If You Are Not Part Of The Solution, You Must Be Part of The Problem - The Gigantic Mess That Is The Federal Bureaucracy

Two articles came together for this post, both of which illustrate how large, unwieldy and ineffective the federal government has become. The first article was written by David Gergen and appeared in the August 15, 2010 issue of Parade magazine. Mr. Gergen talked about how unprepared the Federal government is when it comes to man made or natural disasters. After spending a substantial amount of time in the Gulf after the BP oil disaster, he came to the conclusion that while there were a lot of government employees working real hard to address the disaster, they were overwhelmed for a number of reasons:

• Those employees are "ensnared in a government system that is hopelessly entangled and desperately needs fixing."
• This results in well intentioned and hard working government employees working far below effectiveness.
• Despite large amounts of taxpayer funded resources (Homeland Security, FEMA, the Coast Guard, Centers For Disease Control, state and local governments, etc.), laws and regulations have sprouted up over time that have confused the roles and responsibilities of each of these government entities.
• This mish mash of laws and regulations has resulted in a muddled and clogged chain of command which feeds into uncertainly and delays in addressing the disaster.

Sounds like every other government function from Hurricane Katrina to the financial and economic meltdown of the current recession, everybody is in charge but nobody is responsible. Gergen's remedy is very much in line with Step 1 of "Love My Country, Loathe My Government." We must start downsizing and streamlining all government sources, using a ground up approach to decide what are vital government functions and then properly staffing and training those functions to be more efficient and effective. Without a functional review down to the lowest job responsibility, the muddled chain of command and the substandard performance, relative the taxpayer dollars spent will continue, endangering property, lives, and the reputation of the Federal government.

Speaking of substandard performance, the second article of interest appeared in the August 20, 2010 issue of The Week Magazine. It addressed the continued disaster that is Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac:

• According to the article, Fannie Mae recently announced that it had lost $3.1 billion in the last quarter.
• The good news was that the $3.1 billion loss was its best quarter in three years.
• Freddie Mac followed that announcement by announcing it had a $6 million loss.
• They have asked Congress for a combined $3.3 billion cash infusion in order to not go bankrupt.

Remember, these two organizations have already sucked down untold billions of taxpayer dollars to stay solvent and are expected to need hundreds of billions more in the next few years to remain afloat.

The good news is that the political class is finally talking about making changes to get the situation under control. The Treasury Department will host a conference later this month to generate ideas for a new mortgage financing approach int he country. How successful they will be is in doubt, given that both Fannie and Freddie successfully lobbied to stay out of the clutches of the recently passed financial regulatory reform law. Who says they cannot get out from under Congressional scrutiny again? During the run up to the financial regulatory reform bill, we saw numerous cases of Federal department heads lobbying Congressional people to save their own fiefdoms from change.

Both examples illustrate how big and unwieldy the Federal government has become. We waste tons of taxpayer dollars on very poor service and performance. What is needed are strong, intelligent leaders that know how to analyze a problem, who can identify the root causes of the problem, and are courageous enough to take the correct steps to fix the problem, regardless of whose campaign funding sources gets disrupted, whose Congressional district takes a hit, whose Federal department is downsized, what Federal employees are downsized out of a job, etc. Unfortunately, I see very few people currently sitting in powerful political positions that fill that bill (smart, courageous, problem solvers). Otherwise, I would have hoped that they would have made the necessary changes to fix the bureaucracy. In fact, I would have hoped that they would not have let the situation get so bad to begin with.

That is why Step 34 is so important. This step would remove politicians from Congressional committee posts who did not clean up these bureaucratic messes and the poor, and sometimes fatal, performance that result from these messes. The first step in this long arduous journey to downsize while at the same time improving the effectiveness of the government begins in November with the dumping of all incumbents. As the old saying goes, if you are not part of the solution, you must be part of the problem. Given all of the problems and the inefficiencies we currently have, those that are in charge must be part of the problem.




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