Twenty
years after Ronald Reagan's declaration of war on the welfare state
bureaucracy, and five years following its consummation with a Republican
majority in both houses of Congress, big government won the fight. Total
federal government employment just hit nearly 17 million, according
to a new study by Paul C. Light of the Brookings Institution, reported
in the January edition of Government Executive magazine.
You thought Washington's civilian civil service was only two million
(1.9 million employees in 1996)? But one must include the uniformed
military (1.5 million), and the semi-private Postal Service (.85 million),
for a total direct employment of 4.25 million. But Dr. Light, for the
first time, developed a refined estimate of the "shadow government"
personnel of private contractors for the federal government (5.6 million),
grantors (2.4 million) and the state, county and local government employees
encumbered by federal mandates (4.7 million). This represents an army
of 16.96 million who directly or indirectly work for the feds.
Comparable pre-Reagan numbers for the whole "shadow government" do not
exist but we do know the direct domestic civil service did double since
President John Kennedy's days, from 760,000 to 1.1 million, and non-defense
contractors and grantors increased by 1.6 million since 1984. The year
1960 was approximately when the modern conservative movement was created
as a means to control a "runaway" domestic bureaucracy. It has been
a losing battle, and not just in people and dollars. In his annual year-end
report on the federal judiciary for 1998, Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist
has just criticized Congress for nationalizing an increasing number
of crimes, contributing to a double-digit increase in federal criminal
cases which "threatens to change entirely the nature of the federal
system." He warned that "Federal courts were not created to adjudicate
local crimes, no matter how sensational or heinous the crimes may be.
Matters that can be handled adequately by the states should be left
to them." His examples of local matters preempted by the feds included
arson, car theft, child support, and interstate disruption of zoos or
circuses, hardly weighty matters of national importance.
Candidate Ronald Reagan promised to reduce the size of the domestic
bureaucracy and he did have some success. Between 1981 and the end of
his first term in 1984, non-defense federal full-time-equivalent employment
went down by 78,650, exceeding his pre-set goal. The decrease in number
of employees, the "head count," actually was down 105,484. Significantly,
about 90 percent of the decrease had been achieved by the end of the
first year. Early, bold, and determined action (in the form of a total
freeze on employment, followed later by a more flexible, managed freeze
and rigorous monitoring) allowed his targets to be achieved. By the
end of his second term, reductions in the core Great Society agencies
generally held firm, but other non-defense employment edged up nearly
to the levels under Jimmy Carter. The problem was that the political
energy of the first term had largely dissipated and clear plans and
goals were not set, so the natural forces of bureaucratic growth re-asserted
themselves.
George Bush said he, too, would cut the bureaucracy, but he never made
clear beforehand what programs were to be targeted, even in the general
terms of the second Reagan Administration. Nor did he detail plans specifying
how or to what degree this should be accomplished after he entered office.
Consequently the domestic bureaucracy under President Bush actually
increased 24,283 (more if budget sleights of hand are corrected), while
uniformed military personnel went down 275,079 and civilian military
employment decreased 5,900. Interestingly, Bill Clinton made larger
reductions: 53,028 non-defense cuts and 184,828 overall by 1996--planned
to decrease by 272,900 by 2000. Yet, if Mr. Clinton had had his way
on health care reform, the bureaucracy would have ballooned under his
watch, adding at least 59 new government offices and their related staff.
Even with the large Clinton non-defense cuts, his domestic bureaucracy
was still 49,904 higher than the 1984 low point under President Reagan,
because so much had grown back under President Bush and his Democratic
Congress. Indeed, by the end of 1996, non-defense employment was only
28,746 below the point at which Reagan began in 1981, barely worth the
effort. And the domestic "shadow government" actually increased. At
the same time, the military that Reagan increased to win the Cold War
bore the brunt of the Clinton reductions. While the 1994 Republican
Congress clearly tried to restore the Reagan domestic cuts and military
increases, it would have had to pass its vetoed 1995 budget plan to
return to 1984 levels.
President Reagan's success was to shrink domestic discretionary spending
permanently, declining as a share of gross domestic product from 12.7
percent in 1962 to 6.6 percent by 1998. But the big reductions in money
and people after Reagan were in defense, while entitlement programs
exploded leading to a large increase overall, giving the feds today
the highest share of taxation since the fighting of World War II. Unable
to justify open increases in Washington's budgets, politicians have
had to rely more on mandates upon local governments and the private
sector to force them to do what Washington wills. Even the Light data
do not include private mandates in its total employment, which a Cato
Institute study estimated could double direct national government spending,
and perhaps employment. If so, total federal government employment would
total 20 million or more, and including all local and state government
personnel, total government employment may add to 50 million. This could
represent 40 percent of total employment and wealth consumed by government
bureaucracy.
Still, something has changed. National bureaucracy is a spent force.
Georgie Anne Geyer, a careful reporter and a confirmed nationalist,
observes that: "There is a new localism that is taking the place of
the hallowed American sense of 'Manifest Destiny' in the larger world....It
is not that Americans are apathetic or unconcerned; it is that their
civic passions adhere to their city and community" now, rather than
to their nation. Today almost all growth and creativity is in private
institutions and most governmental innovation is at the state and local
level. Remarkably, that was Ronald Reagan's precise plan, "to return
power to states, communities and citizens," as he promised in his Inaugural
address. While big government legions keep taxing and mandating community
and business institutions, below the surface a new localism is restoring
the decentralized America envisioned by its founders. The question is,
how long will the creative locals keep feeding the ravenous troops gnawing
at the roots of their energy and productivity?
Donald
Devine, former director Of the U.S. Office of Personnel Management,
is a columnist and a Washington-based policy consultant and a Vice Chairman
for the American Conservative Union.
