Guaranteed Annual Income For Consultants
Samuelson, Robert
Guaranteed Annual Income For Consultants by Robert Samuelson Hereafter, I will require that all major legislative proposals, regulations, and rules emanating from the Executive Branch of the...
...They didn’t really have to be followed-only prepared...
...But they had to be careful...
...Multiply that by all the departments and agencies, and we’ve already got a mountain of pulp...
...It wouldn’t be so bad,” he said, “but I know what’s going to end up happening...
...The first was an Executive Order from the White House, dated November 27...
...The idea sounded attractive, looked respectable, and blended well with Republican antiinflationary rhetoric...
...I didn’t know what to say, so I just took the Xerox and laid it softly on my desk, next to an empty Coke bottle...
...Then, two months later, the White House gets around to issuing an executive order on how to implement the paragraph...
...But I let Max trace the dreary chronology...
...First, the President makes his proposal back in October...
...If they went ahead with a controversial program, they usually had compelling reasons : pressure from important interest groups, their own sense of mission, or just an unmistakable mandate from Congress to do something that was blatantly inflationary...
...Max took off his aviator glasses and, with weary resignation, rubbed his eyes...
...Do you have any idea how much paper is involved in the American Battle Monuments Administration requesting an exemption and OMB granting it...
...It’s the rules each governmental department is supposed to follow in drawing up its own rules for writing inflation impact statements...
...I didn’t need Max in my office, drinking the last of my scotch, as the rush-hour traffic piled up eight floors below my single, sooty window...
...Why don’t you tell me about it,” I said, mustering what sympathy I could manage...
...It took a while for Max to answer...
...Seagulls swarming around a mountain of garbage...
...New horrors were being hatched daily, but I wasn’t naive enough to think that analysis-no matter how it was labeled-would make much difference...
...The consultants will have a field day...
...Sure, the environmental impact statement said that the Alaska pipeline would make life miserable for the caribou, and that didn’t end up preventing the pipeline from being built...
...And before he did, he stared at the scotch bottle a long time, as if somehow that would make it less empty...
...Politics determined the fate of most government programs and regulations...
...Across the federal landscape, it was a cinch to spot dozens of programs which helped push consumer prices upward...
...Suits meant delays...
...Most shrewd government lawyers would probably try to limit the number of statements their departments would have to produce by putting a ceiling-say, $50 million-on the kind of actions that required statements...
...That’s all very interesting, Max,” I said, “but what the hell does all that have to do with YOU...
...I could tell that Max had learned a lot since his first days in the White House, when he wrote the memo that set everything in motion...
...Max pointed towards his vinyl briefcase...
...This kind of stuff goes on everyday in government...
...Narrow-minded, agency-oriented bureaucrats would be made to see the wider implications of their actions...
...Nothing in government can be done without rules, so we have rules to write rules...
...OMB is still wading through the exemptions...
...But, as I said, we get paid to listen...
...No one thought much about it...
...Analysis alone wouldn’t eliminate these pressures...
...If a program was popular enough-like the Alaska pipelineall the analysis in the world was useless...
...He was a mess...
...Somebody-a budget analyst at OMB or a congressional subcommittee or the faceless researchers at the GAO-would be encouraged to produce another study...
...Advance public confession would curb sinning...
...I hadn’t been born yesterday, and I had seen cases like his before: a bureaucrat with an identity crisis, trying to cleanse his soul by running to the press...
...The executive order runs two pages...
...The government won’t collapse...
...You see, there are limits to honest analysis...
...Western civilization won’t end...
...The Civil Aeronautics Board made it a crime for airlines to cut fares...
...I didn’t because I figured that Max was either flattering himself or taking me for a sap...
...You see this,” he said, motioning toward the second of his official-looking documents...
...I knew the type immediately: one of those earnest young men, confident of their own abilities, who had enlisted with Uncle Sam convinced that they could simultaneously satisfy their ambitions and their social conscience...
...But Max, to his credit, was made of sterner stuff...
...I wasn’t dismissing all analysis as useless, but my experience was that people only used informa tion when it recommended what they wanted to do anyway...
...When it came to creating higher prices, I knew the government was a principal sinner...
...Each department and agency would prepare an “inflation impact statement” for all its major programs...
...Except in government it’s all the studies, reports, and evaluations that somebody has said must be done, but nobody really gives a damn about .” Something about the seagulls and the garbage cheered up Max, because suddenly he looked relieved...
...And that’s just the beginning...
...Pieces of paper alone wouldn’t change the political situation...
...As I read the documents, their gist became clear...
...And these inflation impact statements did have cosmetic appeal...
...A man in Max’s shape needs a drink...
...And by implicationwhat the hell does all this have to do with me...
...There were deep trenches under his eyes, his hair had been combed by the wind, and his face bore the scars of a trembling razor...
...I had had enough...
...The paperwork just expands geometrically...
...To prove it, he reached into his vinyl briefcase and came out with a dog-eared Xerox of a memo on White House stationery...
...He said he’d think about it...
...He was a genius at numbers...
...agency will have to produce an impact statement it’ll mean an $80,000 fee for a consulting firm...
...I drove him home...
...I think I’m just about at the end of the line,” Max said in a whisper...
...It was the one from OMB, and it carried the enticing title of Circular A-107...
...I rescued a cup from the trash and poured out the last of my scotch...
...And the departments that don’t get them will then have to write up departmental regulations which will probably run 10 to 20 pages each...
...Max was a government lawyer, a GS14 or GS15-I forget whchworking in the White House...
...Multiply that by a couple of thousand statements a year and you’ve added a couple of hundred million to the federal budget-all in the name of fighting inflation...
...There’s a scandal here,” he said, casually spilling out a phrase that’s supposed to make any reporter salivate...
...Guaranteed Annual Income For Consultants by Robert Samuelson Hereafter, I will require that all major legislative proposals, regulations, and rules emanating from the Executive Branch of the Government will include an Inflation Impact Statement that certifies we have carefully weighed the effect on the nation...
...1 was glad, because I couldn’t do much for him...
...He waved the first document at me, and I verified his arithmetic...
...Finally, he got it out: “The whole thing was my idea, but I didn’t realize that it would lead to this...
...The second was a memorandum from the Office of Management and Budget, dated January 28...
...that propped up freight rates...
...You know what consultants remind me of?’’ Max asked suddenly...
...If it didn’t, they’d just come up with some conflicting information, making just the opposite points...
...I didn’t need Max to tell me this, especially when I still had hopes of getting out of the office in time to beat the rush-hour traffic...
...It’s just one paragraph in a long speech...
...That’s four pages...
...Most bureaucrats knew what they were doing...
...I didn’t, but I was shrewd enough not to let on...
...I knew what to expect next-a long monologue about guilt and responsibility, the sort of thing that people came to expect from Daniel Ellsberg on Vietnam...
...That’s how I came to hear Max’s story...
...In my business-the news businessyou either take advantage of other people’s problems, or you’re finished...
...It was sort of an institutional consciousnessraising exercise...
...President Ford in his economic speech, October 8, 1974...
...They had identical headings: “Inflation Impact Statements...
...Somebody remembered a memo with the idea for inflation impact statements, like those environmental things...
...Each time an...
...You can safely say that something’s inflationary, but you don’t necessarily put a finger on it...
...So, the inflation impact statements were an idea that looked good and sounded nice...
...Like paperwork, they cost money and took time...
...The Interstate Commerce Commission limited truck and railroad competition...
...You might as well hock your typewriter and hang up your green eyeshade...
...But I will give you some free advice...
...The executive order, which didn’t expire until the end of 1976, demanded statements, and anybody who didn’t like what your agency was d oing-for whatever reason-could take you to court on the pretext that your impact statement wasn’t adequate...
...It was just one paragraph in the speech, and the President was scheduled to go on TV in just a few hours...
...It started back in October when the President asked his speechwriters for some ideas about how to flesh out his anti-inflation addressyou know, the one with the WIN buttons...
...The Davis-Bacon Act had the effect of requiring building contractors to use only high-cost union workers...
...It was time to get home...
...Medicare and Medicaid procedures made Ross Perot a billionaire and contributed to spiraling health costs...
...In the end, the courts would probably support the agencies, but, even if they did, they still couldn’t restore all the time and effort that fighting the suit required...
...Max drifted into the office late one Thursday afternoon...
...Robert Samuelson is a Washington writer...
...Two months after that, OMB issues its circular explaining the executive order...
...It was late, and I was in no mood for self-indulgent melodrama...
...And we haven’t even gotten to the statements yet...
...Call in sick tomorrow...
...Look,” I said, “there’s no story here...
...He came back to the point...
...It was a familiar tale...
...Take a few days off...
...Inflation would be forgotten, as everyone worried about coping with the nuisance and the nuances of the inflation impact statements...
...But we demand that everything be precise, so these reports are going to be filled with a lot of dubious statistics...
...I opened it and on top were two official documents...
...Such reports weren’t hard to find...
...He was 30, but looked 45...
...What’s going to happen,” Max said, “is that a lot of the agencies won’t be able to ‘handle the extra work load and will have to farm it out...
...All this was pretty routine to somebody in my business...
...But that’s all...
...Of the nearly 100 agencies which received Circular A-1 07, dozens responded by requesting exemptions...
...But he did anyway...
Vol. 7 • May 1975 • No. 3
