Judd Gregg: Shaking up the status quo

The next Republican president should have a duty, a calling and a cause.  

There are plenty of problems for him or her to remedy. Fixing the operational structure of the federal government should be near the top of the list.

Not since the Grace Commission in the early days of the Reagan administration has there been any broad attempt to review the mess that is called the United States government.

{mosads}It is time.

The goal should be an assault on all the many things that are wrong with the way we manage our national affairs: the redundancy, the inanity, the failures, and the just plain stupid things that have sprouted over the years.

An overhaul would be for the most part an exercise in honestly acknowledging what would generate better governance.  

But we can expect such a move to be strongly resisted by the purveyors of the status quo who derive power, prestige and income from government activity — activity that is, more often than not, of marginal value. 

Reform may be a heavy lift. But if it is pursued with vigor and determination, it is doable. It is well past time to do it.

Start with a few things that the new Republican president should propose.

First, we do not need all these cabinet posts and the duplicative layers of administration and activity that they bring.   

Each cabinet post is like a mini-royal court, with swarms of attendees running around stirring up activity that gives them the appearance of importance. 

Several departments should be merged.

Put the Department of Agriculture and the Department of Commerce together. Call the merged entity the Department of Economic Growth. Reduce the overhead and head count by forty percent.  

Do the same with the Department of the Interior and the Environmental Protection Agency. Call the new body the Department of Natural Resources.  

Combine the departments of Health and Human Services (HHS), Labor and Education, and include pension programs. Call this the Department of HELP, after the Senate committee of the same name.  

Forty percent cost savings could probably be achieved just from the buildings and accoutrements that would no longer be required. 

Second, introduce a new initiative modeled on the “BRAC” system that already operates in the defense sector, and apply it to other areas. 

Under BRAC, an independent review board identifies inefficient or redundant military installations, proposes adjusting or closing them, and then there is an up-or-down vote on the whole package of recommendations.

Similar review committees should be set up for activities now undertaken by HHS, the Department of Labor and the Department of Education.  

These panels should review programmatic activity that is duplicative, outdated or where the amount spent is not justified by the return to taxpayers in services.  

There are literally hundreds of overlapping programs in each of these departments.  They survive because people — other than the actual intended beneficiaries — have something to gain from them, in the sense of working within them or deriving income from their existence.

These people fiercely resist meaningful review, never mind actual change. But that is precisely why a BRAC-like approach is needed. 

The savings would be huge and the improvement in government would be refreshing and rewarding. It would get us back to focusing on programs that work.

Third, reduce the federal government employment by five percent in the first year of the presidency and by ten percent within three years. Change federal employment practices so that people can be fired for incompetence, mismanagement and dereliction.  

Federal employment levels have been steady climbing for decades. This has occurred in large part because nothing ever ends at the federal level, everyone is employed forever, and all budgets take last year’s spending as their baseline and go up.   

A reduction in the federal workforce could be handled in large part simply by attrition. But to the extent that it requires lay offs, people should be laid off.  

There are many areas where this would have virtually no effect on government service, especially in cases where technology can be used to improve performance.  

The overarching point, of course, is that too often things just flop along in our government. People worry about the crisis of the day or the press event of the week, while the day-to-day business of government is never subject to conscious, meaningful change.  

The next Republican president needs to break this model. He or she needs to take hold of our federal government and give it a good shake.

Judd Gregg (R) is a former governor and three-term senator from New Hampshire who served as chairman and ranking member of the Senate Budget Committee, and as ranking member of the Senate Appropriations Foreign Operations subcommittee.