After mulling over this overflowing litter box of an election, I’m finished with my bouts of disbelief, ongoing depression, outbursts of invective, and shaking my fist at the mountain gods. All of this has been pretty much self-serving or useless, particularly the fist shaking. The mountain gods have ignored me most of my life with the exception of a few extraordinary moments.
Now is the time to start dealing with why the litter box is overflowing. Let’s start with public trust in government. According to Pew Research, in 2001 54% of respondents thought the Federal Government did the right thing most of the time. Last year that number was down to 22%. Most Americans, regardless of political orientation, don’t trust their government.
Much of this distrust is based on all sorts of issues from over-regulation to inefficiency, lack of accountability, an inept Congress, ideologues on the Supreme Court—the list goes on and on. But a stand-out on the list of issues is that the Federal Government is bloated.
A spooky example: There are 18 federal agencies who are involved in intelligence work here and abroad. Is intelligence work a necessary function of government? Of course. But that’s a large number of operatives on the federal payroll, including intelligence units in each of the uniform services, out there tripping over one another. And then there is a Director of National Intelligence to coordinate these agencies.
Sure.
Part of the federal bloat problem is that Congress controls the purse strings by law. This isn’t going to change, but it is like giving an alcoholic a case of vodka. They have proven themselves inept at controlling spending, an essay for another time. The other part of the problem is the nature of bureaucracies. In simplest terms the main mission of a bureaucracy is to protect and perpetuate itself.
Bureaucracies have been with us since we started walking upright. They will be with us until the sun blows up. But we can get them under better control.
Here is how. My theory is that there is no bureaucracy that cannot cut its spending by 10% over two years, and accomplish this without firing anyone as a cost cutting measure.
The first two steps in this process are done from outside the bureaucracy.
Step one is to simply state that the bureaucracy must meet this spending goal or face outside budget goons who will do stupid things like disbanding whole units of the bureaucracy without concern for collateral damage or long-term consequences.
If the leadership of the bureaucracy sandbags, slow walks, or obfuscates it will be obvious and necessary moves will need to be instituted to terminate its leadership for cause. But a smart leadership will make an attempt to comply.
Step two is to look at all the individual bureaucracies, for the sake of simplicity let’s call them silos, and see exactly what they do. For example, there is the National Weather Service, although it too is bloated, NWS is a sophisticated organization capable of forecasting weather anywhere on the planet. And yet each military service has a meteorological component. Why?
The third step is for each silo to clearly define its mission. This step and the following steps all happen within the bureaucracy. Once the mission is defined, leadership must ask the following questions.
• What components of our silo do we have to have to meet our mission?
• What components are necessary and helpful to meet our mission?
• What components have we added to the silo that do not directly contribute to meeting our mission but are helpful to the citizenry?
• What are we doing that is beyond our mission?
Sidebar: If it seems like I’m picking on the Department of Defense, I am. The DoD is the definition of relentless bloat. For example, the mission of the Air Force is air superiority. Part of air superiority is called Close Air Support or protecting ground troops and attacking enemy vehicles and troops. The Air Force has a fine aircraft called a Warthog (A-10) that was designed specifically for Close Air Support. A new Warthog costs about 15 million. It is being replaced by the Lightning II (F-35), a multirole fighter that costs about 85 million each. And just think for a moment about any tool that is designed to fulfill multiple roles—it is often mediocre at some or all of those roles.
Once these questions are honestly answered the silo leadership can start thinking about how to meet the 10% budget decrease, develop, and implement a plan. But I need to stop here to restate that bureaucracies act totally out of self interest because, for the most part, people act totally out of self interest. This is not meant to demonize federal employees which is the standard rhetoric of the right.
The reason the leadership of the silo will go to work on cutting the budget by 10% is because their jobs depend on meeting the 10% budget reduction. But what about the rank and file of the silo, let’s call them the crew. Why should the crew put any effort into meeting the 10% budget cut mandate?
It’s a fact that one of the major costs of most enterprises, is the cost of salary and benefits. This is why corporations dump employees during difficult financial times. Unless a bureaucracy ceases to exist, firing large groups of employees in a bureaucracy is difficult.
Earlier I said that the 10% cut could be completed without firing anyone. This is an important commitment to the crew to make the 10% budget cut work. To mitigate the crew from protecting their jobs and actively working against the budget cut, the crew need to know that their jobs, or a jobs like the one they have now, will not be cut.
Having said that salary and benefits were a major cost to a bureaucracy, the head count at a silo needs to be cut to make the 10% goal. That’s why this 10% cut will take two years to allow for resignations, transfers, retirements and terminations for cause to significantly lower head count.
But how do we incentivize the crew to become actively involved in making this 10% budget cut work?
Leadership is well compensated because they are part of the Senior Executive Service. To get anyone below that level to work at implementing a 10% budget cut requires that they be paid a commission on what they save the silo by paring components that do not directly contribute to completing the mission and phasing-out components that are beyond the mission.
Look, I know this is a very short proposal to cut federal spending by forcing bureaucracies to focus on their mission, become less bloated, and more efficient. But it is a step in the direction of regaining public trust in government.
Is proposal naive? Yes.
Difficult to implement? Yes.
Needed? Yes.
The next time you see fighters do a flyover at a football game, ask yourself what the flyover has to do with air superiority.
Sounds right to me. Implementing is another story!
Sounds good to me! Following my father’s retirement as a Colonel in the Air Weather Service he became an Assistant Administrator with NOAA. He was called upon to testify before Congress on weather related matters. You referenced one of them. In some locales, the civilian airport and the USAF base shared a runway. There would be two separate Meteorological support teams duplicating each other’s work. Dad testified that indeed it made sense to inform the bureaucracies that it was time to combine operations. One step at a time it can be done.