A Mid-Term Report Card on My "Dear Congress" Letter

Back in January 2009 I published an open letter to our new Congress, requesting that they be the "most intelligent, cooperative, innovative and collaborative Congress (they could)  be."  I sent a similar letter to our newly inaugurated President with the cautionary note that "you have a Magenta Mandate, not a Blue Banner."  Today I revisit their performance.

Congress:

• Intelligent         C-
• Cooperative      F
• Innovative        F-
• Collaborative    F-
• EFFORT          F-

Congress showed no imagination, offered little innovation, refused outright to collaborate or even cooperate, and, in general, hewed to party ideologies, demonizing the opposition as repugnant morons.  Dumb Senators sought to "reform" the Senate by instituting majority rule.  Dumb House Leaders advanced bills sure to die in the Senate, or forced bad bills through using parliamentary parlor tricks.  All in all, not a Congress to remember, except in trying to forget them.

President:

• Magenta Mandate      F
• Blue Banner                 C-
• Effort                              D

The President offered nothing for the vast majority of the folks that voted for him.  He chased the Hea;thcare chimera and made it a real monster that roars like a lion, slithers like a snake and smells like a goat.  The fire-breathing was reserved for his base, who thought he should've declared martial law, killed all the republicans and saved America by putting their utopia, the Single Payer System, into effect. After the mid-term bloodbath, the President finally awakened to the Magenta Mandate and re-affirmed "tax cuts for the rich", something more appropriately referred to as maintaining the status quo.  His budget rhetoric echoes the national concern for deficits and the debt, but the proposed budget does little to change anything.

We have grown from 9 Cabinet level departments to 15 and have 30 or 40 Tsars that are nowhere mentioned in our Constitution.  We have 9 advisory councils, some statuatory some just for the fun of it, like the Office of National Drug Control Policy, which actually does little to control Drugs, but lots to control policy and spending.  We really don't need all these high-priced consultants.  The Presidency, as a bureaucracy, is out of control.  The President shouldn't have over 60 people giving him answers; it should be filtered through the Cabinet.   But the Executive Office of the President (EOP) has grown to over 2000 people.  Similar, commensurate staff expansions have occurred in the Congress.  Unlike the Will Rodgers quip, we are getting all the government we're paying for, and then some.  Only 3500 or so firms in America employ more than 2000 people, and they took in about $11 billion in receipts.  The EOP costs about $300 million to run and brings in nothing.

Now $300 million may seem like nothing, but all these folks, all 2000 of them, have policy-making responsibilities.  Any time you see the word "policy" in Washington, translate it as "huge amounts of money are at our disposal."  Diabolical laughter should also echo in your mind.  There are 30 Executive Office entities that have the ear of the President, aside from the Cabinet, and each of the 2000 Executive staffers works for one of those entities.  It is a madhouse.  The Cabinet no more controls policy for their departments than the President controls his calendar.  It is the staff that insulates us from our government.  It is the staff that insulates the Executive from reality.  It is the staff that ratchets up the invective in Congress and creates the intransigence.  It is time to ask our Congress and Executive to pare their own spending, radically, first and foremost.  The country was governed pretty effectively through two World Wars with less staff cumulatively than we have in place today. 

Don't tell me that things are more complex today, etc., etc.  Armies of bookeepers used to do the books that are now kept by one person on a computer.  Checking and double-checking was a way of life once.  Now we trust in machines, and complain if we have to push a button, or enter a number manually, or even wait for a computer to boot-up.  We are more impatient today, for sure, but complexity has existed, and has been handled manually for centuries.  The Romans invented bureacracy, the Vatican embellished it, the British perfected it, and the Communists made it a religion.  America is still uncomfortable with bureaucracy. By the book is not the American way.  Rules are made to be broken is.

Office We Could Do Without and Save $16 Billion

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