Whenever I read the words “bloated federal bureaucracy”, as in this article at Washington Times, I want to poke my eyes out. It completely misstates the problems in government and makes reform that much harder.
Consider the graph at the top of the page. That red horizontal line depicts the growth in federal employees over the last 70 years. Yes, that’s right. Not only has the growth in the number of federal employees over the last 70 years been negligible, over that period the U. S. population has nearly tripled. That means that the number of federal employees per 100,000 U. S. population has declined sharply.
Government at all levels is in desperate need of reform but that reform should consist neither of minimizing government nor maximizing it but rightsizing it and changing the way it operates to suit the needs of the 21st century rather than those of the mid-20th century. but to understand the actual challenges of reforming government you’ve got to understand the twin transformations in government that have taken place over the last 70 years.
Seventy years ago federal employees actually used to perform most of the services provided by the federal government, from building nuclear power plants or building ships to inspecting beef. Now they only provide a fraction of those services. Most of the services are provided by the federal government are performed by contractors and the federal government has been transformed from a provider of services to a hirer of contractors.
Nobody really knows how many of these contractors there are. The best guess is that something in the vicinity of a quarter of all American workers are employed by government at all levels in one form or another, employee or contractor. That’s something in the vicinity of 50 million workers, somewhat more than the number reflected in the graph above.
The blog form precludes relating in detail how that happened. Suffice it to say that when you have one political party that has made a fetish of reducing the size of government and another that has made a similar fetish of maximizing its scope, the Hegelian synthesis is the chimera that is our present government.
Now look at the pink line in the graph above, showing the growth in the number of local workers. Note that their numbers have grown faster than the growth of the population, nearly four times as many as there were 70 years ago. Many of those are in education. I’ll look around for a chart that illustrates this but most of those additional workers aren’t teachers. They’re administrators. Both our educational and healthcare systems have succumbed to Gammon’s Law.
How that came to be is complicated, too, but it was a combination of the requirements of compliance, pursuing grants, and the natural tendency of bureaucracies to grow without any relevance to their notional missions.
What should be done? I’ll just provide a few quick bullet items for discussion:
- More professional managers, fewer political appointees.
- Modernize government workers’ pension plans.
- Hire employees where necessary and appropriate rather than spending three times as much for contractors.
- Update procedures and policies at least to the late 20th century if not all the way to the 21st century.
- Limit the province of government regulation to what is actually needed.
We can have as many services as we need but not as many as we want. There is no limit to those. That is human nature.
Doesn’t the graph show that the part of government (federal) theoretically least responsive to voters is the part that has remained essentially level, while the more directly responsive governments (local and state) have grown the fastest? Does that not suggest that people actually want more government and are getting it good and hard?
If there has been a popular movement supporting a great increase in the number of school administrators, I haven’t seen it. I think my explanations are more credible.
And yet we don’t hear many complaints from the voters, do we? The voters love to bitch about the size of the federal bureaucracy (as you noted) over which they have only slight control, but stay mum about the things they could quite easily control – like local schools.
Highly rated schools = high property values. The first thing a parent contemplating a move looks at is local schools. If Greatschools.org rates your local school 5 stars your house is worth more. People see value in good schools, and good schools nowadays do a lot more than teach math. If my very dramatic daughter has a meltdown at school I get phone calls from her academic counselor and the school shrink within an hour. When we were first looking at mainstreaming her out of a special needs school, the local public school sent a team of three to evaluate her.
Now, do you think I’m going to be pushing hard to cut costs at local schools seeing how they’ve coddled my kid? Do you think I’d do anything likely to drop the school from 5 to 4 stars? No, I’ll bitch about ‘Washington’ and vote for the next school bond issue.
No one wants crappier schools or fewer cops or slower street repairs or a less responsive fire department or fewer health inspections. So if they can afford it, they’ll support every government service that affects them directly. People have lots of government because people want lots of government. The least representative sector of government (federal) is flat, the next most representative sector (state) is growing and the most directly representative sector (local) grows by leaps and bounds. No one is holding a gun to voters heads.
I think I see things almost completely oppositely to what you outlined above. Free beer is always popular. The way you judge what people want is by what they’re willing to pay for. If they aren’t willing to pay, they don’t want it.
Just to take one example, Chicago has been borrowing to pay its bills for most of the last decade. By my definition that means they want less government. By your definition it means they want more. How are Chicago schools within the control of Chicago voters?
I think you’re confusing despair with aspiration.
Beginning with the Great Depression, the federal government began subsidizing state and local government jobs. This was because many state and local governments were at risk of default and worsening the crisis, but also because the federal government was committed to quick and thorough interventions throughout the country, which was most easily accomplished by subsidizing the various state and local governments already in existence. There was also the political reality that there would be less objection to federal interference if money was being handed out so that state and local politicians could see to the hiring of new employees. This resulted in a permanent change in the role and extent of services at the local governmental level.
In 1932, share of government spending:
32.4% federal
16.3% state
51.3% local
In 1945,
45.0% federal
17.4% state
37.6% local
In 1990,
56.2% federal
17.9% state
25.9% local
I think the federal government is spending more not just on contractors, but also state and local government jobs, and some of those government jobs require filling out the paperwork needed to continue receiving federal funds.
This makes personal preference hard to gauge. If the feds will pay 90% of the salary of diversity consultant, it might be seen as paying for itself. If you tell some communities that the Army will sell your police department old military equipment at a 90% discount, many will take it.
That would be true if not for the fact that people don’t pay with their money, they pay with someone else’s money, either via taxation or borrowing. The top 20% pay all the taxes, which leaves the 80% to demand whatever they like. They want more government and they get it.
Ask the 80% if they want fewer teachers or school specialists. Ask them if they want fewer cops patrolling. Ask them if they do or do not want government to check out the kitchen at local restaurants. They want government, they demand government, and they get someone else to pay for it.