Public Policy and Governance – Page 326

The Shadow Government

A fair amount of my academic research has addressed issues of government privatization–or more accurately, contracting out. (Privatization, as Morton Marcus frequently notes, is what Margaret Thatcher did in England: selling off government enterprises to private sector owners. In the US, privatization means providing government services through for-profit or nonprofit contractors–a very different thing.)

My research has convinced me of three things: 1) while contracting may be appropriate under some circumstances, it is not the panacea that so many politicians seem to think. Sometimes it makes sense, often not. 2) the cost savings that are touted by privatization advocates are largely mythical, the result of omitting the cost to government of contract management–or the even greater costs of failing to manage those contracts. And 3) far from shrinking the size of government, as proponents contend, contracting actually expands both the size and scope of government, while at the same time making that expansion less visible and government less accountable.

Two recent studies confirm those latter conclusions.

A few weeks ago, the Government Accounting Office released the results of its investigation of contracting costs. It found that contracting was often more costly than providing the same services in-house. And just a few days ago, during a debate over a proposed federal contracting rule, the number of of federal contract workers–people working full-time for the federal government who are contract workers rather than federal employees–was estimated at approximately 7.1 million. That’s in contrast to the full-time civilian federal workforce of 2.1 million. The Economic Policy Institute estimates that 43% of all employees who do the government’s work are employed by contractors. (It further estimates that 20% of that 43% are paid “poverty wages.”)

It isn’t only the federal government, of course. When you add the “shadow” employees working under contract for state and local governments, estimates of the number of contracted government employees run as high as 17 million. It’s impossible to know for certain, because there is very little data available that would allow governments to monitor these workers, and considerable resistance from the business community to the Obama administration’s recent efforts to collect and analyze such information.

It’s very difficult to hold government accountable when you can’t see government at work. Contract workers need to come out of the shadows.

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It’s Complicated

It’s election season, and as I’ve watched the various ads, debates and speeches—and grown impatient with the slogans and posturing—it’s occurred to me that the current complexity of our society and world may be outstripping our ability to govern ourselves.

Invoking Ronald Reagan or FDR appeals to partisans, and pledging fealty to American values or ones belief in American Exceptionalism (rarely defined) may provide a window into the philosophical orientation of the speaker, but these invocations give us no clue to how the candidate proposes to solve the growing numbers of problems that aren’t amenable to ideological solutions.

I don’t blame the candidates for this. After all, how many of us, however well educated and informed, really have the background to understand the complicated issues we face?

Take economic growth and job creation, and arguments over whether the proper solution is more stimulus or more austerity. I find certain economists’ arguments more compelling, but not because I have any expertise in economics. Like most of us, I read the competing arguments, compare the assertions to what I (think I) know, and decide which proposals seem most reasonable. Add in the European debt crisis, and I’m pretty much going with my gut.

Similarly, ongoing debates about government regulation are typically posed as “more” or “less,” when the real question is “which ones.” How many of us really know enough to opine about the safety of fracking, or the maximum amount of arsenic that’s safe in our drinking water?

The recent hysteria over health care reform was another case-in-point. That the American health care industry (it hasn’t been remotely coherent enough to be called a “system”) is a wasteful, costly monstrosity is admitted by virtually everyone. The question isn’t whether to keep it or change it; failure to change it will bankrupt the country. The question is how, and I defy any of the folks who got up and screamed at Town Hall meetings to offer a comprehensive, workable alternative to the Affordable Care Act—or even to demonstrate a grasp of how things currently work. This is not a defense of the Act (I personally favored “Medicare for All”), because I do not know enough to attack or defend it. My point is that neither did most of the people doing the attacking and defending.

Recognizing the limits of what “we the people” understand points to an uncomfortable challenge. When should democratic processes decide policies, and when should we trust impartial technocrats?

I am generally comfortable leaving such things as the assignments of air lanes, food safety standards, the disposal of chemicals and hundreds of similar decisions in the hands of people who actually have expertise in such matters. I want real scientists deciding whether global climate change is real, not Rick Perry. On the other hand, as we saw during the last administration, the people we elect can always appoint dubious “experts” who will favor solutions desired by their political allies.

Back before our politics became so toxic, we used to say that there is no Republican or Democratic way to pick up the garbage. There’s also no Republican or Democratic way to address food safety, environmental degradation, air traffic control, stock fraud and a million other tasks that government must provide.

None of this is to suggest that a candidate’s philosophy of government is irrelevant. The way in which a President or Mayor approaches the job will inevitably be guided by his or her belief in the proper role of government, and that’s as it should be.

We just shouldn’t elect people who mistake slogans for solutions.

My Very Own Economic Fantasy

Well, I see from my morning paper that the Congressional GOP is proposing to address the national debt by slashing funding for such frills as home heating assistance and job training. Our compassionate conservatives do remain adamant about protecting wealthy “job creators” from any additional taxes, though.

This shouldn’t surprise anyone; the GOP’s current ideological rigidity has proven impervious to evidence suggesting that keeping tax rates ridiculously low does not spur job creation. As many rich people will confirm, they are more likely to create jobs when poor people have the means to purchase their goods.

As long as those in Congress are playing fantasy economics, let me offer my own fantasy prescription for what ails us.

We have two big problems right now (okay, we have dozens, but I don’t have solutions to all of them): the erosion of America’s already inadequate social safety net, and the lack of jobs, especially for people who don’t have specialized skills. What if we created a true safety net, consisting of a basic income level for those falling below a set poverty level and single payer medical coverage for all of us? And what if, as part of that income support, we required the able-bodied to work for the government? I can think of all kinds of jobs we could create that would improve our local communities: taking care of our parks, assisting teachers in our schools, cleaning streets and alleys, tutoring…the list is endless. At the state and federal level, jobs could include repairing our deteriorated infrastructure, a la FDR.

This should pacify the folks who believe that anyone needing public assistance is by definition a parasite (somehow, their own use of Social Security, Medicare, police and fire, public streets, etc. doesn’t count as government assistance). And it would put people who need work in jobs that need to be done, but aren’t being done because the ideologues have been busy trying to fire every public worker, on the theory that someone working in the public sector teaching our children or protecting our property or overseeing the construction of our highways or administering our tax system doesn’t REALLY do a job–that only work in the private sector “counts.”

We all know this won’t happen. Instead, we’ll just protect the wealthy and screw the unfortunate. Welcome to the brave new America, compliments of Congress.

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But What About the Children?

I see where a federal judge has upheld the part of Alabama’s harsh new immigration law that requires public schools to check the immigration status of all students. This is one more effort to punish the children of undocumented immigrants.

What I find particularly galling about laws like this, and opposition to the Dream Act (which recognizes what any sane person understands–that a two-year-old did not intentionally ‘break the law’ by coming to the US with his parents) is that the people who are dead-set against allowing these children to attend public schools or universities tend to be the same people who can be found piously proclaiming their concern for ‘the children.’

Protect the children from exposure to porn on the internet! Protect the children from recognizing the existence of gay people! Protect the children from studying ‘dirty’ books in school, or taking them out at the local library!

This heartfelt desire to ‘protect’ children would certainly be laudable if it weren’t so selective. But somehow, this often-expressed concern doesn’t extend to paying taxes to insure that poor children have enough to eat, and it doesn’t extend to educating them so that they can be productive members of the only society they have ever known.

Even Rick Perry, in the only statement he has made that I agree with, has said that people who would keep children of undocumented immigrants out of school are heartless. But then he heard the voice of the Tea Party, genuflected, and apologized. God forbid a candidate for President should show some human compassion!

How mean-spirited have we become?

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Doubting Evolution

I am a big believer in science, but I must admit that human behavior over the past couple of weeks has made me doubt evolution.

First, we had the appalling eruptions during GOP debates–first, audience applause when Brian Williams prefaced a question to Rick Perry by noting that executions in Texas during his tenure far exceeded those in any other state; and second, shouts of “yes, let them die” when Ron Paul was asked whether uninsured people should simply be allowed to die.

Now we have the repulsive right-wing reaction to the execution of Troy Davis.

Callers to conservative radio shows last night defended that execution by insisting that the family of the murder victim “deserved closure.” Presumably, closure can come only from the death of another human being. Now, I am not a supporter of the death penalty, for many reasons I won’t go into here, but even if one does support capital punishment, I cannot conceive of the “closure” that would come from proceeding with an execution where there is such substantial doubt of guilt. How can killing the wrong person provide justice or even retribution? How would executing a possibly innocent man be any different from the murder for which they are seeking vengeance?

Perhaps human evolution doesn’t always produce a capacity for compassion or empathy, but it should at least produce beings capable of a modicum of reason. These sickening displays of irrational blood-lust suggest that some among our human family not only haven’t evolved, they’ve regressed.

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