Ah, the election follies are just around the bend and the cast of characters just gets better all the time. But what truly amazes me is the hatred each side has for the other and how everyone takes sides, as if a change of a president or even an entire Congress will make a bit of difference. It won’t and here’s why.
There are 1.35 million civilian workers in the federal government. We elect only 536 of them, a president, 435 representatives and 100 senators. We don’t even really elect the vice president, he’s just part of a package deal.
Yet, we expect one guy, or even 536 men and women, to be able to turn our government around, make it more efficient, spend less money, become smaller, etc. What a crock of crap!
And here’s the reason. I am sure that most federal workers look upon these elected officials with the same affection as cockroaches. When you’ve been a federal employee for 20, 30, or even 50 years, you’ve seen a lot of elected officials come and go. For example, let’s take a guy who has worked in the state department for 40 years. During that time, he has seen eight different guys come and go in the White House, all with their big promises to change the way government does business.
Does he care? Hell no! He’s a lifer in government. He does his job the same way he has done it since Nixon was elected to his second term. He pushes the same paper, approves the same invoices, takes the same coffee break. Who is in the White House or which party is in power in Congress means nothing to him.
He and the rest of the 1.35 million federal employees are the government. They aren’t elected. They don’t answer to us directly. And they don’t have to really care what we want.
I don’t blame them. They are really no different than any of us who are in the private sector. They want to keep their jobs. Some day they want to retire. If a promotion comes along, great. Otherwise, they will do their time, try not to make any waves while they are in their job (so they don’t get fired) and count the days until they can lay on the beach all day long and not have to think about their jobs anymore.
Their interest in changing the way government operates is zero, zip, zilch. There’s no incentive, any more than there is an incentive for you to change in your job. Someone who’s farther up the food chain wants something done, so they trickle it down to their direct report who trickles it down to their direct report and so on and so forth until you get stuck doing it.
Now, you could argue that a president can put in their various secretaries of such and such and that they will initiate changes that will rattle the cages of government. First, these guys rarely last four years, let alone eight in their positions. To the lifers in these departments, these guys are temps. Who’s going to listen to them? And really, what incentive does a Secretary of Education have to say, “Hey, you know what, we don’t need to have my agency be so big. I’d really like to make it a tenth its size and lose all my power and prestige in the process. That would be fine with me, Mr. President.”
As we all know in Corporateland, more direct reports means more power. The more people you have under you, the more you are listened to at the very top. A vice president with 300 people under him trumps a vice president with 10 every time. It really is a numbers game and you can’t tell me that a U.S. Secretary of Such-and-Such is any different than the manager down the hall from you who dreams of a bigger office, a fancier title and more power.
So why we would love to wag our finger at the guy in the White House or those wonderful High-Fiving White Guys in Congress, it’s not their fault that our government moves at a snail’s pace. If a guy has pushed a piece of paper across his desk at a certain speed when Ike was still in office, he isn’t about to pick up the pace because the “new guy” says he has to. And he’s not about to stop spending money, our money, on all the projects he’s in charge of until the budget well goes dry. And it’s not going to, any time soon.
Why? If you’ve ever been in management and had to put together a budget then you know that you always ask for way more money than you need on the chance you’ll get less. You may never get less, though. You may get the whole enchilada. Even if you do get less, there’s still plenty of padding in the budget for your pet projects. Your staff loves pet projects because it keeps them employed. So even if Congress cuts funding for the New Mexico Horned Toad website, it will still be running four years from now.
Why? Because all these guys now that a new administration will eventually come into office. A new cockroach will be sworn into the Oval Office and he will quickly go to task eliminating any progress the last guy made and put in his own pet projects. Two steps forward, two steps back and nothing really ever changes in government.
It’s the nature of the beast. Blame the guys we elect all you want. But it’s the guys in the trenches — the ones who only worry about keeping their jobs, not making waves and getting a pension someday — that are really running the government. And they don’t give a rat’s ass what any of us want, because really, they don’t have to.
They know all to well that without them, the wheels of the economy, the wheels of government and the wheels of our entire societal fabric, come to a screeching halt. They have us by the proverbial balls folks. So if you want to blame anyone, blame the guy behind the passport counter or the ranger stopping you from entering one of our parks without ponying up some bucks. They are the front lines of the stalemate that is our government.
Out on the Treasure Coast, cursing the mailman just because he’s the nearest federal employee I can find,
— Robb