Our federal government has become a huge unworkable monstrosity while we were napping. There are bureaus, departments, agencies and offices for every imaginable activity designed in the human imagination. So what’s the government solution when agencies proliferate faster than rabbits in heat? Why, add more, of course. Because our government is so bloated and inefficient, we need oversight agencies and inspector general departments. We pay thousands of bureaucrats to watch over many hundreds of thousands more. If the rate of growth continues, we may require many more thousands of overseers to watch the watchers who watch the “doers…” who watch us (and Oprah). Geeeesh!
It is natural for some people to be shirkers. We all know individuals who for whatever reason refuse to be productive and reliable, but to dedicate entire government departments and bureaus to ferret out sloth and slackers is the epitome of waste. Certainly civil service law and public union contracts should be changed or repealed if workers have to be overseen, watched and evaluated on a continual basis by an outside governmental entity. The same holds true for those “public servants” who cheat or steal. If we didn’t have the union contracts and antiquated civil service restrictions, we would not require constant monitoring for employee misfeasance or malfeasance.
Oh my, I nearly forgot to address the multiplicity of Congressional oversight committees. They watch the watchers who watch the watchers watch. That is why we pay our career politicians $174,000.00 per year to watch the supreme watchers. And yet, waste, fraud and abuse are common in the realm of government’s spending. Taxpayers must fund inefficiencies, foul-ups and crime. The career politicians are like any other middle-manager in a corporation. They seek to enhance their power and their resumes. By adding more people to the government payrolls and more responsibility for government offices, the political class can insure that their committees and oversight committees will have increasing responsibility and budgets. The taxpayers must dig deeper to pay for their illusions of grandeur, and suffer the consequences of a meddlesome bureaucracy. They win, we lose.
If our federal government were to function within the enumerated powers of the Constitution, we would not need the legions of watchers, checkers and overseers that now collect government paychecks, benefits and pension funds. If the federal leviathan adhered to its constitutional limits, the state and local governments could drastically reduce the huge numbers of employees who are required for compliance and for implementing unconstitutional mandates. We could severely reduce the hordes of watchers. We would pay lower taxes and have more for charitable giving. We could expand our small businesses and maybe hire out-of-work former federal, state and local government employees. We might hire some out of work “watchers,” too, because all those ex-feds might be tempted to loaf, to cheat….and whatever. Massive numbers of government workers resemble those Styrofoam packing peanuts that so many shippers use these days. They’re everywhere and magnetically attach themselves to nearly every object near the unpacking site. Small, constitutional government is much better than bloated monster we have today. We should try it sometime. Maybe our $174,000 watchers will get a clue. Then again…….
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