should be doing reasonably rapidly.

When three days after the BP Gulf oil spill the Dutch government offered its oil-skimming ships and oil-cleansing technology, the Environment Protection Agency rejected them for weeks because the cleaned ocean water would contain more than 15 parts per million oil. Gen. Somervell wouldn’t have taken five minutes to make the opposite decision.

Big government has become a big, waddling, sluggish beast, ever ready to boss you around, but not able to perform useful functions at anything but a plodding pace. It needs to be slimmed down and streamlined, so it can get useful things done fast.