Yes, the bureaucracy in Washington is a clogged-up tangle. That’s why two-thirds of Americans think it needs a major overhaul.
But slashing away at Washington’s many stupidities won’t fix much — like trying to prune a jungle. The way to drain the swamp is to pull the plug on its flawed operating philosophy — the post-1960s red tape compliance model. Americans are swimming in red tape. Is your paperwork in order?
Read MoreIn recent weeks, Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) has moved to eliminate the U.S. Agency for International Development, while President Trump prepared an executive order to wind down the U.S. Department of Education. It’s the latest attempt to make government more efficient by eliminating things that it does. Merely shuttering departments, however, won’t get to the heart of the problem DOGE seeks to correct: The American public sector, at any level of government, can’t get things done in a time-effective and efficient manner.
A new Manhattan Institute report provides an antidote to this public malaise in the context of infrastructure. Its author, Philip K. Howard, offers a new governing vision that authorizes officials to weigh tradeoffs and make decisions for the public’s benefit.
Everyone knows that Washington is broken. Reformers on the right want to cut useless programs, and reformers on the left want to streamline rules and procedures. But neither reform approach will remove the red tape that suffocates common sense. There’s always another rule, another process needed to discuss a new issue.
Americans are harmed, not helped, by all this process.
The modern state is built on a flawed philosophy of law. Governing requires officials, not law, to make decisions.
Read MoreIn a report published by Manhattan Institute, Philip Howard argues that Washington needs to abandon the bureaucratic compliance model, and replace it with a simpler framework that empowers designated officials to make tradeoff judgments to modernize infrastructure and achieve public results.
Governing structures created after the 1960s are designed to fail because they presume legal rules and processes can validate correct choices. But law can't think. The proper role of law is to provide a framework that delineates the authority to make that decision, and provides public transparency and oversight.
Read MoreFederal agencies need more discretion, not less. Many of the rules they follow are not statutory, and one useful function that DOGE could perform is to identify and eliminate the most outdated and inefficient of them. As Philip Howard, the author of many books on simplifying government and founder of the nonpartisan group Common Good, has pointed out over the years, bureaucrats need more freedom to use their own good judgment regarding the implementation of policy, rather than being forced to follow rules.
Read MoreThe litmus test for a good school is its culture—its caring, energy, mutual trust, and commitment to a common mission. Good cultures require teachers to feel ownership of the classroom and principals to enforce standards and values, while red tape and entitlements undermine the authority and human spirit that are essential. Fixing K–12 education requires stripping away bureaucratic and union controls and empowering educators to build good school cultures.
Read MoreMost Americans know that Washington is overdue for a Department of Government Efficiency. But what should such a commission fix?
The civil service certainly needs an overhaul to establish accountability from top to bottom. The point, however, isn’t to inject a sense of terror in government employees but to instill trust that everyone is held to the same standards.
Read MoreThey also should give a prominent spot on their team to the lawyer and longtime government-reform advocate Philip K. Howard, author of The Death of Common Sense and numerous other books outlining a new vision for how government agencies should operate. Nobody has thought longer and harder about how to instill a culture of responsiveness and responsibility to government and civil society.
Read MoreEveryone should read, or re-read, Michael Lewis’s splendid and infuriating book The Fifth Risk, which told the story of the violence done by the first Trump Administration to the government’s necessary experts in places you don’t think of, like the weather service. If there’s anything I’m really fearful about in Trump II—and there are a lot of things—it’s that the regulatory guardrails will be removed by Trump’s circle of oligarchs. But we should also recognize that the regulatory apparatus, and the civil service system, are badly in need of reform. Instead of Elon Musk, Trump’s Efficiency campaign should be led by Philip K. Howard, who has written a slew of books on the subject. You can start with The Death of Common Sense and move on from there.
Read MoreA fourth thing: Establish an Office of Common Sense Reform, working directly from the White House, with a statutory limit of no more than 30 employees to prevent it from becoming yet another permanent and oversize bureaucracy. Appoint either Philip K. Howard, author of “The Death of Common Sense,” or Cass Sunstein, who worked on regulatory reform for Obama, as its first director. Give it the mandate to cut through all the permitting requirements, duplicative regulations and other bureaucratic haggles that keep even modest infrastructure projects from ever being completed on time or on budget.
Read MoreThe lynchpin of Donald Trump’s “plan to dismantle the deep state” is to assert authority to dismiss senior civil servants at will: “First, I will immediately re-issue my 2020 executive order restoring the president’s authority to remove rogue bureaucrats. And I will wield that power very aggressively.”
Trump’s diagnosis is correct in part but his reform proposal badly misses the target.
Read MoreElon Musk’s offer to run a “government efficiency commission” for Donald Trump has triggered enthusiasm in some circles. It raises the question of why Democrats, who say they’re the party of good government, shouldn’t propose their own vision of an efficiency commission.
What would such an efficiency commission do? Trump conceives of it as “a complete financial and performance audit” to “fully eliminate fraud and improper payments within six months….sav[ing] trillions.” Washington is long overdue for a spring cleaning, but improper payments, totaling about $230 billion, are only a start.
Read MoreThe "rule of law" sits high on the altar of American culture as a core national value. Law in America is as pure as law can be—impartial, precise, and therefore unquestioned, like the 10 Commandments. The mandarins of law debate fine points such as judicial deference but almost never ask doctors, teachers, employers, or civic leaders whether law supports or hinders them.
But Americans in their everyday activities see a different reality. Law is so dense that it is unknowable, and so complex that even large companies with huge legal staffs can't comply—more like the 10 Million Commandments.
Read MoreAmerican government is suffering a breakdown of authority. It is unable to give permits for transmission lines and housing, deal with homelessness, fix broken schools, or even fire a civil servant who doesn’t show up for work.
Red tape has supplanted official responsibility.
The accretion of detailed codes, procedures and regulations among numerous agencies at federal, state and local levels are like layers of sediment that have silted over a harbor. It’s hard to get anywhere because it’s basically unlawful to make sensible decisions.
Read MorePublic sector unions wield outsized influence over American government. That power prevents effective managerial control and fosters cynicism toward democratic processes. Successful statutory reforms to address outsized union power are unlikely because of the political resources amassed by these unions. To combat the influence of public sector unions, which serve their own interests instead of the common good, this brief explores five possible constitutional challenges that might dislodge union controls and weaken their grip on power.
Read MoreEveryday Freedom calls on individuals, families, and communities to exercise newfound authority in the pursuit of flourishing lives. By the last page, the book acts as a mirror, staring back at readers with a challenging question: Are we ready to live up to the responsibilities of such freedom?
Read MoreLook at American culture. Something basic is missing. Americans know it. Nothing much works as it should. Simple daily choices seem fraught with peril. In the workplace, we walk on eggshells. Big projects—say, modernizing infrastructure—get stalled in years of review. Endemic social problems such as homelessness become, well, more endemic. Oh, there goes San Francisco. Doing what’s right is not on the table. Who’s to say what’s right? Extremism grows.
Powerlessness has become a defining feature of modern society. Americans at all levels of responsibility feel powerless to do what they think is needed.
Read MoreHere we are, led like sheep into an election to choose whether Joe Biden or Donald Trump should lead America at this perilous time. A clear majority disfavor the choice. Nor do the hot buttons of political debate between woke progressives vs. right wing conspiracists align with the views of most Americans.
Out in the real world, nothing much about government works as it should, with porous borders, broken schools, and homeless encampments. The list is long. Mandatory speech codes and other indignities of the nanny state fuel growing resentment.
Read MoreMuch of the answer lies in Everyday Freedom, a powerful and succinct new book by Philip Howard. As liberals ushered in a wave of fundamental changes to individual freedom and equality beginning in the 1960s — one of the great achievements in human history — they rightly sought to constrain the power of government to impinge on individual rights.
Read MoreAmericans have lost confidence in America. It’s not hard to see why. Broken schools, unaffordable health care, homelessness, decrepit infrastructure, and student mobs at universities readily come to mind.
The last three presidents have come to office promising “change we can believe in,” to “drain the swamp,” or to “build back better,” but government institutions seem beyond their control.
Pundits blame political polarization. But most public failures have little to do with policy or politics: They’re failures of execution.
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