WASHINGTON — For the six years of the Obama presidency, or perhaps the last 35 years since Ronald Reagan’s election, American politics has been dominated by a debate on the size and role of the federal government. This argument, while intense and consequential, has often lacked one element: actual knowledge about the size and role of the federal government.
Into this gap, political scientist John DiIulio has thrown a slim volume titled “Bring Back the Bureaucrats.” It is a reproof to everyone who hates government or loves government without understanding what it does — which covers most of the American ideological spectrum.
DiIulio describes two, seemingly contradictory trends. Since the 1960s, federal spending has increased by more than five times in real terms. But the number of federal bureaucrats in 2014 was smaller than at any time since Dwight Eisenhower was in office. The federal workforce has essentially been capped at around 2 million since just after World War II.
Some of this vastly increased level of spending per bureaucrat can be explained by improved productivity — computers, for example, have made it easier to administer Social Security. But mostly we have seen what DiIulio terms “Leviathan by proxy.” The federal government has expanded its mission without expanding its workforce — outsourcing the administration of programs to state and local governments; to for-profit businesses (i.e., the military-industrial complex); and to large social service nonprofits.
Not all proxies are bad. But the weaknesses of this system were on full display in the launch of the Obamacare exchanges — in which the reputation of government was tied to the cinderblock of contractor performance and thrown overboard. Hurricane Katrina revealed that the Federal Emergency Management Agency is a phantom organization that works mainly through contractors. Our system of government by proxy is often comfortable with high levels of fraud (as in Medicare and Medicaid), and content with low levels of information on outcomes.