Obama made a stop in Green Bay a couple of days ago and, as he’s known to do, made a speech. Big shocker. Pretty standard stuff but there was one specific section of the speech I’d like to dwell on and possibly over analyze. Here’s the relevant passage that piqued my interest:
As president, I will go through the entire federal budget, page-by-page, line-by-line and I will eliminate the programs that do not work and are not needed…. Even for the programs that we do need, I’ll make them work better and cost less. I want to create a high performance team that evaluates every agency and every office, based on how well they are serving the American tax payer. We are going to fire government managers who aren’t getting results. We will cut funding for programs that are wasting your money. We will use technology and the lessons from the private sector to improve efficiency across every level of government because we cannot meet 21st century challenges with a 20th century bureaucracy, and that is going to change when I’m president.”
Idealistic? Mmm-hmm. Ambitious? You bet’cha. Realistic? I seriously doubt it. Shenanigans? Quite possibly.
I realize this is a politician making a campaign speech but… seriously? High performance team to evaluate government efficiency? Fix the bloated bureaucracy by creating more bureaucracy? Come on. Adding to the total number of bureaucrats is not likely to make anyone more efficient, even if you do modernize the existing bureaucracy.
Then there’s the firing of government managers. This one had me scratching my head. Is he talking about civil servants? No, he can’t be…that’d be like suggesting the President could fire the chairman of the SEC. He must be talking about people in his cabinet. OK, fair enough. I’m all for accountability. If someone in your cabinet pulls a Brownie, sack ’em. Immediately.
More than anything, it’s disappointing that Obama is saying we’re still at a stage where we need to evaluate and find the inefficiencies in our government. After years of watching the current administration awkwardly stumble their way through multiple wars and natural disasters we still need to evaluate. Great. Change? Yeah, we’ll get to that, some day….
It’s funny, especially as a government contractor, to hear this. A couple points: (1) Isn’t this the mission of the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) – take a look, http://www.opm.gov . (2) Performance evaluations for fed employees aren’t enforced across the board, so I’m not sure how they’ll exactly be able to tell who isn’t “getting results.” (3) Since most of the government is made up of contractors already (such as myself), which already have performance metrics/goals/deliverables, I’m interested to see what kind additional oversight he would propose.
I agree that the government is full of inefficiencies, but to just throw a blanket statement at the public just sounds to me like another not-to-be-fulfilled campaign promise.