Commentary
Years ago as an intern in D.C., and long before the agencies all locked their doors to visitors, I had the occasion to putter around the Department of Transportation and the Department of Housing and Urban Development.
These were obviously not normal workplaces. To my amazement, they were mostly dark, empty, and quiet, and the employees did not seem in the slightest bit busy doing anything at all. It was all kind of spooky.
It then occurred to me that these many hundreds of agencies and millions of employees are not really covered well by the media much at all and certainly not in any detail. They mostly operate without any oversight but for the periodic reporting done for Congress and the sporadic accounting reports from the Government Accounting Office that are mostly ignored.
It’s rather strange, isn’t it? The business pages are packed with details on the hirings and operations of every publicly traded company. We know sales, products, locations, and management structures and changes. But as regards these agencies that are supposed to be responsible to the people, there is a strange lack of curiosity about what they really do and how they do it.
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- The average pay in 109 of 125 federal agencies was more than $100,000 per employee and after just three years federal employees received 44 days—8.8 full work weeks of paid time off.
- In a report to Congress, the Biden Administration redacted (hid) 350,000 names and 280,000 work locations from the payrolls. And these employees aren’t spies or intelligence officers—they are rank-and-file workers within the alphabet soup of traditional federal agencies like Education, Health and Health Services, EPA, or IRS. As a result, the organization couldn’t tell “who” was working, “where” they were located, and “what” they were doing!
- At the Department of Commerce, the Inspector General found 23 percent of employees sampled were overpaid.
- Employees took nearly a year in some instances to update their duty station, which dictates their locality pay. The Department couldn’t verify whether employees were showing up to the office as required.
- The Commerce Department has 47,000 employees. The Inspector General sampled only 31 employees and seven of those were overpaid by a combined $43,000!
You are not surprised, right? And you probably assume that this is just the tip of the iceberg also. Indeed, one supposes so. I’m looking at the Federal Register. It lists 429 agencies in the government now, with only a tiny number mentioned in the U.S. Constitution. The rest have been legislated into existence by Congress, going far beyond anything the Founders ever imagined.
Thanks to nearly a century and a half of gradual accumulation, these agencies have a permanent life. The employees cannot be fired except for egregious actions. And the elected president has no control over them. The president can appoint agency heads but then the battle becomes hundreds versus millions, and the hundreds of appointees are new at their jobs and easily driven out with a hint of financial impropriety, real or made up. The permanent class of middle-state bureaucrats with all the institutional knowledge know precisely where the power resides. It is with them.
This system of administrative hegemony has not been seriously tested in court. It is likely contrary to everything the Constitution ever imagined. True, Congress created these agencies but they exist within the executive branch. Congress cannot simply outsource its job to another branch and then wash its hands of the result. That practice makes a mess out of the original Constitutional structure.
Leaving those fundamental issues aside, what’s striking is how little oversight of these agencies really takes place. Very little reporting is done on them at all apart from perfunctory reprinting of agency press releases by major media. The reason is that many reporters rely on the permanent government for information sources and protection after the fact. There is a hand-in-glove relationship going on here and it’s been building for many decades, even dating back to the Great War.
Every once in a while, we get a glimpse of the reality on the ground. The work of OpenTheBooks makes life briefly hard for agencies that never like to be in the news but very little if anything is ever done about the problem.
There has been some much-welcome talk lately of untangling the cozy relationships between these hundreds of agencies and the industries they oversee. That’s good. We really should not be building a corporatist system that runs contrary to the ideal of free enterprise. But the idea of ending agency capture is also not a permanent solution to the problem.
We must think more fundamentally. With an ideal president and legislature, we would pursue something like what is going on in Argentina today. Whole agencies need to be deleted entirely from the federal budget. And then let the chips fall where they may. So long as I can remember, every Republican president has promised to get rid of the Department of Education. Great. But why does it never happen? I would like to know the answer. Plus, that is only a starter: there are hundreds of such agencies that should be on the list.
The real solution is a complete rethinking of government itself.
Every candidate should be required to articulate their perspective on the role of government. It is crucial to evaluate current government practices in light of their answers. Voters should also consider what type of society they wish to live in – one that is free or centrally managed. This is the fundamental question that should guide our decision-making.
The recent events at the Department of Commerce offer a glimpse into the issue, but the true scope of the problem is much larger. A thorough examination of government operations, conducted by a reputable think tank with full transparency, would likely reveal shocking findings. As some news outlets have rightly pointed out, democracy suffers when shrouded in secrecy. Shedding light on the vast network of civilian agencies that claim to govern our lives better than we can ourselves is essential.
In memory of Adam Andrzejewski, the founder of OpenTheBooks, who passed away at the age of 55, this column pays tribute to his commitment to transparency in government. Unlike many non-profit organizations, OpenTheBooks was a research institute focused on productive work that addresses critical issues. His recent piece, detailing how he was silenced by Forbes, is a must-read. May his legacy inspire others to follow in his footsteps.
Please note that the views expressed in this article are the author’s own opinions and may not necessarily align with those of The Epoch Times.
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