Checking In on the Bureaucracy
Bubba
25 Nov
There’s a vibe shift in the air that has even liberal pundits like Ezra Klein scrutinizing the inefficiencies of government. (NYT)
The conversation: In the latest episode of his eponymous podcast, Klein declares “government should deliver fast, affordably, reliably,” and it shouldn’t be controversial for Democrats to say so.
The numbers: As Klein points out, over the past one hundred years, the government’s ability to build stuff quickly and efficiently has steadily declined.
In 1900, a New York subway contract delivered 28 stations in 4 years.
By contrast, high-speed rail funded by the 2009 Recovery Act still hasn’t materialized after 15 years.
A 2021 Biden administration pledge to build 500,000 EV charging stations by 2030 has so far resulted in just eight.
Zoom in: In fiscal year 2022, the government spent $271 billion to employ 2.3 million federal workers.
It cost another $694 billion to compensate federal contractors in FY 2022.
According to Jennifer Pahkla, a senior fellow at the Niskanen Center, 90% of federal jobs rely on outdated hiring processes like resume keyword matching and self-assessment questionnaires, limiting merit-based hiring.
Pahlka:
What we’ll do to hire civil servants is we will have human resources people screen their resumes and look for — and I’m not kidding you — exact matches in the language between the job description and what’s on their resume. …
And then once you’ve found all the people who were great at cutting and pasting, then you send them all a self-assessment questionnaire. Because it’s safer to have them self-assess than it is to have, say, if it’s a programming job, programmers interview them — where they might bring their own biases to the table.
Context: The Trump administration’s recently announced Department of Government Efficiency aims to eliminate waste and drastically reduce spending at the federal level.
Vivek Ramaswamy, who along with Elon Musk is leading the commission, has said he wants to slash the federal government’s headcount by as much as 75%.
Counterpoint: For a “(sort of) defense of bureaucracy,” check out this blog post from left-leaning journalist Kevin Drum, who cites increased manufacturing spending following the Biden admin’s CHIPS Act as one sign the government actually can move fast.
Chart: Kevin Drum
Bubba’s Two Cents
We’ve expressed some skepticism about whether DOGE can deliver on its grand ambitions, especially if it doesn’t touch entitlements. But I think Klein is right that expecting government to run efficiently should be a bipartisan concern. I don’t see how you can look at government hiring processes (just to name one example), and not root for the spirit of what DOGE is trying to do.