Donald Trump ran for president promising to “drain the swamp,” but even his sometimes valiant efforts amount to no more than removing marsh water one tin cup at a time.
Three Supreme Court decisions at the end of its term last week remind us that the federal administrative state, not the elective offices, is the frustrating, sometimes abusive entity through which most citizens encounter their government. The next president should make it a priority to radically restructure and reduce the administrative leviathan. The virtual GOP campaign against President Trump must make massive administrative reform a galvanizing issue.
The challenge could even employ a Trump-like slogan: Bust the bureaucracy!
The goal should be, within a decade, to reduce the 2.1 million federal civilian workforce by nearly a third while simultaneously making agencies more responsive, not less, to the citizens they serve.
To do this, Congress and the president must enact complete re-writes, top to bottom, of the Administrative Procedure Act of 1946, the provisions still in force from the Pendleton Civil Service Reform Act from way back in 1883 (!), and the Civil Service Reform Act of 1978. These laws set rules governing the processes by which federal regulations are issued and enforced and governing the standards, job protections, and expectations for federal employees.
The interplay of those laws right now gives bureaucrats far too much power, but far too little accountability. Even good, responsive federal employees are hampered by a maze of rules that discourage initiative and the taking of responsibility, while making pass-the-buck attitudes the default option. The three laws at issue, more than the bureaucrats themselves, are responsible for the state of affairs where “bureaucracy basically makes people stupid.”
That last quote comes from longtime author-reformer Philip K. Howard, who since publication of The Death of Common Sense in 1994 has catalogued and excoriated these bureaucratic stupidities and related issues. Almost everyone who has navigated a federal bureaucracy with anything but the simplest question can attest to the system’s soul-sapping impersonality.
To fix that, a Virtual President Hillyer would appoint a commission to propose from-scratch legislation to revamp civil service rules and administrative procedures. As Howard writes in this year’s Try Common Sense, federal hiring should be politically neutral but without guaranteed job tenure, federal employee job descriptions should be re-oriented toward solutions rather than restrictions-and-punishments, and accountability must be reestablished through rewards for constructive performance and discipline for incompetence.
The commission’s recommendations would be aided by legislative rules similar (although with some leeway for legislative amendment) to those used under the successful Defense Base Closure and Realignment Act of 1990. Its mandate would be major, groundbreaking reform, not mere nibbling around the edges.
The commission should be weighted toward conservative principles, but not terribly overweighted, because in the end its product will need buy-in across the political spectrum. The commission chairman should have a reputation as relatively nonideological. The choice is obvious: Philip Howard himself.
There should be three vice chairmen. The first would be Don Devine, who as President Ronald Reagan’s director of the Office of Personnel Management oversaw a rational and systemic reduction of the federal workforce by 100,000 employees. The second would be Cass Sunstein, who was President Barack Obama’s semi-reformist regulatory czar. The third vice chairman should have practical political sensibilities in addition to administrative expertise. Former Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal is the choice. Give them good associate members and a crackerjack staff, and give them the reins.
Americans deserve to have a government that is responsive, efficient, understandable, and accountable, all the while also saving many tens of billions of dollars each year. Bust the bureaucracy, now!
