Just the Facts, Ma’am
Our U.S. government at work
Ted Folkert
February 5, 2015
September, 2014 Washington Post/ABC News poll:
1% of Americans surveyed are enthusiastic about the performance of government.
23% say they are satisfied with the performance of government.
74% say they are dissatisfied the performance of government.
These are not encouraging numbers for those public servants engaged in the work of performing governmental functions. One should assume that the figures would be more favorable if we had an unbiased, publicly-owned, news media instead of the likes of Fox Noise – but like Jack Friday would have said on the Dragnet radio show, “just the facts, ma’am”. And, of course, the likes of Fox Noise don’t let facts get in the way of the point they are selling to the American people.
To counter this perceived opinion of our government at work, we should read Donald F. Kettl’s article in “Washington Monthly”, Ten Secret Truths about Government Incompetence:
His statement: “…… much of the government actually works pretty well, most of the time.”
The Social Security Administration makes monthly payments to 64 million Americans with an accuracy of more than 99% and administrative costs of .7%, a fraction of the cost of administering private pension plans.”
The government saved or bailed out General Motors, Chrysler, AIG, Citigroup – money lost and gained by the government turned out being on the gain side after saving millions of jobs and setting the economy on the path to recovery.
Eighty eight percent of government workers work outside of Washington DC and only about one-sixth of the budget goes to work performed by government employees. Cutting federal workers reduces government’s oversight over the vast network of private contracting firms that actually do the work.
One example of understaffing – The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services manage about $1 trillion in federal spending with 5,720 employees – each employee, on average, would be responsible for $175 million in government spending. They were charged with setting up the federal Obamacare website and creating the insurance marketplace. They didn’t have the staff with the expertise to do the job. Obviously, it didn’t work well at first – bad things happen when agencies are assigned work they lack the capacity to do.
John Diulio, political scientist, “… if you want better, smaller government, hire another million bureaucrats. – We have no hope of making government work if we don’t hire the government we need to run it – and to rein in the proxies who do so much of the work on its behalf.”
Congress gets in the way of much government progress. They demand that the Postal Service take steps to offset lost revenue, but when steps are suggested to do so, Congress refuses to allow any reduction in services.
Congested highways, transportation infrastructure, mass-transit systems are impossible to enact because Congress can’t pass a transportation bill.
The Department of Homeland Security has oversight by 108 committees. In 2012 and 2013, 391 officials from the department testified at 257 hearings, in addition to 4,000 briefings. Obviously, the department is troubled.
This story could go on and on – and it does in Kettl’s article. But just consider these facts:
The Executive branch of our government employees, an estimated, more than 4 million workers and oversees more than $1 trillion each year, including the departments of: Agriculture, Commerce, Defense, Education, Energy, Health & Human Services, Homeland Security, Housing & Urban Development, Interior, Justice, Labor, State, Transportation, Treasury and Veteran Affairs.
Which ones of these do you want to reduce or eliminate?
Some of our fearless leaders say that the government should run more like industry. Which industry or which company do they want it to run like – without the staff to do the job and constant interference and unnecessary constraints in managing the job.
Kettl says that the government can be made much better relatively quickly and can be made worse even more quickly and that presidents can win the game if they pay attention.
He may be right, but it would seem much more likely if he or she had a cooperative congress working alongside.
Think about it!
Please help us elect better leaders.