The new chair of the House committee that handles government personnel and USPS issues, Republican Congressman Dennis Ross of Florida, says his clear priority is "to reduce the cost of the federal payroll, while still maintaining a very efficient and effective workforce."
Deja vu. When there's a shift of power in Congress, this is always a goal, and really, it's not a bad one, if a couple of guidelines are kept in mind:
- It can't be undertaken in isolation. As I've said elsewhere, we will need cuts in many areas to get a grip on our fiscal irresponsibility -- that will quite naturally include the federal workforce, but it must also include our military budget, as well as entitlements.
- It can't be achieved unless we are prepared to decide what services we're going to do without.
Unfortunately, the temptation in the past has always been to ignore these basic precepts. Congress may cut federal civilian personnel, and extend pay freezes for five years rather than two, because it can -- it controls these areas. Meanwhile, though, Congress has always backed away from making the cuts needed elsewhere, treating the armed forces and Medicare as sacred cows. Maybe the subcommittee should wait to make its cuts, which are easy, until the difficult ones are done. It won't.
Also with respect to cutting services, the tendency historically has been to pick at the edges, legislating a five percent cut here, three percent there, or just decreeing blanket cuts to every agency budget. It's probably more important to make decisions about what services won't be needed any longer. That way, entire swaths of the federal workforce can be eliminated; that's where big savings come in. Even before we get to the point of eliminating services, however, or calling for blanket cuts, we might consider what savings (in workforce time and thus in personnel costs) can be made by eliminating services that Congress has decreed for itself.
On the same page of the Washington Post as the "Federal Diary" column linked above, there was also a report on the findings of the Inspector General at the Department of State, who has reported that inordinate amounts of time are spent in writing huge, long, annual reports. (One example is the "human rights reports," in which the U.S. government rather haughtily takes it upon itself to criticize human rights practices in other countries - ALL other countries, except the U.S. itself.) Who has ordained that these reports be written? Congress, of course. They are reports to Congress. In many cases, it's a ridiculous waste of manpower.
Savings in Congressional services could also be found by eliminating the Defense Department's provision of free transportation (planes and crews) for Congressional junkets. It's also pretty certain that a lot of money could be saved at the I.R.S. - no doubt at least half its personnel budget - if Congress would simply devote itself to straightening our and simplifying the ever-more-complex tax code, which wastes billions of man hours both in government (enforcing, interpreting, and just plain processing tax returns), in business (in complying with the law or finding ways around it), and in the public (filling out those returns). Are the people better served by cutting the budget for FDA food inspection, or by providing taxpayer-paid smart phones to each member of Congress?
Savings in government? By all means. But let Congress be a part of the solution, please. Reduction of unnecessary tasks such as I've highlighted above will not, I admit, come anywhere near the magnitude of cuts we really need to make. Yet it would be silly not to start there.
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