Big Al's Big Scam
ByronTork
"Big Al's Big Scam" ON A SUNNY DAY LAST SEPTEMBER VICE PRESIDENT AL GORE joined President Clinton on the White House lawn to mark the second anniversary of the reinventing government campaign....
...The news cannot come as a surprise to Gore...
...They say it proves that New Democrats like themselves have a sensible alternative to Republican economic proposals...
...Still, considering the powers Clinton has given them by executive order, the federal workers' unions have come out of reinventing government significantly stronger than before...
...And who would bother to check the numbers...
...No doubt their departures were duly counted among the downsizing brought about by reinventing government...
...If you decrease that number, you are decreasing the size of the government...
...If we're going to decentralize, it will simplify things," he says, but it might not make much difference overall...
...During the September White House ceremony, he not only repeated the Sio8 billion figure, but promised to save another $70 billion beyond that...
...Again, Gore has reduced his first estimate...
...Like mandatory dues or service fees, it faces a grim future in the Republican Congress...
...And how do they use that power...
...Still, aren't the federal employees' unions up in arms...
...And the White House is not mentioning the fact that parts of the federal bureaucracy are actually growing under reinventing government...
...Kamarck says that the National Performance Review considered the issue, but saw no reason to reduce the number of political appointees...
...that task, he wrote, "is not for a humble columnist to say without a prolonged research effort...
...After all, the president said, $58 billion in savings is "already in the bank...
...Indeed, if one reads the volume after volume produced by 42 February 1996 • The American Spectator the National Performance Review, it becomes clear that Al Gore believes the highest purpose of government is the delivery of services...
...Despite such retro-spin, that is precisely what Gore's National Partnership Council wanted...
...he now says this aspect of reinventing government will save $2.3 billion...
...temporaries...
...Even if the administration's cuts don't amount to much, one might still ask: Of the jobs that were lost, just who lost them...
...No wonder union activists gave Gore repeated standing ovations when he appeared before them shortly after the Council's report was released...
...That's certainly the media point of view...
...Gore himself as a member of Congress never supported mandatory dues," says one Democratic Hill staffer...
...But what about the relatively small cuts in the federal workforce that came outside the Department of Defense...
...It's not about the taxpayer, it's not about saving money," says a Capitol Hill staffer who follows reinventing government...
...And where is organized labor on this...
...Of course, since the savings are almost entirely the result of defense cutbacks set in motion under President Bush, it is inaccurate to call them the work of reinventing government...
...Of the new $2.3 billion estimate, more than half will come from hoped-for savings in electronic benefits transfer, an idea that had bipartisan support before the Clinton-Gore administration took office...
...And on the side, they performed favors like changing the rules to allow union members to use payroll deductions to contribute directly to union political action committees...
...It allows the president to claim that a New Democrat like himself can cut the deficit by "responsible" reform without resorting to the "extremism" of Republican budget proposals...
...And that is, for Moe, the core problem of reinventing government: its unquestioned faith that government should be run like a business...
...Moe points out that the Gore report, "while calling for a massive decrease in career management and mid-management positions, makes no mention of any corresponding decrease in the number of political appointees, thus making the ratio of political appointees to career executives even higher...
...The government still sends out vast amounts of money, it just has less idea where it's all going...
...The president formally created the Council by signing an executive order in October 1993...
...Downsizing...
...As far as they're concerned, everything is wonderful...
...So far, President Clinton's only contribution to the process has been an angry and emotional protest that cuts made by the base closing commission have been unfair to the politically crucial state of California...
...the administration has made exaggerated and unsubstantiated claims for reinventing government since its first days in office...
...On the other hand, the number of part-time temporary workers has been reduced by 11.7 percent, and the number of full-time temporary workers has been reduced by 7.5 percent...
...It's not because of any actions the president or vice president took...
...And Gore actually used it to excuse the extravagant habits of Energy Secretary Hazel O'Leary, telling "Meet the Press" on December io that "she's done a fabulous job on reinventing government and eliminating unnecessary spending...
...The result is a big payday for Democrats, who receive 98 percent of that PAC money...
...In reality, $40 billion of that has been saved by workforce reductions that were not the work of reinventing government, and the rest is fuzzy at best, and may not exist at all...
...Nor did she respond to similar questions about RTC reductions...
...The original Gore report said the savings would come from simplifying the way the federal government gives out money to state and local governments...
...That was unfortunate, because there was one unreported —and newsworthy—aspect of what was said that day at the White House: very little of it was true...
...So who knows...
...Estimates range as high as $200 million...
...Who wouldn't choose the painless path of reinventing government...
...It hasn't happened...
...And two, they made sure the reinventing government initiative featured a variety of proposals designed to make unions richer and more powerful...
...The Vice President takes credit for cutting the federal government and saving the taxpayers billions...
...It is true that the total number of federal government workers is falling...
...beyond that, it does not estimate any savings that will result from "Changes in Individual Agencies...
...It's enough to give reform a bad name...
...Where are they—and are they the result of reinventing government...
...Break down the president's figures and you'll see they've come largely from one area: civilian workers in the Department of Defense...
...And beyond that, almost nobody has questioned whether "reinventing government" was a good idea to begin with...
...BYRON YORK is a writer and television producer in Washington...
...Start with reducing the size of government...
...Ronald Reagan would have told such a story with a catch in his throat in his State of the Union speech and had strong women and men wiping away tears," Gitlin wrote...
...Unions represent about 6o percent of the federal workforce, or about 1.3 million people...
...You can cut safe and drug-free schools—or you can eliminate obsolete programs...
...That report listed page after page of recommended changes, from the much-ballyhooed end to the mohair subsidy to getting rid of a U.S...
...And what about the original five-year savings of S1o8 billion...
...The 1995 report says simply that "It is unclear whether the projected cost savings will be realized...
...Thus when Gore attacks regulations, he attacks the regulations that restrict the bureaucracy, not the regulations the bureaucracy imposes on society...
...Changes in Individual Agencies," which at $36.4 billion represented the second biggest savings projected by the original reinventing government report...
...Even if it can't take credit for cutting the number of federal employees and hasn't lived up to its grand claims of money saving, wasn't reinventing government a noble idea in the first place...
...According to most experts, Gore's figure of $40 billion in savings is accurate...
...The goal of business is to succeed in the marketplace...
...But Gore would change that...
...The president and vice president made two main points that September day at the White House: reinventing government has (1) saved billions of dollars and (z) reduced the size of government...
...The event didn't receive much press coverage...
...Either way, the unions would receive more money— a lot more money...
...In 1992, for example, the two most active unions gave $354,403 to candidates for federal office—and $34+003 of that went to Democrats...
...and let executive branch officials reinvent their agencies...
...If they didn't want to join a union and pay dues, the Council recommended they be forced to pay the union something called a "fair share service fee...
...The Wrong Idea...
...workforce figure...
...A recent investigation by the General Accounting Office found that, outside of the defense cuts, the number of full-time permanent workers has been reduced by just 1.1 percent...
...Rather than seek to tightly limit the power of the bureaucracy, the government The government still sends out vast amounts of money, it just has less idea where it's all going...
...But I say there are two sets of fundamental values that are not very compatible...
...You can cut Head Start, it said, or you can streamline management...
...Now, "after two years, $58 billion is already in the bank...
...One of the fundamental assumptions of reinventing government is measuring the size of the government by the number of employees," he says...
...Or a copyright...
...The 1995 Gore report points to $2.8 billion in savings already realized (but not specified...
...And the services it offers are mostly monopolies...
...When you cut out one half of the management in the executive branch, you're really cutting out half of the oversight of the contractors...
...Add to that the fact that reinventing government can be a handy rationale for virtually anything the administration wants to do...
...And the goal of government is "customer satisfaction...
...Together, the various guises of reinventing government have made Al Gore's signature initiative an Old Democrat parody of the New Democrat ideal...
...After all, the unions—one of the Democrats' largest and most generous campaign contributors— expected great things from a Democratic administration...
...Moe points out that from the Progressive Era on, government reformers have strive to keep the bureaucracy under strict control, to make it more accountable to the executive and legislative branches—and less able to run over the rights of ordinary citizens...
...Instead, they responded cynically, and what we are left with is reinventing government...
...Since then, AP reports, all but two have been reassigned, demoted, or have left HUD...
...According to OMB, the federal payroll fell by the following number of employees in recent years: Year Reduction 1993 86,loo 1994 34,900 1995 (est) 35,900 The American Spectator • February 19 9 6 39 Together, that comes to 156,900, reasonably close to Clinton's claim that he has cut 16o,000 jobs...
...Government bureaucrats are "entrepreneurs" who are "empowered" to better serve those customers...
...Indeed, some Democrats today call the dues issue a dead letter, and speak as if the administration never really meant to suggest such a thing...
...Okay, so reinventing government hasn't really slashed the federal bureaucracy...
...If a business opens to provide a service and does a poor job of it, the customer goes elsewhere and the business fails...
...That was nothing new...
...Throughout the administration, there have been reports that insiders were skeptical of the $1o8 billion estimate, and some White House officials opposed placing any dollar figure on reinventing government savings...
...We talk past each other," he says...
...And the rest were...
...The Bush administration began to cut back, pushed by the creation of a nonpartisan Military Base Closing Commission...
...That's not exactly drawing blood," says Nesterczuk...
...But even as they use it to sell themselves as common-sense moderates, Clinton and Gore are also using reinventing government to pay off their political supporters...
...BIG AL'S BIG SCAM ON A SUNNY DAY LAST SEPTEMBER VICE PRESIDENT AL GORE joined President Clinton on the White House lawn to mark the second anniversary of the reinventing government campaign...
...reinventing government has received almost universally positive coverage throughout its first two years...
...Compare the number of defense cuts with the total cuts claimed by Clinton: Year Total Defense % of Total 1993 86,1oo 63,500 75 1994 34,900 34,20o 98 1995 (est) 35,900 33,500 94 Can the defense cuts be counted as the work of reinventing government...
...In place of the Council's sweeping proposals, Gore began to circulate a draft of something called the "Federal Human Resource Management Reinvention Act...
...They don't recognize a single problem...
...Although union officials traditionally have sought greater power through legislation rather than executive orders," wrote the Washington Post shortly before the order was issued, "they are delighted with the proposal, which they helped draft...
...But "they've been surprisingly quiet on the reductions," says Nesterczuk...
...even though most federal employees don't belong to unions, there are no non-union, non-management employees on the Council...
...Reinventing the Campaign Despite its shortcomings, reinventing government will have great public relations value to the Clinton administration this re-election year...
...Perhaps "peace dividend" would be better...
...Although it was not known at the time, the deal was even sweeter for labor than the Post said, since Gore protected union jobs from even meager cuts...
...Gitlin conceded that he had not checked out whether the administration's claims are true...
...The federal government today has 160,000 fewer people on the payroll than it did on the day I took office...
...Whatever the number, Kamarck did not respond when asked whether the cuts can be claimed as the work of reinventing government...
...Recently the Associated Press reported that during the administration's first week in office, the head of the American Federation of Government Employees sent Housing Secretary Henry Cisneros a hit-list of thirteen managers the union viewed as anti-union, racist, or aligned with Republicans...
...Now, with Republicans in control on Capitol Hill, it doesn't have a chance...
...But unlike some of the other favors to the unions, the mandatory dues or service fee provision required congressional approval...
...His reinventing government campaign is full of phony claims—and worse...
...For example, there is nowhere else you can go for a Social Security check...
...The explanation...
...Still, isn't Clinton and Gore's other big claim —that reinventing government will save $108 billion —a good thing...
...There is no reason to believe it has any basis in fact...
...Indeed, Gore often cites polls that he says prove people do not want a smaller government but rather a government that delivers services better...
...Gore says much of the original estimate resulted from the hope that some jobs could be replaced by high technology—but the administration mistakenly double-counted some of the savings already included in reducing the 41 $ 40.4 billion $ 22.5 billion $ 5.4 billion $ 3.3 billion $ 36.4 billion $108.0 billion And what about the original five-year savings of $1o8 billion...
...Don't believe it...
...It started by giving the unions a jump on the game...
...Taking his cue from trendy management gurus, Gore refers to citizens as "customers...
...Labor leaders were ecstatic...
...If anything, reporters have occasionally thrashed themselves for not covering it more...
...Now, as the '96 campaign begins, reinventing government is taking on a new role for Bill Clinton and Al Gore...
...He's not alone...
...In 1995, it added an estimated 1,600.1 1 In response to detailed written questions on this issue, Elaine Kamarck, senior policy adviser to the vice president, disputed the contention that Department of Defense reductions make up the vast majority of cuts claimed by reinventing government...
...It grew as the scandal grew, but its payroll shrank in recent years, and, in keeping with its congressional mandate, it went out of business altogether at the end of 1995...
...But that hasn't stopped the vice president...
...According to the administration's Office of Management and Budget, there were 2,138,800 federal employees the year Clinton took office (the number does not include the uniformed military or the Postal Service...
...There is no reason to believe it has any basis in fact...
...In Gore's world, the bureaucracy's constitutionally designated overseers—the elected representatives in Congress—would have less say over the workings of government agencies...
...First of all, of the 16,1oo jobs lost outside the Defense Department and the RTC, 95 percent were non-union managers who took buyouts (offered by Congress at a cost of about $30,000 per worker...
...Gore's claim that he is "downsizing" the government, says Moe, is precisely the wrong way to approach the problem...
...He didn't stop there...
...Add up just those two areas — Defense and the RTC —and you get 140,800 jobs, or 90 percent of the cuts claimed by Clinton and Gore...
...Given those powers, government has to be closely accountable to its elected leaders, the President and the Congress...
...The little-noticed effect of this is that it gives more power to the president...
...Remember, the president once claimed the White House Travel Office purge was the result of a reinventing government review...
...Elaine Kamarck, a top Gore aide, denies there was any deal...
...The analyst points out that Gore's plan to simplify and decentralize the government's purchasing practices might result in some savings —but he also points out that several years ago the government centralized its purchasing in order to save money...
...In the first Reinventing Government report, Gore predicted the initiative would save the taxpayers the following amounts in the following areas (the terminology is Gore's): Streamlining the Bureaucracy Through Reengineering Reinventing Federal Procurement Reengineering Through Information Technology Reducing Intergovernmental Administrative Costs Changes in Individual Agencies Total Take them one by one: • "Streamlining the Bureaucracy Through Reengineering...
...It's not clear how Gore calculated that number, but late last year he lowered his estimate dramatically, to 512.3 billion...
...Reinventing government, he continued, is "a national success of the first order...
...One who has is Ronald C. Moe, a professor at the Johns Hopkins University Center for American Government and a specialist in American national government at the Congressional Research Service...
...But the figure of $12.3 billion in savings, like the earlier figure, is the administration's own...
...The Post continued, "Insiders believe unions got most of what they wanted in return for soft-pedaling opposition to President Clinton's decision to eliminate 252,000 jobs...
...We are way ahead of schedule in cutting the cost of government," the vice president said, "and ahead of schedule in reducing the size of government...
...Information Agency office in Mexico City to ending federal support for honey makers (more than 25 percent of the original "savings" were actually new or increased fees for federal services...
...If you can just free him, that will solve the problem...
...Those claims beg a closer look...
...The base closures were basically driving the reductions in the defense department," says George Nesterczuk, staff director for the House Civil Service Subcommittee...
...It's very hard to estimate savings associated with management improvements in general," says one CBO analyst...
...It's a stripped-down version of the Council's grand vision, but it would place into law some of the features of Clinton's original executive order...
...But the administration has had almost nothing to do with it—and at times has actually been fighting the trend...
...It has extraordinary powers not found anywhere else in society...
...And what wasn't plain wrong was profoundly misleading...
...by presidential fiat it granted them the right to bargain over areas that had previously been controlled by management alone, including work assignments, pay grades, new technology, and training...
...the Congressional Budget Office has declined to calculate any savings from the legislation...
...It's safe to say few people have read his cutting analysis of the ideas behind Gore's project, published last year in an academic journal called Public Administration Review...
...Moe says that is a poor standard, because the federal government actually spends a relatively small amount of its money delivering services directly, while it gives vast amounts to third parties, like state and local governments and the contractors who do much of the federal government's work...
...That, Moe says, along with other moves like eliminating much of the Government Personnel Manual's rules for the civil service and the administration's successful campaign to repeal the Hatch Act's restrictions on partisan political activity by government employees, constitutes "an intentional major break with the tradition of a merit-based, nonpolitical federal workforce...
...In a word, no...
...reinventors would give it more freedom and authority...
...Congress should simply pass the bill submitted by the president...
...Being a more modest, media-literate sort of mortal, the current resident of the White House has to orchestrate a less melodramatic sort of media event...
...A Payday for the Unions...
...Reducing Intergovernmental Administrative Costs," estimated to result in a savings of $3.3 billion...
...That means the administration has cut a grand total of 16,1oo jobs—less than one percent of the workforce...
...For 1994, if you take away Defense and RTC cuts, the government added 3,000 workers to the payroll...
...And then there was the unions' top priority, something they've been hankering after for years: a rule to require federal employees to pay union dues, whether they belong to a union or not...
...Consider this case...
...Then Gore got out of the way while his boss did the big bragging...
...It's if you can make the welfare state beneficiary happy, then that's what you ought to do...
...It's a shame, because public demand for reform is strong, and Clinton and Gore could have pursued real change...
...The first National Performance Review report, President Clinton said, "predicted we could save Sio8 billion in five years by reinventing government...
...Clinton went on to trash Republican budget-balancing plans, saying his success with reinventing government proves the budget can be balanced without resorting to proposals under which, among other things, "fewer children will go to Head Start [and] fewer schools will be able to teach their children to stay away from drugs and gangs...
...For two reasons...
...They exempted union workers from almost any cuts, and also gave big unions more power than ever before...
...Moe points out that Gore's promise of multi-billion-dollar savings does not include the elimination of any substantial government program...
...But government is accountable not to the marketplace but to the citizenry and the law...
...The National Performance Review starts from the premise that the government should be organized like GE," he says...
...Or justice...
...It recommended the creation of something called the National Partnership Council, to be made up of top administration officials and top officials of the American Federation of Government Employees, the National Federation of Federal Employees, the National Treasury Employees Union, and the AFL-CIO (by "labor," the administration means organized labor...
...And the affection was mutual...
...Nevertheless, Clinton and Gore are claiming RTC jobs among those cut by the reinventing government campaign...
...In its report, issued in January 1994, the Partnership Council proposed a major overhaul of the civil service...
...The RTC was created to clean up the savings and loan scandal...
...The American Spectator • February 1996 43...
...What's not to like...
...The National Partnership Council proposed to make them all pay up...
...But where are the cuts—and did they have anything to do with reinventing government...
...But that is not Gore's plan...
...Reengineering Through Information Technology," originally scheduled to save $5.4 billion...
...For the September 7 White House ceremony, Gore's office created a poster giving voters some simple choices between the GOP and the administration's plans for saving money...
...And it gave the administration political cover for a union power grab...
...They protected the number of political appointees under their command...
...40 February 1996 • The American Spectator And that was just the beginning...
...At the Energy Department there are ten contractors for every employee," Moe says...
...Todd Gitlin's recent paean in the New York Observer was typical...
...Kamarck says DoD cuts make up less than half of the total reductions, a figure disputed by the administration's own Office of Management and Budget...
...And it, along with some of Gore's other ideas, got lost amid Hillary Rodham Clinton's health care reform campaign that dominated 1994...
...It all adds up to "more than half the savings in less than half the time...
...Impressed by Clinton and Gore's motivational anecdotes at the September 7 White House ceremony, Gitlin regretted only that their sales pitch was not more effective...
...In short, for the Clinton administration, reinventing government is politicizing government— on behalf of a Democratic administration...
...The original $36.4 billion figure has disappeared...
...Two years ago we said we could shrink the size of government by 252,000 positions," the president continued...
...what mention there was focused mostly on the budget battle and did not examine the president's and vice president's claims...
...If you add up all of Gore's revised estimates, you get $57.7 billion, roughly the amount touted by the president as being "already in the bank...
...The original Gore report contained a chapter entitled "Forming a Labor-Management Partnership...
...very few observers have paid much attention to the fine print and footnotes of the Gore project...
...Gore appears to be counting on savings he says will come as a result of the Federal Acquisition Streamlining Act, signed into law by the president in October 1994...
...It's not clear where the rest will come from...
...As the Cold War drew to a close, it became clear that the United States had a larger military force than it needed — especially in the number of civilians working for the Defense Department...
...Thus, under Gore's plan, government agencies would be run by more officials who are politically beholden to the Clinton administration and less bound by the oversight of Congress...
...enriched by forced-dues, the federal unions could contribute more money to political candidates like Al Gore and Bill Clinton...
...In other words, one could say that Clinton and Gore are reinventing government by going after the temps...
...It offers no estimate of any money that will be saved...
...You can cut student loans—or you can reengineer with modern technology...
...In Bush's last year, for example, more than 41,000 jobs were cut from civilian defense...
...The American Spectator • February 1996 Costs Less...
...If the government cut back on its obligations to spend, then it could reasonably cut back on the people whose job it is to oversee the spending...
...And don't forget, the administration is actually adding workers in other areas...
...Reinventing Federal Procurement," which Gore predicted would save the taxpayers $22.5 billion...
...Which means that Gore's reinvented government is supposed to continue doing everything government has been doing, only more efficiently...
...If you had a Democratic Congress you wouldn't get that...
...It would have elevated the unions to coequal status with cabinet heads," says Nesterczuk, "in terms of assigning work and defining performance standards...
...Not surprisingly, Moe's concerns have met deaf ears in Gore's office...
...They view Congress as a nuisance," Moe says...
...Flanked by posters hyping "Common Sense Government," Gore told the small audience that things are going very, very well...
...Now, however, things have changed...
...The order directed the new group to come up with ways to end the "adversarial relationship that dominates federal union-management interaction...
...One, they persuaded Gore to aim any cuts at non-union workers...
...It's a success story, they say, and the press isn't very good at covering success stories...
...In plain English, that means cutting federal workers...
...They feel the average government worker has too many restrictions," says the Hill staffer...
...But only about one-fourth that number actually chooses to belong to unions and pay dues...
...A significant number of them, 9,600, came from the Resolution Trust Corporation...
...The networks would have cooed...
Vol. 29 • February 1996 • No. 2
