[Congressional Record Volume 141, Number 115 (Monday, July 17, 1995)]
[Senate]
[Pages S10079-S10081]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                      GUARDING AGAINST BUREAUCRACY

  Mr. GRAMS. Mr. President, any successful entrepreneur who starts out 
small and gradually builds their business up knows about bureaucracy.
  As his or her company grows, so do the piles of paperwork, and the 
number of employees handling it, and pretty soon projects that used to 
take a day are taking weeks, or even longer. Lines of communication 
that used to be clear and open become tangled and confused. What began 
as a lean machine too often turns into a convoluted, Rube Goldberg 
contraption.
  ``In every small business lies the seeds of a bureaucracy.''
  I read that line in a recent column in the Minneapolis Star-Tribune--
a piece by Mark Stevens entitled ``Action Needed to Guard Against 
Bureaucracy.''
  ``Rules begin to sprout,'' wrote Mr. Stevens, ``and procedures start 
to take hold that do more to complicate life than to achieve 
objectives. Left unchecked, these enemies of efficiency tend to 
multiply until they choke the business.''
  How many entrepreneurs, do you suppose, have choked on their own 
enemies of efficiency? How many have been done in by a self-generated 
bureaucracy that simply ate up resources, devoured precious time, and 
clouded the original goals outlined in the business' master plan?
  Judging by the rate that small businesses come and go in this 
country, I guess that it is a significant number. Bureaucracy is a lot 
like hail on a cornfield--a little is not going to hurt, but too much 
of it can be disastrous.
  And nobody knows more about bureaucracy than the folks who work here 
on Capitol Hill.
  Mr. Stevens was writing about small business in his article, but he 
could just as easily have been describing the 

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Federal Government--the biggest bureaucracy this world has ever known.
  I have said it often: small business and Government actually have a 
great deal in common. But the bureaucratic problems that can plague a 
small business are magnified a million times in Washington.
  Imagine having so many new regulations that it took 65,000 pages to 
print them last year alone.
  Imagine having so many employees that you are not only far and away 
the largest employer in the Nation, but your annual receipts put you at 
the very top of the Fortune 500 list as well.
  Imagine having your finger in so many pies that diversified is just 
too small a word to describe your operation.
  Your employees are overseeing thousands of individual little 
bureaucracies, thousands of programs, projects, and agencies that have 
taken on lives of their own, and have little accountability to the home 
office or the folks who ultimately pay the bills--the taxpayers.
  That is the Federal Government.
  But just as small business owners need to take steps to clear out the 
cobwebs of bureaucracy and get back to basics to survive, so should 
Washington.
  In fact, the line that originally caught my eye in Mr. Steven s 
article could easily be turned around to read: ``In every bureaucracy 
lies the seeds of a small business.''
  Re-exposing those seeds to the light of day and refocusing on the 
basics is the key to what we are now trying to create in Congress--a 
Federal Government that runs with the same efficiency as an effective 
small business.
  In his column, Mr. Stevens outlined four steps that managers can use 
to gauge whether a business is drowning in bureaucracy, and suggestions 
on how to turn things around if it is. His ideas work equally well when 
applied to the Federal Government.


                              Step No. 1:

       Review company rules and procedures, questioning why they 
     were established and, equally important, if they still make 
     sense.
       [Eliminate] anything that detracts from your company's 
     ability to achieve its business objectives rapidly and 
     productively.

  Of course, the National agenda changes with time and circumstances, 
but we are in a period now where our objectives, as mandated by the 
voters, seem better focused than ever.
  Provide for the Nation's needs, protect the unprotected, and 
unshackle our job providers, so that they are able to put more 
Americans to work in new, higher paying jobs.
  Mountains of Federal rules and procedures litter the track and keep 
the objectives out of reach.
  Sure, they may create Federal jobs--after all, there are some 128,000 
regulators on the Federal payroll--but in reality they are job-killers 
for the private sector, with a cost to the economy as high as $1.65 
trillion each year.
  More Government jobs are not the answer.
  That is why the efforts in this Congress toward regulatory reform, 
and the legislation we are considering on the floor, are so critical.
  Cutting back the forest of Federal regulations will make Government 
more efficient. Loosening the bureaucracy will free Government to meet 
its objectives.


                              Step No. 2:

       Take a fresh look at payroll, asking if you really need all 
     of the people who work at your company. Investigate whether 
     some people have been added to back up others--who have 
     little to do themselves--or to enforce the wasteful rules and 
     procedures already in place.

  Small business owners often work 80-hour weeks just to barely break 
even. When they see how the Government wastes their tax dollars, they 
get furious. They could not run their business the way Congress runs 
the Government, with reckless overspending and billion dollar deficits. 
The Government would toss them in jail.
  Many businesses, large and small, realized during the past decade 
that bigger does not necessarily mean better. To help boost their 
profit margin and cut back on the waste, they began downsizing. It is a 
move that has saved many businesses from extinction and returned them 
to profitability, and it is a move being duplicated here in Washington. 
We call it ``reinventing Government.'' With fewer rules and regulations 
clogging the pipeline, fewer Federal employees are needed to enforce 
them, and fewer taxpayer dollars are wasted.
  But re-inventing does not just apply to the number of people on the 
payroll, because bureaucracy is more than just employees--it is also 
the programs that the employees create, enlarge, and regulate. In the 
balanced budget resolution we have crafted, this Congress has taken a 
close look at each and every place we are spending the taxpayers' 
dollars. If a program or an agency does not meet the test of relevancy, 
if it is not meeting an important national need during tight economic 
times, then perhaps this nation can do without it.
  Small business makes these tough decisions every day--it is about 
time Congress makes some tough decisions, too. Writes Mr. Stevens:

       Unless you rid your company of this dead wood, you will be 
     building a bloated company that is likely to sink under its 
     own weight.

                              Step No. 3:

       Make certain that accountability is built into every job. 
     Every personal function and responsibility should be 
     monitored and evaluated. Be sure that seniority is not the 
     criterion for promotion.

  There is a strong correlation to this in Washington. When it comes to 
spending decisions on the Federal level, the effectiveness of a 
Government program does not always determine whether it gets funded 
year after year. Far too often, Government programs get their annual 
funding simply because they are there. Unmonitored and unevaluated, 
they are often automatically renewed for decades. And nothing breeds 
more bureaucracy than an entity which never needs to justify its 
existence.
  If Washington is serious about guarding against bureaucracy, it will 
build accountability into the budget process by sunsetting Federal 
spending. Congress needs the opportunity to reexamine what works and 
what does not. Just because a program has been around for a while does 
not mean it is a good investment.


                              Step No. 4:

       Grant responsible employees the authority to make certain 
     decisions--for which they now need approval--unilaterally. 
     Elaborate approvals do little more than slow the company's 
     response time and make it more difficult to serve customers.

  For the Federal Government, that means moving the concentration of 
power from Washington back to the States, where it belongs. There is 
more than just a physical distance between Washington and the rest of 
the country. There are different priorities outside here as well, and 
nobody on the other side of the Beltway really believes that Congress 
can spend the taxpayers' dollars better than local officials can.
  Our responsibility is to leave the decision making where it can do 
the most good and speed up the response time to best serve the 
taxpayers--who are not only the customers of this Government, but its 
owners as well.
  ``Keep in mind that no one sets out to create a bureaucracy,'' wrote 
Mark Stevens. ``But unless you are diligent in protecting it, the 
bureaucracy will form on its own.''
  Of course, that is exactly what happened in Washington. But if we 
follow the same advice that scores of small businesses have used to 
pull themselves out of the bureaucratic quagmire--eliminating senseless 
rules and regulations, downsizing to promote efficiency, evaluating 
spending decisions, and putting faith, and the dollars to go along with 
it, in the hands of the States, not Washington--we will shrink the 
bureaucracy. And while we are doing that, Mr. President, we will expand 
the people's faith in their Government.
  Mr. President, I suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
  The assistant legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. INHOFE. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for 
the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Grams). Without objection, it is so 
ordered.
  Mr. INHOFE. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that I be allowed 
to speak for whatever time I shall consume during morning business 
between now and 10 o'clock. 

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  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.

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