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Federal News Radio
Caution: When
draining the swamp, remember, it’s a very, very big swamp
By Mike Causey
March 20, 2017
The new A-team that is taking over (slowly in some cases) top
government jobs mostly has a business or military background — former
CEOs and generals who are being saluted. And that lack of civilian
government experience at the federal level may not be a bad thing.
Some operations, and some feds, may have to reinvent themselves over
the next few years. Wall Street is different from Pennsylvania Avenue.
Some people in government will have to learn (right or wrong) that
programs they’ve overseen for decades may be out-of-date and
out-of-touch with the client base or simply walking dinosaurs.
Some people in the new administration will have to learn that many of
the people and programs they’ve pledged to eliminate or revamp are
badly needed and wildly popular with taxpayers who may loathe the
IRS or EPA, but love their local Agriculture Department office, local
national park staff or the folks down at the Social Security office in
the strip mall.
Groups representing federal workers, managers and executives know they
can count on congressional Democrats to fight many cuts proposed in
last week’s so-called skinny (as in first) budget. But to win
Republican votes in the House and Senate, they are reaching to private
groups, societies and (in the case of the EPA) to state governments to
oppose cuts.
Their goal is to side-step the climate-change argument (in which EPA
has been a leader of the pack) and concentrate on things like water
pollution and crop contamination. Especially in red states which gave
the President his electoral college victory.
There are lessons to be learned from the massive downsizing of the
Clinton years when about 250,000 federal jobs were chopped using
buyouts as the carrot and reductions-in-force (which are costly, messy
and often hit the wrong people). Tens of thousands of federal jobs were
privatized and turned over to contractors. So the federal payroll
dropped, but reappeared in the private sector where privatized feds
wound up making a lot more money than they did in the same jobs in
government.
During the BRAC (base realignment and closure ) operation, someone
official figured that every federal job brought into a city or town
created, in whole or in part, six other jobs in the private sector.
People who service federal workers supplying them parking, food,
entertainment, homes and apartments, etc. — but such data has yet
to be seen that creating or importing any job almost anywhere generates
more jobs.
What the folks who have come to town to drain the swamp need to realize
is that 85 percent of the federal workforce lives, works, spends and
votes outside the Washington area. Feds in major centers with fewer
people but a higher percentage of federal workers than D.C., probably
aren’t much like their “decadent and distant” colleagues Inside the
Beltway.
Huntsville, Alabama, with just about every federal agency represented,
represents a miniature Washington, D.C., without the Metro and all
those type A’s. Ogden, Utah — with the IRS, Interior Department and Air
Force —is a major federal center. Toss a rock in Raleigh-Durham- Cary,
North Carolina and chances are you will hit a well-paid federal
professional. So are places in Arkansas, Montana, Idaho, North and
South Carolina, as well as Florida, Texas and California and New Mexico
where Uncle Sam is both a big-deal and the employer of choice. And
job-generator for the private sector. The late Sen. Robert Byrd
(D-W.Va.) was so successful moving federal offices into the Mountain
State that many think it is D.C., with hills but minus the attitude. At
one point the American Federation of Government Employees (a great
outfit, but not the Teamsters) was by far the largest union in Oklahoma
because of all the federal operations — from the Postal Service to the
FAA and every other agency — there. The reason that homegrown
anti-government terrorists chose Oklahoma City as their target in April
1995, was because the Federal Building to them was a human target-rich
symbol of a massive government presence in the heartland.
Feds are used to abuse. It goes with the territory. Most can shake it
off and keep doing their jobs. But they don’t need another round of
bureaucrat-bashing and rhetoric about draining the swamp. Because all
of the above places, including wherever you are reading this — not just
D.C. —are part of the swamp too.
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