Americans get angry when they learn of government bureaucrats spending lavishly at a Las Vegas hotel or Secret Service agents consorting with prostitutes, and they should. Such conduct wastes money and drains Americans’ respect for their government.
Washington’s routine for such embarrassing revelations is for executive and legislative officials to express shock, demand an investigation, and vow that such shenanigans will never happen again. A legislative tweak or two, some heightened oversight for the agencies in question, and then all is forgotten until the next scandal – which invariably comes along.
The problem with all this isn’t how we react to the occasional revelation of bureaucratic malfeasance. It’s how we don’t act the rest of the time.
Our government is so huge and unwieldy that only robust, continuing scrutiny – by Congress and from within each department – will keep it on course. Yet somehow we seem unable to rise to that challenge.
Most federal employees behave professionally and appropriately; I do not believe that the lapses unveiled in the GSA or Secret Service scandals are common. Nor, however, is misconduct exceptional; it happens much too frequently in government, even in the military: think of our soldiers in Afghanistan burning Korans.
How do we rebuild Americans’ trust that the federal government can get things right?
First, Congress and the agencies themselves must not just react to misconduct after the fact, but be alert to its possibility in the first place: they should expect it will occur, search it out, and act to prevent it.
Second, Congress must insist that top layers of the bureaucracy take ethics and efficacy seriously. Third, the civil service system needs overhauling to ensure bonuses, promotions, rewards and even disciplinary actions are infrequent, few rewards exist for genuine excellence and even fewer penalties for shoddy performance.
Finally, huge problems are created by duplicate programs and overlap – there are 15 agencies assigned to food safety, for instance – along with wasteful spending, uncollected debts, unenforced rules and unmanageable programs. Congress bears heavy responsibility: it regularly enacts programs with competing or similar objectives, adding unneeded layers to an already unmanageable government structure. It’s time for concerted attention to the big picture.
There’s no question where this attention must come from: Congress and the White House. It’s popular to say these days that “government is the problem,” but it is equally true that only government can be the answer. No one else can fix it. It will take dogged effort and a willingness to delve into the unglamorous details of bureaucratic process. But until that happens, scandals and bumbling will continue to undermine Americans’ trust in their government.
Lee Hamilton is director of the Center on Congress at Indiana University. He was a member of the U.S. House of Representatives for 34 years.
