On 1 November, I published an article entitled CUT SPENDING BY TRANSFORMING CONGRESS INTO A MORE EFFECTIVE AND EFFICIENT ORGANIZATION. In that article I explained there were two ways for the Federal Government to cut spending. The 1 November article centered on how to fix Congress and this one explains how to fix the Executive Branch.
The intent of these two articles is to answer President Biden’s question, “What do the Republicans stand for?” At the time he said it, after the lackluster 2022 midterm election results, it was his way of declaring that the Republican Party does not stand for anything. In light of the 2022 midterm election results, perhaps he is correct or at least too many voters do not believe or see or hear enough about the Republican Party’s underpinnings. Republicans need to find a way to make it crystal-clear to the American public that strong defense, a growing economy, less taxation, states’ rights, law and order, secure borders, energy independence and deregulation, to name a few, are what the Party “stands for.” Also, there was a time when fiscal constraint and fiscal responsibility were regularly included in that list.
All the time we hear Republicans in Washington saying, “We have to cut spending.” “We have to get control of the $33 trillion national debt.” But, when was the last time you heard one of them say, “There are two ways we can cut hundreds of billions of dollars out of the annual budget, get control of excessive spending, and move the country towards a balanced budget.” The point being, there are actual solutions to the problems that are tearing this nation apart and we need our Republican spokespersons to begin leading.
First of all, as a new leader in the House of Representatives, Speaker Johnson is perfectly positioned to publish an agenda that articulates actual solutions the Republican Party believes in and plans to initiate. Secondly, the Republicans have a very strong bench of presidential candidates all out there talking about what needs to be fixed but have you heard one of them say, “Let me explain to you (the voters) exactly how we will cut spending and balance the budget.” I am not suggesting that these two solutions to fix Congress (1 November article) this one, fix the Executive Branch, are the only ways to cut spending, but it is a start that voters can understand and believe in.
GROUND TRUTH:
A mammoth, sprawling, uncontrollable, federal government currently numbering about 4.3 million plus hundreds of thousands of contract employees was never the vision or intent of the Founding Fathers. Organizations have a propensity to grow to a point of diminishing returns; cease to be efficient, effective, and/or no longer perform the functions for which they were created. At that point, a large organization will tend to look inward and become self-perpetuating rather than value-added for the greater good.
Some or all of that could apply today to the Departments in the Executive Branch of the federal government. This results in two major problems that desperately need to get fixed.
First, a too-large organization is very expensive to maintain. A more effective and efficient Executive Branch will be much smaller and less expensive. Every 1% reduction in end-strength equals about a $1.5 billion saving in annual salaries plus billions of dollars more in long-term retirement pay and benefits.
Second, and more importantly, the annual U.S. budget boils up out of this massive organization. Every government-funded program is maintained and sustained inside these bureaucracies. These programs are this organization’s product. General Motor’s product is vehicles; the Executive Branch’s product is taxpayer-supported programs. The question is, what is the value added of those programs? An in-depth review will undoubtedly find programs that have existed for decades, their original purpose no longer relevant, programs that sounded good at their inception but have failed in execution, programs to solve a problem that should have been the purview of state or local officials, programs initiated to solve a short-term problem but live on forever. The list is long. President Reagan summed up the problem with this statement, “Government is like a baby, an alimentary canal with a big appetite at one end and no sense of responsibility at the other.”
Before we launch into how to fix spending and the bureaucracy, a word about the national debt. The out-of-control spending and debt increase is a relatively new problem. The Obama/Biden administration swamped us with more debt than all of the 43 previous presidents combined. And now increasing debt annually has become the norm. The Congressional Budget Office has been telling us for several years that annual debt increases are “not sustainable”, aka, there will be a day of reckoning and it will be ugly.
It is difficult to get our minds around a debt figure of $33 trillion and growing at a rate of about $6 billion a day; a billion dollars about every four hours. If you had stood on a street corner in 1991 handing out dollar bills, one dollar per second, you would just about now finish giving away the first 1 billion dollars. You would be on that street corner for 32,000 years to hand out the first $1 trillion. If you were paying off the current debt at one dollar per second, it would take you over 1 million years. Unsustainable. We have to do something about spending and we have to change the way we think about debt before that day of reckoning becomes a reality.
As Joe Biden was sworn in as president on 20 January 2021 the U.S. national debt was $27.6 trillion. Twenty months and two weeks later it passed $31 trillion; 19 September, 2023 it passed $33 trillion. It will pass $34 trillion before the 2024 election.
A WAY AHEAD IN 2024:
Congressional Authority over the Executive Branch:
- Congressional oversight refers to the power of the U.S. Congress to monitor and change, if necessary, the actions of the executive branch, including the many federal agencies.
- The main goals of congressional oversight are preventing waste, fraud, and abuse and protecting rights and civil liberties.
- Congressional oversight is one of the “implied” powers granted to Congress by the “necessary and proper” clause of the Constitution.
- In empowering the legislative branch of government to oversee the executive branch, congressional oversight forms a key element of the system of checks and balances of power among the three branches of government.
- Congress can also limit an agency’s power by reducing its funding in the annual federal budget process.
Transforming the Executive Branch should be a 6-phase program enacted and enforced by the House of Representatives between now and into the next administration in February, 2025.
PHASE 1: Given the above listed authority, the House should immediately, as part of Speaker Johnson’s agenda, propose specific legislation for the next president to initiate an Executive Branch-wide effort to reduce the size, budget, and influence of the sprawling Executive Branch. In all probability the big-government proponents in the Congress as well as the Biden administration will oppose such legislation. But the Republican Party could, in early January 2024, be on record with a specific plan to reduce the size and reach of the federal bureaucracy which will reduce spending and make voters believe the Republican Party is, in fact, fiscally conservative.
The House Republicans can use this legislative agenda, and the fact that the Democrats have rejected it, to present and execute the remaining phases.
PHASE 2: This 118th Congress should pass an array of reform legislation to cut spending that includes, but not be limited to, the way Congress operates and the plan to streamline the Executive Branch.
PHASE 3: The 2024 Presidential Campaign. During the primary-election season, all Republican candidates should campaign on specific proposals that will alleviate the spending and debt crises and, if elected, will make it a priority to execute detailed reform processes.
PHASE 4: During the 2024 general-election campaign, the Republican presidential candidate will make it clear that the priority for his/her vice president will be to lead Spending and Debt Reform execution.
PHASE 5, post-election: Nomination of Executive Branch Leaders, November 2024 through January 2025. The president/vice president-elect should concentrate their selection process on principals and their deputies who understand organizations, who have successfully led large complex organizations, and who will lead the effort to re-think their mission and to restructure their organization to most effectively and efficiently achieve their mission while cutting spending.
PHASE 6: Spending and Debt Reform Execution, January 2025-June 2025. This will be a difficult process because we are talking about change, massive change, within each Executive Branch organization. We must recognize that for any large organization, especially one as large as the Executive Branch, change is very difficult. Fear of the unknown is a powerful human force, especially in government with an entrenched, layered bureaucracy that is stiff, stifling, and, in many respects, self-serving.
The newly elected Vice President will provide hands-on leadership from start to finish with periodic in-progress reviews provided to the American people.
How does all this get accomplished? It is a long and tedious process; even explaining it is a long tedious read but there are no viable shortcuts to re-thinking, re-designing, and re-structuring large organizations and making them be all they can and should be.
- First, during the last week in January 2025, the vice president should set up a senior Spending and Debt Reform Task Force consisting of the deputies of all the departments, agencies, and commissions. They will be the change-agents and become the junkyard dogs of Washington.
- Second, early February, 2025, define the end state and end date for the campaign. For example, the VP might say, “Over the next six months, or as long as it takes, our task force will look inside every organizational element of the Executive Branch. We will assess their mission (is it relevant today), their structure (too many or too few people), layering (is it OK or dysfunctional), can the organization integrate (communicate) vertically and horizontally efficiently and effectively on a day-to-day basis? Is the organization as a whole agile (able to deal with change as a matter of course) and is there overall value-added for the government and especially for the American people?”
- Third, February through August 2025, execute: The process begins in every named organization by putting together a very detailed organization chart. That’s the visual for the task force and it provides an immediate sense of size, complexity, and layering. Big government is layer after layer after layer, some of which produce nothing; they exist just to oversee what is being produced at the layers below. Why the organization chart? Because it allows the task force to begin the analysis and restructure at the bottom of the organization. One cannot reorganize and restructure top-down; to be successful it must be bottom-up.
BOTTOM-UP FROM THE ORGANIZATION CHARTS:
Using the Department of Agriculture as an example, there are 65 different organizational elements that come under the headings of departments, agencies, councils, institutes, programs, foundations, services, authorities, offices of, boards and facilities. Inside them are departments, directorates, branches, sections, cells, and individual elements. Every one of those becomes a “box” in the organization chart. Each organizational box must list the name of the element, number of employees, and the grade of the leader, GS 10, 12, whatever.
Within the Department of Agriculture, for example, the Deputy Secretary, part of the VP’s senior task force, will form his/her own internal departmental task force. The Department Task Force’s first action will be to send out an internal memo to the leaders of every “box” to submit, in one week, a no-more-than-two-page report to the Deputy Secretary. The report format should include, as a minimum these six elements:
- First, a one or two-sentence mission statement that describes what it is that element collectively does; for example, responsible for writing, executing, and enforcing Department Regulation 135, Beef Export Program, and reporting results quarterly to ………
During the following week, the Department Task Force will begin a detailed review of every input report. Their job is to ask, do we need Dept Reg 135 any longer? If so, could this be done with fewer people? Could the same number of employees also be responsible for Dept Reg 246, Pork Export Program? Do we need the report quarterly? And most importantly, what is the value-added of that organizational element to the overall Department’s mission?
Keep in mind that there are undoubtedly tens of thousands of worthless reports written every year by an entrenched bureaucratic mass that lives on forever sucking up tax dollars, stifling initiative, and being a roadblock to progress.
- Second, the report should describe the grade structure of all the employees in the box.
The Department task Force will look at the grade structure for each of the boxes in the organization chart. Is it commensurate with the degree of complexity of the mission? Could two or more similar “boxes” be combined, perhaps scaled-down and led by this same leader (a span of control issue)? Is the leader a “working leader” or just grading the papers of his/her subordinates and passing them up the chain?
- Third, describe a typical work week; number of meetings, amount of travel, etc.
This can reveal a lot about an organizational element and its leader. Many meetings are just to fill up time, or are a daily social coffee clutch, or make the person in charge feel like he/she is actually “leading”. Many are a colossal waste of time. If employees have time to attend too many meetings, they probably are not very busy to begin with. Is the travel critical to success, nice to have, or perhaps just to fill up the workweek? Travel is very expensive.
- Fourth, what laws and/or regulations guide that organization’s work?
This is a critical element in the review. Has this organization been acting out a scenario that is unnecessary or at least should better reside at the state or local level?
- Fifth, a list, in single sentences, of major accomplishments in the past twelve months
The task force will then determine if the accomplishments are in line with the mission or are just doing busy work?
- Sixth and finally, a short statement of value-added. For example, without us the Department would not/could not do the following………
The Departments’ Task Force reviews of the input from the bottom-up is all about policy, practices, process, grade structure commensurate with overall responsibility, span of control, layering, and value-added determination. When the Vice President routinely attends Departmental Task Force sessions, he/she will be grading their work and progress; are they tough enough, too tough, thorough enough, on the right track, or being overly protective of the status quo? The VP will also be able to pick up strong points and pass them along to other Departments as best practices.
The leaders of the Executive Departments along with their deputies will attend, in mass, a monthly in-progress-review with the president and vice president where they will lay out their findings to date.
Once the task force has worked its way up from the bottom, looking at every element, their individual mission, and value added, then and only then will they be capable of looking back and seeing how many subordinate elements are off track, irrelevant, unnecessary or even counterproductive. They will then be capable of restructuring, re-aligning, re-tasking, reorganizing the subordinate elements to create an organization that is more focused, aligned, responsive, innovative, agile, and rid of pockets of resistance.
What must be emphasized here is the importance of the bottom-up review process. As the task force works up from layer to layer on the organization chart, they will come to some conclusions about value added at each level. Having reached the top of the organization chart it is possible the Vice President’s senior task force could conclude that an entire department’s continued existence should be questioned. A prime example is the Department of Education. We know that education in America is a national disgrace and not getting better in spite of (or because of) the 4,400 employees and a 2023 budget of $68 billion; not to mention the hundreds of billions of tax dollars expended by the department since its inception 43 years ago.
This process may look tedious and time-consuming because it is. But unless we begin at the bottom and unless we include every element, we will never achieve an acceptable level of success.
CONCLUSIONS:
The task forces must be especially mindful of the phrase, “we provide oversight.”That is a red flashing light that an organization does not, in and of itself, produce anything of value. They simply exist to grade papers, expand their purview, inhibit progress and expend tax dollars. As President Reagan reminded us, “The most terrifying words in the English language are, I’m from the government and I’m here to help.”
During the process, it is important to not lose sight of the two-fold objectives. First, the objective is NOT to reach some specific lower end-strength number of federal employees. The objective is to rid the government of “boxes” in the organization charts that have no valueadded, they just exist because they have always been there. The end state is an organization that is leaner, more focused, more efficient, more effective, and agile. The second objective is to end up with an organization that has a much smaller and more realistic annual budget.
Why do all of this work? Two reasons:
One the most common attempts at downsizing, in my experience used numerous times over the past decades, have been to declare a hiring freeze or order an across-the-board, for example, ten percent personnel cut, neither of which make any sense nor achieve any lasting positive results.
Second, what I have described above has never been done before. We have just allowed the Executive Branch to grow without ever undertaking a necessary pruning process.
When completed, many positions, perhaps hundreds of thousands of them, will be eliminated. It will then take a couple years of shuffling the deck by the Office of Personnel Management to get folks reassigned or retired, but it is within the art of the possible and worth the effort.
Let me remind you one more time, the president’s budget is the sum of what all of the departments, agencies, councils, institutes, programs, foundations, services, authorities, offices of, boards, and facilities believe they need to accomplish their mission. When, perhaps tens of thousands of actions, programs, and policies are eliminated because they are outdated, unnecessary, and/or redundant, the budget requirement can in all probability be downsized by hundreds of billions of dollars.
There is also a states’ rights issues in all of this. As the federal government grows, a natural outcome is that they over-reach into areas that are better and more effectively handled at the local and state levels. Federal over-reach tends to result in a one-size-fits-all approach to problem-solving and creates a stifling regulation-nation.
BOTTOM LINE:
Getting spending and hence debt under control will resonate with the American people a lot more than the tax-and-spend economic baseline of the Democrat Party. This is a necessary, positive endeavor the Republican Party needs to embrace now with legislation that will call for this to happen with the next administration.
This legislation will send a powerful message to Congress and the voters; Congress has become increasingly irresponsible with deficit spending and debt. They need a wake-up call and now is the optimum time.
President Reagan got it right when he reminded us that:
“Government does not solve problems; it subsidizes them.”
“Government is not the solution to our problem; government is the problem.”
“Government always finds a need for whatever money it gets.”
Transforming Congress and the Executive Branch are not the do-all, be-all efforts to cut spending but they are a start, they are understandable, they will save taxpayer money and they are within the art of the possible. The Republican Party needs to embrace this concept of operations and Republican leaders in the House and 2024 Republican presidential candidates need to lead the way.
Marvin L. Covault, Lt Gen US Army, retired, is the author of VISION TO EXECUTION, a book for leaders, and FIX THE SYSTEMS, TRANSFORM AMERICA as well as the author of a blog WeThePeopleSpeaking.com