[Congressional Record Volume 140, Number 133 (Wednesday, September 21, 1994)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Page E]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Printing Office [www.gpo.gov]


[Congressional Record: September 21, 1994]



                        CUTTING THE BUREAUCRACY

                                 ______


                          HON. LEE H. HAMILTON

                               of indiana

                    in the house of representatives

                     Wednesday, September 21, 1994

  Mr. HAMILTON. Mr. Speaker, I would like to insert my Washington 
Report for Wednesday, August 24, 1994 into the Congressional Record.

                        Cutting The Bureaucracy

       I find a lot of interest among constituents in a question 
     too often ignored in Washington, and that is what to do about 
     the sprawling government bureaucracy. This bureaucracy 
     developed during the Great Depression, World War II, and the 
     Cold War. Now is a good time to see if we can tame it and 
     make the federal government work better and cost less. 
     Private corporations have undertaken major restructuring to 
     get ready for the competitive challenges of the 21st century. 
     The same thing has to be done in government--making it more 
     efficient and more compassionate. The Jeffersonian ideal of a 
     ``wise and frugal government'' is still worth striving for.
       All of us in government have to make a deliberate and 
     sustained effort to slim down the size of government and to 
     redesign it. Once launched, government programs tend to go on 
     forever; agencies never die. Unless a President and a 
     Congress are determined to shake up the system, the easy way 
     to try to energize government is simply to add new layers of 
     bureaucracy on top of the old. Our effort has to be to save 
     money, to reduce layers of bureaucracy and, most importantly, 
     to get citizens better results.


                          government services

       The Executive Branch consists of some 90 federal 
     departments and agencies ranging from the Departments of 
     Agriculture, Defense, Veterans Affairs, and Treasury, to 
     agencies like the CIA, the Federal Reserve, the Consumer 
     Product Safety Commission, and NASA. Some of these were 
     developed to provide specific services to Americans while 
     others, such as the Nuclear Regulatory Commission and the 
     Environmental Protection Agency, oversee vital industries and 
     resources.
       Currently there are some 3 million federal civilian 
     employees employed in these departments and agencies, 
     including 800,000 postal workers. The federal civilian 
     workforce grew from 2.5 million in the 1950s to a high of 3.1 
     million in 1989. Since then more than 100,000 jobs have been 
     cut and additional cuts are in the works. Most of the growth 
     in the ``government bureaucracy'' has actually occurred at 
     the state and local levels, where today about 15 million 
     people work, compared to 3.5 million in 1946.


                                reforms

       In this century at least a dozen major efforts to improve 
     and streamline federal government agencies have been 
     undertaken. Both Presidents Truman and Eisenhower appointed 
     commissions to reorganize the executive branch; President 
     Carter deregulated the airline and trucking industries; and 
     President Reagan appointed the Grace Commission to search out 
     government waste. In 1980 Congress passed the Paperwork 
     Reduction Act which cut paperwork by 32% (342 million man-
     hours) in three years. Last year President Clinton began an 
     ambitious project to make government programs work better and 
     cost less when he appointed Vice President Gore to lead a 
     task force on bureaucratic reform.
       After a six-month evaluation, the Gore task force made more 
     than 380 major reform recommendations to improve the 
     bureaucracy by shifting to an entrepreneurial management 
     style. The report focused on ways to cut red tape, put 
     customers first, and empower employees to get results. If all 
     the recommendations are implemented, $108 billion could be 
     saved over five years from eliminating redundancy, reducing 
     the civilian work force by 252,000 employees, and upgrading 
     computer and information systems. Within three months of 
     receiving the report, President Clinton signed a dozen 
     executive orders ranging from a 50 percent reduction in 
     executive branch internal regulations to an order to improve 
     federal debt collection efforts. Congress expanded the 
     personnel cuts to 272,900 and recently passed a measure 
     allowing agencies to offer buyouts to encourage federal 
     employees to retire early.


                               assessment

       My view is that we need to examine every cabinet, every 
     department, and every agency of government. We have to focus 
     on the question of how a government should work and what can 
     be done to make it work more efficiently. We must make a 
     major effort to reduce the size of the civilian workforce and 
     bring non-postal workers below 2 million for the first time 
     in decades.
       Some argue that we should not be overzealous in reducing 
     the federal bureaucracy. They point out that fraud in the 
     savings-and-loan industry--costing taxpayers well over $100 
     billion--went unnoticed in large part because many federal 
     inspectors were eliminated. They note that, relative to the 
     size of our economy, our federal government is small compared 
     to those in other industrialized countries. They also point 
     out that many federal agencies are generally well run. Social 
     Security's administrative costs, for example, are only about 
     1% of benefit costs.
       Clearly, downsizing the federal workforce must not leave 
     open the door for waste or fraud or slowdowns in agency 
     services. I am not among those who heap scorn on the federal 
     employee. I believe the federal government is staffed by many 
     qualified people who are committed to their jobs and want the 
     opportunity to try to do them better. It is important that we 
     not create an environment that discourages these people. If 
     we do, the system will undermine itself.
       We need to downsize the federal government, but we must do 
     it in a rational way. The federal government is characterized 
     by over-control and micro-management. The bureaucracy stifles 
     the creativity of managers and workers. The aim must be to 
     get higher productivity at lower cost by eliminating 
     unnecessary layers of management and non-essential staff. I 
     think we have to decentralize authority in the bureaucracy 
     and empower those who work within it to make more of their 
     own decisions and solve more of their own problems. Many of 
     the standard complaints about government--overstaffing, 
     redtape, excessive centralization, obsolete systems, large 
     backlogs--can be addressed by a better management system.


                               conclusion

       The recommendations of the President's task force now 
     underway hold out the promise of making the federal 
     bureaucracy more responsive to the needs of Americans. Deep 
     personnel cuts are being made, and even more could be done. 
     Too many Americans have simply lost confidence in the 
     government. Nothing is more important than that all of us in 
     government make the American taxpayer feel that he or she is 
     a valued customer. Our task is to do our job in such a way 
     that they are getting a dollar's value for every dollar of 
     taxes they pay.

                          ____________________