Chainsaws, Bloated Bureaucracy and Human Decency.

 I wholeheartedly support the Trump Administration’s desire to reduce the size of the government bureaucracy and I understand the new Administration’s focus on firing large numbers of folks working in government jobs, rather than pursing some sort of slower, more measured, approach to the challenge of government overstaffing. I find it ridiculous that you can stay home and collect a government check for “working.” Having said that, I also feel very sorry for the folks who are being fired. The very nature of the situation ensures that many, if not most, are going to have a very difficult time finding employment, the equal of what they are losing. Private business is often more demanding than is government employment and lacks many of the job descriptions found in government organizations. A person that has worked ten years in an arcane, useless government position will find it very difficult to transfer that work experience to the private sector.

Retaining the benefits attendant on government employment will also be extremely difficult, if not impossible. Insurance, housing, health, education, all become serious challenges for the individual, very few of whom set out to be a problem for society. Long term financial planning, to the extent that there was any, will be seriously damaged if not obliterated. The vast majority of these folks were doing what they were told to do and the system was far more responsible for their inefficiency than were the individuals caught up in the governmental morass. I repeat, I support the reduction in federal employment and believe that it would be good to extend the effort to state and country levels as well, but I also want to take care of the poor slobs caught up in the budgeteers drag net. Not to do so is just plain wrong and I do not now see any thinking about how to handle the challenge. The political leaders that were invested in inefficient government are attempting to stop the purge and the zealots that are trying to fix decades of sloth with a chainsaw are equally misguided.

What is required is a slower, more considered approach to the issue. The problem with that is that the zealots know for a fact that if they don’t get it done right now, they will lose their chance in the very next flip flop that is inevitably coming down the political road at us. My guess is that the chainsaw zealots will continue to dominate for enough time to accomplish major reductions in the size of our bureaucracy and that it will have very little adverse effect on the functioning of our national government. I am also cynical enough to believe that while it will reduce government spending, it will not improve the efficiency of our government. Excessive size is a financial and organizational burden, but not a serious intellectual burden. Smart government is not a function of size. A smaller, leaner bureaucracy may well be less expensive, but it is not necessarily smarter, just as a bigger govvernment is not necessarily smarter. In order to produce smarter government, you have to improve the quality of the people doing the governing and that brings us back to the quality of the general society from which these people are drawn.

America is well enough educated to produce an acceptable bureaucracy, but our head is all f*cked up with imaginary hogwash. I am here talking about you and me, because we are the pool from which our bureaucracy is drawn. We are mindlessly blue or red, not red, white and blue. We argue with one another about the sign on the bathroom door and you expect us to produce a decent bureaucracy, let alone intelligent leadership? Our bloated bureaucracy is a function of our society, not a given politician and the chainsaw crew is merely a reaction rather than a considered solution. I feel really sorry for the poor slobs that are caught up in the current purge and I am critical of the ardent cost cutters who are not thinking about the lives of the people that are the statistics about which they brag so smugly.

My solution to the bloated bureaucracy remains the solution that I advocated when I was part of the bloat. Every supervisor should be given the task of developing a plan that would reduce his or her unit of government annually by some factor. Say 10%. If the individual supervisor failed to do that, he or she would be removed. The supervisor would also be required to provide a time line for the reduction to take place. That too would be subject to review by that person’s supervisor. Exceptions could be made by superiors. Programs would be developed to assist employees that were let go transition to other employment in the private sector. The overriding policy would recognize that inefficiency is the system’s fault as much as the individual’s fault.