Considerable controversy surrounded the introduction of DOGE. Then came the government shutdown followed by lay-offs. We often lose sight of the one thing that these two controversies have in common: mission.
The Crisis
When I hear people object to funding cuts or the treatment of federal employees, I usually encourage them to understand the starting point. The federal government is in serious financial trouble. Servicing the debt is now consuming a large part of the federal budget, exceeding that of the defense department. Let me say this another way – if 14% of the budget goes to servicing the debt, that means we, the people, have 14% fewer choices we can make in our democracy. That is, of course, if you don’t simply print more money and get deeper in debt.
To balance the budget will require a massive 37% cut in expenditures! That is simply wicked.
There are two ways to solve this: politically and administratively. Politics is hard to control. It is also slow. But how money is spent is largely controllable. That President Trump knows. Introduce DOGE: grants suspended, budgets cut, probies fired (at least some were), some programs eliminated, USAID vanishes and the Department of Education will soon be gone. While Trump cannot control what Democrats do in regards to the shutdown, he can control how to staff the bureaucracy. The White House is determining who is “essential” to the normal function of governance.
The Private Sector
What is fascinating about the DOGE phenomenon is that we are seeing a rare event in human history, where technology and entrepreneurialism are unmasking bureaucracy. I worked for many years in the private sector and only worked in the federal government the last thirteen years of my career. The difference was quite significant. I feel for my federal colleagues because many of them have never experienced the angst of the private sector employee. The intensity and speed by which work is done is also difficult for them to comprehend. This culture, when placed in the context of a fiscal crisis, makes for an unpleasant, if not terrifying, experience for them. Like an addict, they have to first recognize there is a crisis. I think it is important to understand that this does not imply that federal workers are lazy or entitled. It is a matter of realistic perception and expectations.
So a lesson in how the private sector deals with crisis is essential. When a company is on the cusp of bankruptcy or serious financial setbacks, they have to make difficult decisions. They cut unprofitable operations, layoff employees and sell assets. And they do this quickly. A company will accomplish in a matter of months what a federal agency, if left to themselves, cannot figure out in eight years!
And key to this retrenchment is a renewed focus on mission. Many may find this hard to believe, but Apple was once on the cusp of bankruptcy. Their recovery began when they discarded peripheral endeavors and returned to their core competency – inventing game-changing technologies. General Electric went through a similar transformation, festering into an unyieldly global conglomerate. They split the company into three companies that focused on their strengths: aerospace, energy and health care. Success was all about rediscovering their mission.
When you look at the departments and agencies of any government, is it possible to identify what their true mission is? Has mission ever been brought into question? Is it possible that retrenchment is necessary to rediscover mission?
System Development
In a previous article on Lessons Learned I discussed the importance of system development. If there is anything that marks success in the private sector it is a company’s ability to innovate and improve at a systemic level. It is in their culture. When you look at success, you look at companies like Apple, Amazon and Tesla/Space X. I am certain you can think of many more examples. The trick is that these companies not only do something innovative once, they do it again and again. And more importantly, what they produce is constantly improving at every level, with every component.
No one embodies system development in this generation more than Elon Musk. Everything he has touched is a living example of how an idea can be transformed into a viable enterprise. His success is that he has a knack of building a team around him that directs this energy into testing, trying, failing, redesigning and persisting in these attempts until a finished product is presented. And it doesn’t end there. The customer becomes engaged in the improvement of that product. The product gets better, the production is done more efficiently, and the customer is provided a better quality product at less cost.
And some ideas fail. When that does happen, reality sets in. Money does not grow on trees. The project is dropped. Google did it with the glasses, and Apple had a nasty ride with their Apple car.
The first step of system development is determining the goal. And the goal has to be consistent with the mission of the organization.
Is it possible that government can be developed in the same way?
The Debt Problem
For the United States, the fortunate thing about government at all non-federal levels is that a budget has to be balanced. Even socialists know this. Few cities and very few states in the United States are “bankrupt”. Some are close. But, by and large, governments know that they have to pay their bills from tax revenues. There are no other options.
But the federal government is a different matter because it can print money. If it can spend more than they take in, it can print the money. Sure, there are other phrases used to describe what the government does to “print” money. But the end result is the same regardless what you call it: mounting debt. The debt has to be “serviced.” Servicing a debt is 1) paying interest on bonds and treasury notes that they have issued, 2) paying off debts that are due to be paid and 3) reselling the debt (kicking the can down the road). Servicing the debt is now larger than the defense department budget!
But there is a big difference. If I had died at the age of 40, my wife could have used my life insurance to pay off the debt. That was why I had life insurance. The insurance would cover the remaining debt, enabling her to live in a house debt free. What is the life insurance of our national government? It is you – the taxpayer.
An alternate scenario would be if I died and did not have life insurance. The survivors would be left holding the bag of a debt that all their income combined could not cover. In the real world, they would hopefully sell the house and hopefully gain something from it. But if that did not happen, they could lose everything. What happens when the government has a debt it can not, or will not, pay? They sell more debt to cover it. Or they print money. The end result is that the next generation will be expected to face this problem. At some point, this becomes unsustainable.
Debt evolves into a political problem because economic reality begins to trump political opportunity. In essence, it eats away at our democracy like a cancer. Suppose the budget is balanced. At current levels of spending, it means that 14% of the budget is paying for yesterday’s decisions. That is 14% of our freedom. At what point does the debt become a crisis? 15%? 20%? 33%?
Appears to me it is now a crisis. It is a bit ironic that the shutdown presumably revolves around health insurance subsidies. Hmm. “Health” is 13% of the US budget. Servicing the debt is 14%. Beginning to see my point?
In the middle of this are federal employees. Once considered a secure arrangement, a federal job is now as uncertain as a private sector job. At 14% of the federal budget, it appears that servicing the debt is expensive enough to warrant lay-offs. At 14% of the federal budget, it is time to look at each agency and audit everything from the ground up.
Solving Debt
There are several avenues by which debt can be erased. First, there is the politically most palatable approach: grow out of debt. I have been through this rodeo for decades with each Republican administration. Cut taxes and we can grow ourselves out of debt. It actually works – sort of. The economy soars and tax revenues come pouring in.
But then there is the second aspect that is a bit tougher – cut spending. And it is this that politicians since 1965 have failed miserably. And it is why at this moment in history our country is buried in debt. To eliminate excessive spending would require a 37% cut in expenditures – which would be nothing short of revolutionary – and it may take one to do such a thing.
How to Cut Spending — Introducing DOGE
Spending cuts are never pleasant – if not sometimes cruel. Real people lose real jobs. Some services we find useful are reduced or eliminated. We may lose Saturday delivery from the post office. Some people may find medical care, housing and food more difficult to come by due to rule changes.
But one thing spending cuts can do is to bring the adults at the table to ask the question – what is the mission of this agency? The Department of Education, for example, has overseen a horrendous decline in the performance of education in this country. It has utterly failed in its mission. So it was eliminated. PBS and NPR, public broadcasting – eliminated because it’s mission was obsolete. And there is all the fury regarding USAID – in this era of budget cuts, is it reasonable to ask that USAID be focused on real aid? It’s history of diverting from its core mission was so incongruous that it was dissolved and absorbed into the State Department.
The most radical thing that DOGE has done is introduce into governance system development. And the first step of system development is defining the mission. It is one reason why DEI needs to be eliminated from all agencies. Agencies should be about their mission – and nothing more. There simply are no resources to fund DEI – unless you care to print more money!
In a world of economic reality, the US government needs to cut their spending by 1/3. In a world of political reality, that is not likely to happen. But in between, there is “better.” And “better” begins with refocusing on the mission.
Trimming the Bureaucracy
The recent government shutdown has introduced another element of debt reduction – reducing the bureaucracy by definition. Every shutdown requires agencies to determine who can go on furlough or not. “Essential” workers are asked to continue their jobs despite not being paid to do them. “Non-essential” workers are sent home. So it was that someone asked the question, “If they are non-essential, why do we have them in the first place?”
As noted in my article on the prospect of lay-offs, it is a matter of semantics. The real question that should be asked is whether a person’s job is missional. If they are considered “non-essential” in regards to the shutdown, is it logical to ask of that group whether some are “non-missional?”
So it is that we return to mission. What is the mission of an agency and which core set of its employees actually perform the mission?
Simplifying Governance
Trimming the bureaucracy will have only a minor effect on the cost of governance. Eliminating or reducing agencies with a history of expenditures outside its core mission can save significant funds over the long-term, but much remains. Reducing spending by 37% may be structurally impossible. It is not that the people involved are not smart enough to reduce spending. It is because we have layered bureaucracy with mandates that have made it difficult, if not impossible, for it to reduce spending after a certain point.
My experience with the USFS is one example. I worked for the United States Forest Service (USFS) for thirteen years, so I can provide some insight as to how complicated it can be to define mission. Before 1970, the USFS has almost 100% missional. Its staff went about the tasks of managing our forests and adjacent grasslands. It was, in fact, almost martial in its corporate culture. You were expected to follow orders, often rotated every three years to a different location.
But Congress introduced into American life NEPA, the National Environment Protection Act. Grafted into the USFS was an ever-growing staff of specialists who were required, by law, to conduct environmental assessments. I worked in a regional office (that covered the state of Alaska), so everyone who worked in the office was performing administrative functions. Of that staff, roughly ¼ of the staff were connected to NEPA. As computer technology bloomed, NEPA staff demanded more and more IT services to conduct their jobs more efficiently. What emerged was a Geographical Information System (GIS) division that was almost another ¼ of the staff. So together, the GIS division and the NEPA staff, were making up nearly half of the staff in the office.
Tucked away in a few cubicles were the timber managers and engineers who actually managed the forests. Another team focused on recreational services that made forests accessible and safer to enjoy.
From what I observed, there was not much fluff in USFS operations. But it was clear to me that if there was ever a trimming of the government to solve the debt problem, mission would matter. Congress, in 1970, changed the mission of the USFS (and many other agencies) by adding NEPA. So if Trump is to cut its staff, where would it start? The irony is that NEPA is established by law. The law would need to change or funding simply dropped. As far as I could tell, the staff of the USFS were faithfully applying the law. Their staff were competent, almost all holding college degrees and many holding graduate degrees. They were legal specialists, scientists, foresters, geologists and biologists. They were the sort of people you would expect to find doing environmental assessments. And no – they were not partisan activists. Within our local national forest there were several mining operations. Large timber contracts were issued on a regular basis. The NEPA staff were committed to being fair and successful in protecting the environment. It was a tough balancing act.
In summary, during the shutdown almost the entire floor was vacated. Practically everyone was deemed “non-essential.” Yet almost everyone was considered missional. Thus my concern regarding how the White House is bandying about the term “non-essential” as also imputing “expendable.”
But if the perception by some is that the USFS has a mission to only manage its forests and grasslands, then they need to recognize that the bureaucracy they disdain is also the bureaucracy their parents and grandparents created.
Rediscovering Mission
Simplifying governance is as much a political consideration as economic. Economic necessity will eventually force the government to cut its budget. It is as certain as the sun rising. When what is inevitable arrives at the door step of the President and Congress, it will be messy. The rhetoric will be severe, terribly unkind. Little of it will be factual. Yet there is hope that there will be enough adults in the room to arrive at rational solutions, key of which is looking at the mission of each agency and program. Is it really needed? Has it succeeded in its original mission? If needed, is it equipped to successfully achieve its objectives?
One of the unexpected consequences of the government shutdown has been the attention applied to the food stamp program (called SNAP and ABT). Is it really needed? It certainly is. Has it succeeded in its original mission? Largely. Is it equipped to succeed? Most likely not. Podcasters, like Matt Walsh, have compiled damning information about the current administration of SNAP. Its original mission was to feed needy Americans. Today, it feeds almost 49% of the illegal aliens in our country. It is obvious that the correlation of obesity and SNAP is strong, so defining what “feeding needy Americans” means is necessary. Feed them what? Corn syrup products? Walsh presented one item listed on Amazon of a wine and cheese collection selling for $120.
The lesson here is that saving SNAP is a microcosm of saving the federal budget. SNAP does not need to be thrown out. But its mission has been confused. Billions of dollars can be cut by simply focusing on Americans, and limiting SNAP-qualified products to food items that meet basic nutritional needs. Walsh presented one chart that showed the percent of SNAP benefits by product. It was startling. You get the impression that the SNAP budget could be cut in half by simply applying the program to real food, meeting real nutritional needs for real Americans.
And that returns to a healthy discussion of mission.
Resources
“How much has the U.S. government spent this year?“, Fiscal Data, Treasury Department
Want great pictures of the Tongass National Forest? View Ron Niebrugge’s photos
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