Bureaucracy: The Biggest Crisis of All

...It grows in each of the millions of direct, “routine” contacts that take place every day between citizens and the agencies of their government, many of which are supposed to be helping them...

...Yet, like most of their leagues, they have found it easier just to slam away at an agency than to do whatever is necessary to improve it...

...Well, Good Lord, I’ve been paying taxes for 30 years and nothing’s ever been wrong...

...Unfortunately, the problem is far more fundamental than that...

...the government has also to act to make itself work better...

...The advantage of this shines through in the experience of the Social Security Administration...

...Our present system of civics education in the public schools, sticking as it does to explications of a constitution that doesn’t even mention the bureaucracy, tells people almost nothing about how to make agencies work for them...

...What is worse, many congressmen reported, in the four to eight months it takes to get a favorable decision, people have lost their homes, spent hundreds of dollars on lawyers, even died...

...But regardless of their class, almost all saw little connection between political issues and their own lives...

...Senator Lawton Chiles’ complaint to Pettigrew that many people’s SSI payments go down dramatically whenever their VA benefits go up can be traced to a problem in the law, not the agencies...

...And that woman came down here and went through every cabinet I got, that welfare woman,” added Viola...

...So we go down and it turns out that nothing is wrong...

...The Nature of the Complaints What is striking is the nature of the complaints...

...Certainly...

...Caring for people through outright handouts would also vastly reduce that grating citizen-bureaucrat contact...

...But most of the burden of dealing with these problems should be shouldered by the government itself...

...Past holders of this job have gone on to work at Harper‘s, The New Yorker, The New Republic, The Manchester Guardian, The Los Angeles Times, The Wall Street Journal, and the White House staff...

...For one thing, we need to teach as well as learn about how bureaucracy works in this country...

...You can get pretty hungry from the first to the tenth waiting for that check, and they should take that into consideration...

...The Washington Monthly has its “Memo of the Month...

...It lies in the simple difference in perspective between agency and citizen, a difference that makes it difficult if not impossible for the two to deal in a mutually satisfactory way...

...It was the 58 highly complicated SSI, disability, and welfare programs that spawned all sorts of problems...

...In contrast to Watergate and Vietnam, this crisis is neither readily identified nor easily cured...

...I told her that in 30 days I’d be starving and she could forget about it.’’ Ron, an unemployed landscaper, dreaded going down to the unemployment office...

...As one might expect, each class of people dealt with somewhat different groups of agencies-the well-off with, for example, the IRS, the blue-collar families with the unemployment office, the poor with the Social Security Administration...

...The hours are long and the pay low, but the work--about half writing Washington Monthly articles, and half editing themis interesting and it‘s a good steppingstone for a career in journalism...

...Think of Martha, the woman who, because she had saved for so many years for her burial, had more money in the bank than the SSI law allowed its beneficiaries to have...

...Thus, the local office turned down her application, though a sympathetic caseworker advised her that if she went out and spent her savings, she would become eligible...

...Mail to Intern Program at the above address...

...He helped us out...

...That means the bureaucrat, sitting as he does at the bottom of the agency ladder, must function as a cog in that machine...

...After all, who does...

...As all four gentlemen are, and have been for some time, influential members of the congressional committees that are responsible for the OWCP (Williams is chairman of the Senate Labor Committee...

...The press was alternately miffed and condescending...

...And she is different, as is every other person who sits on her side of the desk...

...Though congressmen, who are at the receiving end of almost all citizen complaints against the government, were the logical ones to ask, evidently no one ever had before...

...The Washington Star daily runs a “great moments in bureaucratese” feature called Gobbledygook...

...The IRS, Immigration and Naturalization Service, and Small Business Administration showed up in two...

...Washingtonians also seem to assume that if they are laughing at bureaucracy, the whole world must be laughing with them-when it’s time for Americans to get serious about politics, they, like their brethren in Washington, surely must drop bureaucracy and start talking about “issues...

...But when in the process of supposedly doing something for them it makes them hopping mad, then we have a problem...

...Aside from the IRS and, perhaps, OSHA, all of these are, supposedly, benefits agencies...

...The impersonal nature of agency contacts further incensed people...

...Unlike a pollster, I was as interested in what people chose to talk about when they talked politics as in the specific opinions they expressed...

...A guaranteed annual wage (with poverty the only measure of eligibility) and a national health care system would take care of those needs far more simply than the present system, and because of the simplicity, at a reduced cost...

...The district director finally says, ‘Well, I can’t help you...

...Trying to get a decent anpraisal out of a government official-the VA or the FHA-is unbelievable...

...As Pettigrew’s study showed, popular dissatisfaction with government stems from its failure to deliver on promised services, not from the regulatory ills you see detailed in the Mobil Oil ads...

...Most politicians do this chiefly by taking polls, but pollsters get their answers by asking people questions about the things the pollsters (or more precisely, the people who hire them) think are important...

...Equally curious, the agencies that drew the most fire were, on the whole, those whose business is supposedly providing benefits to people -social security, food stamps, welfare, tax counseling, and so on...

...We accept interns throughout the year, but require a minimum of six weeks’ service...

...None of this should be taken to mean that agencies are blameless or that there is nothing they could do to make things more pleasant for the people they deal with...

...Gene and Ella, who live off his VA disability payments, got very upset when some bureaucrat waited too long to get the checks out...

...it was the disability insurance, Medicare, and Aid for Families with Dependent Children that drew all the flak:) The Veterans’ Administration was next on the list...

...Even good intentions can’t do very much about this fundamental problem of perspective, as I learned from my experience in a legal aid office in Atlanta...

...Diana, a university press editor, complained about “the computerized courtesy’’ of form letters from the IRS: “We got a letter saying come down to the IRS at such-and-such a time, blah, blah, blah, and bring all your papers-very impersonal...

...As a result, we end up with reams and reams of data about what grandma thinks about the Panama Canal, assuming she cares enough to have an opinion, and nothing at all about what is on her mind...

...If anything does set off a wave of right-wing, anti-government fervor, it will be the failure of liberals to see to it that the government Americans want need not be gargantuan or staggeringly complex, and must be delivered efficiently and courteously...

...She is, of course, a whole person, and wanted to be treated as a whole person...

...we‘re looking for somebody with intelligence and a sense of humor who can write and edit well and is interested in politics...

...Some of them wait until the last minute and foul everybody up, and it can be real costly to people...

...Growing Means Listening Elected officials also need to learn more than they do, and in a democracy learning means listening...

...and Senator Proxmire grabs headlines with his monthly Gol’den Fleece Award, uncovering governmentfunded studies on “the sex life of the fern” and the like...

...It is the issue...

...Any small-town mayor can tell you that if he wants federal money for some well-deserved project, he has to put up with reams and reams of forms and meetings designed to insure that the construction company doesn’t discriminate in its hiring, that the plans are perfectly sound, that the environmental impact of the project won’t be adverse, and so on...

...Time, for example, thought the questions asked at the televised phone-in in Los Angeles were “either soft or silly...

...For example, the IRS set up a toll-free number that citizens could call for help with their taxes...

...Of Course On one side of the desk is the citizen, a unique individual with a unique set of circumstances...

...The fact that Borden’s had had a “no jobs” sign in the window for as long as anyone could remember was irrelevant...

...But to the rest of the country, bureaucracy really isn’t the least bit funny...

...Clearly, then, the message Americans are sending-that they feel and resent the weight of government agencies pressing in on their personal lives-is an urgent one...

...Ordinarily, that would have entitled her to get additional Supplemental Security Income (SSI) benefits...

...The agency is notorious for having more than half its determinations that applicants are ineligible for disability benefits or SSI overturned if appealed-usually by its own administrative law judges...

...It will be a huge effort-Mao, after all, started a “cultural” revolution toward that end, and even that was only partially successful...

...So proposals to meet the bureaucratic problem head-on usually involve throwing out the baby with the bath -getting rid not only of the bad apparatus but also of the good program it’s supposed to implement...

...I’m different...

...I would bet that for every thousand people in this country who could list the Bill of Rights and name all nine Supreme Court justices, you would be lucky to find one who could explain his rights against federal agencies and name the members of even one regulatory commission...

...So when I finally reach him, he says, ‘Does your company subscribe to Prentice-Val1 and Cammerce Clearinghouse and different tax services?’ I Sjiid yeah...

...He is there not as a friend or neighbor, but purely as the hired representative of his agency...

...The administration of the old-age pension, whatever you might say about its conception, is simple and popular-I heard almost no complaints about it and neither did the congressmen who reported to Pettigrew...

...unpredictable and bizarre, not rational...

...Just more big brother...

...Two agencies ranked high in all four “bad” categories: the Department of Labor’s Office of Workers’ C o m pe n s at ion Pro grams, which administers the black lung program and workmen’s compensation for federal employees, and the Social Security Administration...

...country today...

...It meant dealing with organizations that were not only large and impersonal, but whose 52 actions sometimes seemed to defy all reason...

...Because we don’t teach these things, we shouldn’t be surprised that people feel ignorant and overwhelmed when they have to deal with as many agencies as they do...

...Consider the Alternative So Martha did not get her SSI check...

...I had a note from the doctor saying he’d have to stay out of work for ten months...

...Exposing Watergates is fine, but these days lawbreaking is the least of the government’s problems...

...What is striking about these complaints, and the scores of similar ones I heard, is not that people don’t like bureaucracy...

...Putting out fires as they occur translates into votes...

...Among the others that were singled out frequently : the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, the Department of Housing and Urban Development, the Civil Service Commission, the Farmers Home Administration, the Postal Service, the Economic Development Administration, and the Employment Retirement Income Security Administration...

...They saw a great deal of connection, however, between bureaucracy and their daily concerns-and most of what they saw they didn’t like...

...Bend the rules a little...

...Random and Arbitrary Bureaucrats’ behavior also seemed random and arbitrary, though for those who were shrewd enough, it could be gotten around...

...The point is to care enough about the government’s grating inefficiencies to attack them with passion...

...it is insidious, the more so because it manifests itself in such ordinary ways...

...So what is to be done...

...Similarly, though congressmen respond vigorously to the specific complaints of their constituents, they rarely dig deeper to discover the patterns of agency practice that underlie them...

...now they must be willing to deliver on them...

...And at that time she’s been drawing welfare and food stamps for two years and she said they never had so much as come to her house...

...In China, it concerned Chairman Mao more than any other problem, enough so that he plunged his country into near-chaos in an attempt to deal with it...

...You have to get on one line for this and another line for that, and the people behind the counterthey’re busy, I know-but they treat you like you’re probably a rip-off artist or something...

...Forums like Jimmy Carter’s phone-ins, where the citizens themselves decide what to talk about, would be far more educational for Washingtonians who venture out into the bush than the latest Caddell poll...

...with the benefit of hindsight, it becomes obvious that they have been trying to get it through for some time...

...After Willie’s husband Fred, a mechanic, broke his arm, she went down to the food stamp office...

...He is empowered only to do certain limited things, and only for those clients who are eligible...

...But a new spirit is at least as important as a new agency...

...and all too often, insensitive or downright insulting rather than courteous...

...Applicants should write, explaining why they want to work at The Washington Monthly, enclosing a resume and listing the names of two people who have taught or supervised them...

...His first job, then, is to fit this woman before him into a category: eligible or not...

...Even worse was having to rely on a large, anonymous, and hence unpredictable organization for basic sustenance...

...In most congressional offices, the legislative staff almost never tries to learn anything from the casework staff, which handles complaints (in fact, there’s a powerful status difference between the two, and snobbery often keeps the high-status legislative assistants from even talking to the lowly caseworkers...

...instead, when I got to ‘their homes, I repeated my interest in hearing about their concerns, then sat back and listened as they talked, partly to me, but mostly with each other...

...He says, ‘Well, you better look it up there because that’s more help thqn we can give you.’ ” Martha, a retired spinster, had been supporting herself with a small social security check...

...A real estate dealer explained that “It’s very difficult to get the right information out of the government in my business...

...In’fact it is not too much to say that out where the services of the government are delivered, the performance of the bureaucracy constitutes the biggest crisis facing our Michael Nelson is a contributing editor of The Washington Monthly...

...in fact, the Office of Management and Budget in the executive branch and the General Accounting Office in the legislative could, under their charters, do as much investigating of the government as anyone could want, but they don’t...

...the fact that it was irrelevant was due to the way Congress had written the law...

...What Cannot be Eliminated Of course, any simplification will still leave a lot of bureaucracy standing, so it’s important to try to reform what bureaucracy cannot be eliminated...

...The office of Senator Harrison Williams, for example, was extremely critical of the Department of Labor’s Office of Workers’ Compensation Programs, calling the program ‘unresponsive, unorganized, and insensitive.’ ” Representatives John Dent, Phillip Burton, and William Ford were among those equally critical...

...It certainly doesn’t do that now-at the Office of Workers’ Compensation Programs, they kept waiting for the flock of reporters to descend when Pettigrew’s report came out, but nobody called...

...for that reason alone they are probably worth reforming...

...I didn’t bring in a long list of questions...

...columnist Joseph Kraft said the radio program that started it all was “a set of ‘Dear Abby’ phone calls to the President...

...In 30 Days I’d be Starving’ For some, the inherently complicated nature of bureaucratic procedures was a source of anger and confusion...

...THE EDITORS The Washington Monthly also has unpaid internships available to graduate and undergraduate students who are interested in gaining experience in the circulation, promotion, editorial, production, and graphics phases of magazine publishing...

...If that sounds horrible, consider the alternative: bureaucrats with the discretion to waive the law at their option...

...But according to Senator William Proxmire, the line is almost always busy during tax season, for 23 consecutive days in one case...

...Their answers, interestingly enough, were quite uniform, spanning party and ideological lines...

...In fact, the bureaucracy crisis is an ideal issue for liberals, who want the government to meet the major problems of the nation...

...We have no set requirements for the job...

...When I asked Michael Naver at Social Security why local bureaucrats made so many wrong determinations in the first place, he pointed out that “the hearing is the first time anyone in the Administration actually sees the applicantphysically sees how he moves, how he talks, how he copes, and so on...

...Our address is 1028 Connecticut Avenue N.W., Washington, D.C...

...No Jobs’ ~~ Congress not only failsto correct a lot of the problems citizens have with government...

...Over the years, liberals have responded to popular demands with an impressive set of promises...

...Until then, we’re just looking at a file.’’ Again, common sense-never mind human decency and courtesy-would seem to cry out for a change in administrative practice here...

...They told me I could get the stamps but I’d have to wait 30 days...

...But they were right...

...His wife went down there and said him and her was separated and had two young ’uns...

...But if the effort isn’t made, the mood of sullen resentment I found in the people I talked with eventually will turn to angry action...

...And when it does, expect the worst...

...We, too, had our eligibility requirements, kept them waiting in the outer office, got impatient when they didn’t keep to our schedules or rambled off the subject...

...It was as if they had gotten stuck with a new car, that not only did not run when they wanted it to, but that periodically started itself up and drove all around their lawn...

...finding out why so many fires take place, though, would be not only long and tedious, but difficult to dramatize to the folks back home as well...

...For instance, the vast array of government programs designed to give people sustenance (welfare, disability, social security, unemployment, veterans pensions, workmen’s compensation, food stamps, Medicare, Medicaid) really are addressed only to two simple needs: the need for money to live on, and the need to pay for health care...

...It is not surprising, of course, that people grumble when the government exacts taxes and other burdens from them...

...In Washington, of course, the bureaucracy is the company, and not surprisingly Washingtonians find its foibles to be an endless source of memment...

...It’s not sup posed to do whatever it-or one of its employees-wants, or feels is right...

...Listening, learning, and reading are only the first steps, of course...

...I once taught a course in public administration to a class of government employees, and even they couldn’t muster up a kind word for it...

...As bad as machine bureaucracy is, the obvious alternative is worse...

...Though Carter described his town meetings as “a learning process rather than a teaching process,” the White House seemed more excited about the public relations benefits of being seen listening to people than the listening itself...

...All too often, though, an inept agency action gave the appearance of being malicious...

...Special consideration?’ Of course...

...If this sounds appealing, send us a letter about yourself and some long samples of your writing, preferably showing both fact-gathering and analytical ability...

...The subject they warmed to with raised-voice, tablethumping intensity was the bureaucracynot the anonymous, bloated, big-B Bureaucracy of Chamber of Commerce after-dinner speeches, but rather the specific agencies of government they felt intruding into their personal lives...

...You know, guilty until proven innocent...

...Liberals need not worry that any concession to critics of bureaucracy is an invitation to reactionthe New Deal has already been ratified...

...And what is the justification for outright rudeness in any situation...

...Pettigrew sent out a letter to every representative and senator asking them which federal programs their constituents thought were “administered least efficiently,” “most confusing,” “least successful in achieving their stated objectives,” involved the most “excessive paperwork,” and, finally, were “most responsive...

...Were Looking...

...As much as possible, that agency is supposed to execute the law as written, that is, to function as an efficient machine...

...OSHA made it a practice to concentrate its fire on small businesses rather than large ones...

...We thought of ourselves as the anti-bureaucracy agency, tilting against the local welfare, food stamp, social security, and VA offices on behalf of our clients...

...By definition, he must not look at the whole person, but only those features that enable him to transform herinto a “case,” a “file...

...Mostly Absent That passion is mostly absent today because criticism of big government is the exclusive province of the right, which doesn’t want social welfare programs in the first place...

...Bureaucracy isn’t limited to government, of course, or to the United States...

...Dent, Burton, and Ford are senior Democrats on House Education and Labor), they obviously bear some of the responsibility for the OWCP’s shortcomings...

...As the conversations rambled qlopg, these people began to paiqt 3 verbal picture of the political world as they saw it...

...First, although there are limits to what we can do to change bureaucracy, there are ways we can cut it down to size, minimizing the number and complexity of contacts between citizens and agencies...

...It is basic to bureaucracy, built into the relationship between citizens and government in a democratic welfare state...

...If he appraised it, that’s the last wordthat’s it...

...Once classified, she becomes subject to the same treatment as all the others in her category...

...I went all ‘the way to the IRS district director before I could get anybody to listen to what I was saying...

...if so, for what and on what terms...

...The red tape...

...For example, Frqnk, a prosperous middle-aged lawer, told of trying to fiqd out from the IRS how his purchase of a condominium would bear on his taxes...

...The patterns of complaints Pettigrew foundunnecessary delays in processing cases, agencies’ failure to provide people with information, and “outright rudeness”were very similar to the ones I heard...

...I began to find this out a cquple of years ago, after I decided to try to learn what politics and government look like from a citizen’s-eye viewwhat people think about when they think about the political system...

...I drew people’s names randomly from the phone book, wrote to tell them 1 was interested in finding out what was on their minds concerning politics, and asked to come visit for a couple of evenings with them and a few of their friends and families...

...As with poor congressional law drafting, obvious deficiencies like these could be remedied with a little more care and concern...

...The press can play a large role in this, by giving its audience a running commentary on what parts of the government work, what parts don’t, and why, so that we can apply the lessons elsewhere...

...Further, they didn’t like that intimacy, those intrusions...

...In this country we haven’t had a Mao, and with any luck we will never need one, but we do have to recognize that the problem is as serious here as it was in China...

...Douglas Goralski assisted in the research for this article...

...Sometimes it’s better for the government just to take a deep breath and give away the money, trusting its recipient to spend it in reasonable ways and accepting that there will be some who won’t...

...Dear Abby’ Unfortunately, the message generally has been ignored...

...Everyone who worked there was zealously dedicated to “serving the people...

...If a man is depending on that check,” said Gene, “he could be sitting out in the street with his family maybe for ten days if his landlord wants his rent on the first...

...Perhaps it can be best understood by starting with the desk that lies between them...

...More than 200 of them replied, often in great detail...

...As a VISTA volunteer representing people at social security hearings, I frequently heard vocational experts testify that my clients should be turned down for disability benefits because they were healthy enough to do sit-down jobs like those at a local Borden’s plant...

...for a new writer for our staff, and we‘d like to invite any of our readers who are interested to apply for the job...

...These are all worthy goals, but they create a lot of bitterness and kill a lot of projects...

...Thus, Pettigrew blandly reports, “even the offices of those senators and congressmen with legislative responsibilities for various programs acknowledge the acute need for administrative reform...

...The author of a call for “less government involvement in the ‘daily lives’ of individuals and businesses,” for example, was George McGovern...

...Social Security disability hearings again provide an extraordinary case in point...

...But because she had saved over the years for her burial, she told me, she had accumulated more in the bank than SSI recipients were allowed to have...

...We didn’t look at them as whole people any more than our fellow federal employees in the other agencies did...

...20036...

...One reason this kind of simplicity isn’t more widespread is that the government’s intentions are, in a way, too good-we can’t bear to give away money without making sure it’s well deserved...

...Curiously, many of the poor whites were certain that the government now discriminated against them, using evidence like Homer and Viola’s...

...I know a black man who used to work at the truckstop,” complained Homer, a young part-time school janitor...

...And, most obvious, there is all that congressional mail...

...it creates a good many of them by writing bad laws...

...Now and then proposals for accomplishing this come forth, usually involving some sort of “ombudsman” agency...

...In fact, when people spoke of current affairs and the like (mostly, I suspect, because they thought it would please me), they did so stiffly, with uncomfortable pauses and lags in the conversation...

...One would like to think they would do so for good-hearted purposes, but our experience with government is that agencies that are free to exercise the most discretion in applying the lawthe regulatory boards, contracting agencies, even judges sentencing criminalstend to use that discretion in ways that harm, not help, the average man...

...Across from her is the bureaucrat...

...It is worth remembering here that the agency’s old age insurance program seemed to work fine...

...The fact that her savings are for burial purposes, not high living, could not even be considered...

...And the only way we could rectify two of the things that came in grossly underappraised was to go to our congressman, who used to be a neighbor...

...you have to talk to the agent of the day’-you know, call a number and qgent so-and-so answers...

...where is the sense in that...

...A 1976 survey by Potomac Associates found that Americans-even self-described conservatives-want the government to do more to help the elderly, make college available to young people, reduce air pollution, improve health care, and so on...

...Fine...

...Why offer a service and not deliver it...

...It was expressed at Jimmy Carter’s town meetings and phone-ins, for example (not to mention his election itself)--in the plea for help from a Cleveland woman who couldn’t get her mother’s GI Bill benefits straightened out, the complaint of a Lanham, Maryland jobseeker that she had been frozen out of civil service employment, the California man’s protest about letters the Post Office takes forever to deliver, and so on...

...The Good Guys and the Bad Guys Thus, I was amazed to learn that many poor people regarded us as just another bureaucracy-couldn’t they tell the good guys from the bad guys...

...Spanning Party Lines This last point is underscored in a recent report to Jimmy Carter from Richard Pettigrew, a presidential assistant working on reorganization...

...discriminatory or idiosyncratic, not uniform...

...I did so by going to three towns to talk with three classes of people-poor whites in Augusta, Georgia, professionals and businessmen in Towson, Maryland, and blue-collar workers in New Milford, New Jersey...

...their long hours at low pay proved that...

...it scored badly in three categories...

...People of all classes felt that their treatment had been bungled, not efficient...

...But if bad guys and bad practices were all that there was to the problem, such tinkering with the machinerythe usual activity of reformerswould be all it would take to solve it...

...As every scholarly treatise on the subject will tell you, the great advantage bureaucracy is Supposed to offer to complex, modem society is efficient, rational, uniform, and courteous treatment for the citizens it deals with...

...To my surprise, what loomed largest in that portrait was not presidents or elections or issues or the rest of the stuff we usually think of as “politics...

...Yet not only did these qualities manage to conceal themselves froh the people I talked with, it was their very opposites that seemed more characteristic...

...Why do they need to call me now...