The past few months have been eventful on the government reform front.
Although the effort was described as the elimination of “waste, fraud and abuse” from the federal government, instead, the administration, with apparently little if any consideration of regulatory agencies’ functions or effectiveness, issued wholesale reductions in the number of federal employees at each agency, sometimes with buyouts, more often via layoffs. It also eliminated or significantly reduced a range of government programs at most if not all regulatory agencies.
Perhaps you expected reductions like this would have involved close cooperation with, and input from, the relevant personnel at each agency. Or maybe you expected evaluation of the chores Congress told each agency to perform, and analysis of how well the agency was doing each. But that isn’t how this was done.
The goal of rooting out and eliminating “waste, fraud and abuse” is worthy, but the administration’s chosen methods are ill-suited to it, more arbitrary than logical. For example, at some agencies, pretty much any federal employees who were on ‘probationary status’—either because they were new to federal employment or just new to their job within an agency—were terminated, regardless of what they were or weren’t doing. It’s clear that not all of them were guilty of waste, or fraud, or abuse. Employees by the thousands at multiple agencies, in any and all job types, were encouraged to resign, and many did. Large numbers of other employees were eliminated as well, after which, frequently, thousands were quickly hired back, as the administration essentially admitted its mistakes in letting them go.
Meanwhile, federal workers are being required to prepare weekly reports on what they are doing, though the odds are low that anyone is basing termination decisions on those reports.
A few words about my particular angle on all this: I am an attorney in private practice who helps companies comply with laws and regulations, and I fight like heck on their behalf. I am well-acquainted with frustrating and burdensome regulatory requirements. But I am not a cynic about regulators and regulations, and don’t believe all or even most regulators are corrupt or lazy. I have long believed that on balance industry is usually helped, not hurt, by regulatory requirements that are clear, consistent, predictable, and fairly enforced, and operated by experienced, knowledgeable, responsive regulators. I also believe that most or all lawyers in similar roles have the same view.
Remember, every regulation is made for a purpose. If the purpose of a regulation is not needed anymore, or it’s too burdensome on businesses or people, then it would of course be good to eliminate the regulation. But wholesale and arbitrary cutting of personnel and budgets and regulations doesn’t appear to be aimed at those targets, and importantly, will certainly mean that purposes like food safety, drug safety, limiting pollution, providing healthcare for poor or disabled people, protecting consumers from banks cheating them, and many others, all will stop altogether or will be done in a worse way.
