Hard to Kill: Why Government Agencies Take on a Life of Their Own
[W]hen a program supplies particular benefits to an existing or newly created interest – public or private – it creates a set of political relationships that make it exceptionally difficult to further alter that program by coalitions of the majority. What was created in the name of the common good, is now sustained in the name of the particular interest.
– James Q. Wilson, “The Rise of the Bureaucratic State”
Georgia State Route 400, commonly known to Atlantans as “Georgia 400,” is the state’s only toll road. The sole toll plaza on “400” was opened in 1993, on a new express extension running from the trendy Buckhead community up into the north-eastern suburbs. Like most toll roads, the pay-to-drive section of Georgia 400 was sold to taxpayers and commuters on the notion that the new stretch of highway would pay for itself, in this case at fifty cents a car.
State Route 400 quickly became one of Atlanta’s most trafficked highways, in a class with the dual interstates of I-75/I-85 and the infamous I-285 loop. All those pairs of quarters piled up, and by early 2009, the toll booths had raised funds well in excess of that required to retire the original bond issue. So in accordance with the original intent of the law that created them, the toll booths were removed around the last Fourth of July.
Whoops, sorry — that’s not what actually happened. It’s what should have happened, but true to Wilson’s famous paper, the bureaucracy that grew around the Georgia 400 toll booths did not go quietly.
In fact, it didn’t go at all. The Georgia 400 toll plaza is still running, 24-7, despite the fact that by March of 2009, the state had banked over $32 million on an outstanding debt (including interest) of $26.6 million.
When the Atlanta Journal-Constitution asked State Road and Tollway Authority officials last year why the booths were still in operation, a spokesperson insisted that it would be impossible to pay off the debt early, since that would mean, er, shutting down the State Road and Tollway Authority.
According to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, “Of the $22 million or so the state reaps from Ga. 400 drivers, about $7 million goes to running the toll authority and $9 million a year goes to paying down the debt.”
These figures bring up a very obvious point — or at least one that’s obvious if you don’t work for the government. Georgia is in as much fiscal difficulty these days as any state not named California or Michigan, and nobody asked me, but, hey, state: you just admitted that you can save at least $7 million dollars a year — forever — just by shutting down a toll authority that’s not needed any more! That’s like getting free money!
Pertinent questions here would be:
1. How much debt is still outstanding. (Just because initial cost of the road has been collected in tolls, doesn’t mean that that we are at breakeven. There’s interest on the debt and costs associated with collecting tolls that have added to the overall cost of the road.)
2. If there is debt outstanding, how would the tolls be collected and debt paid down if the toll authority were closed.
3. How many of the $7 million/year jobs are necessary to collect tolls and pay debt?
Three thoughts. First, the “iron triangle effect” kicks in almost immediately around any government activity that transfers resources from sector to sector: the bureaucrats who run the program, the vendors who sell products and services to the program, and the direct beneficiaries of the program become passionate special interests dedicated to the maintenance and expansion of the program. Their powerful motivation and tight focus allow them to routinely outmaneuver the more diffuse and variably focused “general public.”
Second, as Italian sociologist Robert Michels noted, the “Iron Law of Oligarchy” striates the promoters of any transfer program into leaders — usually amoral and extremely adroit at campaigning for their interests — and rank-and-file who back the leaders’ plays with little resistance. Thus “popular movements” for this or that species of State action are more often than not “engineered,” in the sense that the “grass roots” aren’t acting on their own initiative and emotion, but are being led by persons in whose judgment and priorities they repose trust.
Third, almost any transfer program can make use of the Washington Monument Defense to protect its funding and its perquisites. In general, politicians and bureaucrats will league together to protect the expansion of the State and its privilege of taxation and redistribution by attacking those State activities the public values most to quell opposition to those activities the public would willingly sacrifice for budget reduction.
A nasty little troika of defenses for the Omnipotent State and its ruling class, eh?
If somebody is smart, the next campaign slogan for the next successful politician will simply be: “STOP SPENDING MONEY!” Three words that, if a plitician sticks to them, will elect just about anybody. Hopefully some politician out there will try it. One can only hope, though.
The bureaucracy is expanding to meet the needs of the expanding bureaucracy.
And they wonder why the Tea Party people are pissed off.
Wow . . . for a few minutes there I thought you were talking about Tulsa, Oklahoma. New mayor is cutting cops, policemen, firemen, turned off all the lights on the expressways around town . . . the list just keeps going and going . . . but we got a new city hall, new baseball park, new civic center, old civic center renovated, lots of city property that is now sitting empty (was a plan to rent out off space) . . . but when the budget gets tight who’s got to go, only the ones that we see and rely on everyday.
Not to mention that business can do things cheaper and more efficiently. The government sector has done so much to destroy once lucrative businesses. Only to transform them into huge losses. Maybe the tea parties will give us the change we need. It’s sink or swim time!
It’s not just “the selfish civil servants” you should blame. Sure, like all people they want to keep their jobs (in this economy especially), but you have to look higher up. It’s the agency heads (and elected officials) who are responsible for the agency that want to protect their fiefdom. In all non-profit worlds: less budget = less power. So you keep dead weight around just to justify larger budgets and thus importance within the organization.
On top of that, there is no incentive to save money in government (same goes with universities/non-profits, etc.). If you don’t spend all your budget, most likely you won’t get the same amount next year – you’ll get less and possibly go broke before the end of the year. If you do spend all your budget, you get MORE next year! So if you’re in charge of setting up a budget, you set a high number, know it’s going to be reduced, and make sure you spend all of that or else you risk not getting enough next year to meet operating costs.
Yeah, it’s crazy, but that is how things run now. One way to fix this is to set up a budget system that rewards (or at least not punish) coming in under budget.
Much of what the private sector enjoys and manages to make robust profits from was given to them freely as a shared, open source result of some sort of government research, scientific, technological and/or development program.
Often the most prized possession all companies, educational institutions, enterprises, entrepreneurs, industries and organizations begins and ends with the word “government”.
Government approved, government subsidized, government preferred, government guaranteed, government standards, government restricted; you name it – just as long as whatever it is begins with “government” is what matters most.
Yet when the behemoth brain powers that run all of the “we must make a profit or die” industries cannot construct a simple sentence to defend their selves with, a heap of self flatulence on the easiest target around is sure to produce something that stinks good no matter how you rotate or smell it.
Mr. Collier knows that folks that live in glass houses shouldn’t throw stones. Yet he chose to hit the ground running with a shameless crowd.
This is yet another reason to begin “cleaning house” and voting average citizens into government at every level. Oversight is needed to prevent this type of waste and fraud.
This is not what our founders envisioned and it’s certainly not what we voted for. We expect common sense in our government, and if you don’t have it, don’t bother running for office.
eventually these programs (like the government) will hit a wall. (the wall).
WHAT WILL IT LOOK LIKE ??
it will look like most any country in Africa …or Haiti if you prefer to look closer to home.
it doesn’t take much imagination to see that the debt load of the USA is unsustainable. It will be Obama’s lasting legacy. the complete and irreversible destruction of the strongest economy..
http://www.pbase.com/opinion/opinions
ummmm…..DUH!
What else is new?
In the Philly area, money from river bridges is used to support the Sports Stadiums…you know, those “factories” where the employees (players) are already millionaires…but of course need some extra subsidy from the 8-12 dollar an hour local woking stiffs.
The Government and their “friends” rob us every hour…
AND?
(Like, what WAS the point of this article, beyond the umpteenth-thousandth bloggers articulation of the painful omnivorous appetite of the Government?)
I expected more..I was disapointed…
Billy C., you should WRITE for the State.
Bingo!!! And let’s include non-profits in that, as well.
Here is my funny story for the subject of Bureaucrats gone Wild. FEMA declared my land a special flood zone( whiich it is not) and were going to sell me FEMA flood insurance by directing taking the premiums out the the checking account. Does that sound like the Chicago-way protection business? ‘Nice business you have here chump, it would be ashamed if somebody busted it up.”
The bureaucrats are little feudal states, run by little feudal lords, serving their own interests while pretending to work for the public. These are public masters pretending to be public servants. Review and cut off their fundings when possible!
I see Boobily is bashing the banks again. Gotta have those private sector bogeymen in order to advance the cause of bureaucratic government. The government was the only job growth area for 2009. It looks like this will also be the case this year.
This is Parkinson’s Law at work. E.G., National Public Radio, subsidized by the taxpayers, (another of Lyndon Johnson’s loony ideas), not coincidentally supports statist policies, socialism generally.
Hell – Georgia drivers got off easy.
In NJ, the polls borrowed a bunch of money, spent it on union giveaways that have nothing to do with the Turnpike – then assigned the debt to the Turnpike Authority to make sure nobody got ideas about taking down the tolls.
In MA, the Mass Pike raised tolls on the West-East commuters (Worcester County Republicans) to pay for the Big Dig – which provides nice new free highways to the North-South Democratic commuters.
Government exists to give jobs and self-esteem to government workers (meet some of ‘em, you’ll know what I mean).
Three suggestions if we ever get control in DC:
1. Small scale: Take out some visible targets – like Dept of Ed, arts, etc.
2. Large scale: Cut # of govt employees 5% first year, cut grants of all sort 5%, move SS, Med, etc off of automatic increases – force congress to vote each year (its their job!)
3. Super-Big scale: start constitutional amendments to limit govt – limit scope of commerce clause, etc.
This scandal is part of a broader problem involving the state DOT planning (or not planning) road expansion desired by the state legislature and executive; plans to further expand toll collection by taxing EXISTING HOV lanes on the interstate highways in the Atlanta metropolitan region; and the underlying distaste for public transport by many Atlanta residents (which expresses itself in county referenda which decline integration of their county systems into MARTA, the Metropolitan Atlanta Rapid Transit Authority, also known colloquially as Moving Africans Rapidly Thru Atlanta). Transportation policy is perceived (accurately I believe) as a means whereby the City of Atlanta and Fulton County export their deficit based, high tax budgeting style to the rest of the region, which by and large (whether Democratic or Republican controlled) practices financial prudence.
Well, big business has been running our health care systems since it existed and thats a real gem isn’t it? a gem for the multi-billion profit scrounging bad jokes called …insurance companies…
However, I agree with Will on this one, on the Federal and State level, there is always waste to be cut and money to be saved. One of the most successful in the 20th century was … Bill Clinton. Ironic in that he, as a liberal Democrat turned a Massive “Republican Tax and Spend Federal Deficits” into a lean Surplus which Bush and the Republicans Promplty ruined upon taking office in 2001, spending us into oblivion. We know that OBAMA is trying to save us now but will he be successful? Only the next 3 to 7 years will tell…..
Will,
You’re over complicating the subject at hand. Bureaucrats propagate money-wasting, needless, useless jobs because it’s the way they
make money to put food on their family’s tables. They
don’t give a hoot about efficiency. It’s just the way these dregs on society (for the most part) they are.
The only good thing about them are that most aren’t terrorists, domestic
or otherwise. Furthermore, most bureaucrats have families and loved ones and believe
that instead of spending money on lawyers to defend terrorists in New York City, Obama should be spending money on weapons systems and people to kill them.
The giant elephant in the room that no one wants to talk about is the fact that when you cut government spending, you have to fire people from their government jobs and thus make them unable to feed their families.
That’s the inescapable ugly truth you cannot get around. And when push comes to shovel, no one has the guts to do the dirty deed.
The fact that every single job will be recreated in the private sector is irrelevant, since it’s impossible to factually prove, and 90% of the population has no interest in understanding complicated macroeconomic mechanisms.
World peace is probably a more achievable goal than small government.
How about sunset laws applicable to all Federal agencies? I know the article relates primarily to state agencies, but federal agencies are worse by far and they impact upon all of us. Mandate that all Federal agencies must die automatically if not affirmatively endorsed, by a majority vote in the Congress and the signature of the President, for another five year period.
That would not only be a big help with the federal budget, it would also give the Congress something useful to do instead of looking for new and more politically beneficial ways to spend more money. Surely, after fifty or so years in existence, some of the agencies can be permitted to die.
This won’t happen, but it is pleasant to dream.
20. Poor Citizen:
Well, big business has been running our health care systems since it existed and thats a real gem isn’t it? a gem for the multi-billion profit scrounging bad jokes called …insurance companies…
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The joke is you. These evil insurance companies you are so quick to cry about make on average 2.2% profit. Behind:
1 Network and Other Communications Equipment 20.4%
2 Internet Services and Retailing 19.4%
3 Pharmaceuticals 19.3%
4 Medical Products and Equipment 16.3%
5 Railroads 12.6%
6 Financial Data Services 11.7%
7 Mining, Crude-Oil production 11.5%
8 Securities 10.7%
9 Oil and Gas Equipment, Services 10.2%
10 Scientific, Photographic, Control Equipment 9.9%
11 Household and Personal Products 8.7%
12 Utilities: Gas and Electric 8.7%
13 Aerospace and Defense 7.6%
14 Food Services 7.1%
15 Industrial Machinery 6.9%
16 Food Consumer Products 6.7%
17 Electronics, Electrical Equipment 6.5%
18 Commercial Banks 5.2%
19 Telecommunications 5.1%
20 Chemicals 5.0%
21 Construction and Farm Machinery 5.0%
22 Insurance: Life, Health (stock) 4.6%
23 Information Technology Services 4.5%
24 Computers, Office Equipment 4.3%
25 Metals 3.9%
26 Wholesalers: Diversified 3.5%
27 Insurance: Property and Casualty (stock) 3.3%
28 Specialty Retailers 3.2%
29 General Merchandisers 3.2%
30 Health Care: Pharmacy and Other Services 3.0%
31 Packaging, Containers 3.0%
32 Beverages 2.9%
33 Engineering, Construction 2.7%
34 Health Care: Medical Facilities 2.4%
And that only includes the for profit companies not the non-profit ones of which there are a good number. But don’t let those pesky facts get in the way. Like the fact Obamam has quadrupled the spending and debt over what bush did and more then all the presidents that came before him thus spending into oblivion. But that fact would get in the way of you liberal masturbation party over Bush. You are dishonest and have no credibility.
If I have a runny nose and I have a health insurance policy, I go to the doctor because all I pay is my co-pay. My doctor charges my insurance for my visit plus 15% of a medicare patient’s visit because he knows I don’t care what it costs my insurance company and because medicare will only pay my doctor about 70% of his money for his medicare patients and they are over 1/3 of all his patients. Insurance gets dinged by me and by my doctor. In addition, the doctor will run several unnecessary tests to make sure that he has not misdiagnosed my bronchitis because he is afraid I will get a lawyer and sue him for malpractice if he makes a mistake and because he knows my insurance will pay for it, and I don’t care because I am spending the insurance company’s money.
If I have a runny nose and I don’t have a health insurance policy, I don’t go to the doctor unless I develop bronchitis or worse because the visit is paid for by me, and who wants to pay for something they don’t really need? My doctor sees that I will have to pay for my visit and my drugs, once I contract bronchitis, so he charges me only for services rendered to me because he is afraid I won’t pay him anyway so why gouge me for his medicare losses. Plus, I will make a scene if he tries to charge me more than the doctor down the hallway charges his patients for a normal office visit.
Point: Health care costs are out of control because the PATIENT only cares about the costs when he/she is paying. The PATIENT is the cause of needless expensive tests and frivolous lawsuits.
Now, Poor Citizen, say again how greedy the insurance companies are? I still say you just want someone else to pay for your health care, including your runny nose, and you don’t give a damn who that is as long as it isn’t you. And I believe that is greedy and immoral.
Roads with never ending tolls have more to do with government’s addiction to revenue sources (a particular pitfall in transportation policy) rather than with “government programs” generally, and are a bad example for that reason. A better example would have been why government benefit programs never go away.
It’s convenient to fill copy by deriding government employees at all levels for their very existence. Certainly there is an audience for lazy ideological rants. It’s a bit harder to ask the electorate the more complicated question of whether they get the government they deserve, and why. I’m always amazed at so-called conservatives who rely on ad-hominem condemnations of government employees, or pedestrian ideological rhetoric concerning small government, to make their point. Perhaps it is more productive to define the areas of government that should not exist, and argue this point without conflating it to a question of whether a government employee should have a job.
I will even offer an example. I’d be okay with never-ending toll roads to supplement transportation funding (which incidentally creates thousands of government employees) as long as I can drive on the non-toll roads that benefit from this funding. If I hate the toll that much, I can take a different road. What I resent is when my income tax money is given as a benefit to my fellow citizens who do not work as hard as I do and expect to be taken care of nonetheless, or to my fellow citizens who destroy wealth in the private sector by recklessly speculating their way into ill-conceived government assistance. Surely this is more offensive than the fact that there are government employees who, like everyone else, have jobs that give them wages in exchange for their labor, and seek protection for their livelihood as all humans tend to.
Poor Citizen weighs in ad nauseum with the same talking points that have been shown over and over again to have no merit and always finishing up with a knock on Bush and a cheer for Obama, his savior. You have to understand that it is a religion with these people. You might as well try talking your dog off of a pork chop.
Poor Citizen – way to change the topic with your blithering.
The U.S. deficit was started declining in the 2nd Reagan Administration. Unfortunately, H.W. Bush and the Democrats running Congress decided to bail out the S&L’s (that Bill Clinton helped screw up). This caused a spike in the deficit in the early 90′s.
Once the S&L’s were bailed out, the deficit resumed its decline. It accelerated during the Clinton Administration (a moderate Democrat) due to massive military cuts (which were regretted a few years later) and a Republican controlled Congress.
In case you forgot, we have been at war since 2001 and both houses of Congress have been controlled by Democrats for the past FOUR YEARS. This is your deficit, dummy.
AIG insurance company executive(s) averaged about 60 million per year salary and the rest around twenty per year……
So what newspapers have you been reading the last few years?…
Again, I am not hear to teach, so wallow in your ignorant fantasies if you wish. Being an adult and accepting the truth is pretty tough eh?
29. Poor Citizen:
AIG insurance company executive(s) averaged about 60 million per year salary and the rest around twenty per year……
So what newspapers have you been reading the last few years?…
Again, I am not hear to teach, so wallow in your ignorant fantasies if you wish. Being an adult and accepting the truth is pretty tough eh?
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Strawman argument. But I’ll burn it down anyway.
What AIG had in its contracts to pay executives has no bearing on anything. I wish I could say it was a good attempt at obfuscation but it was just petty and sad. I’m glad you aren’t here to teach. The last thing I would want is for some one who is as childish and petty as you teaching any one. Accepting the truth is hard for some people. You are a prime example. When the truth is shown to you what you do is hide behind an army of strawmen and try to divert attention to something else. It’s ok though it’s what you need to do to avoid the shame of admitting to your self that you lie and use false information to feel better about your life and have no intellectual integrity or credibility.
1. No, they don’t make $60 mil in salary. In 2008-2009 the CEO didn’t take any pay. Executive compensation is publicly disclosed in the 10K. Here is the link – try page 23.
http://phx.corporate-ir.net/External.File?item=UGFyZW50SUQ9NDA1MnxDaGlsZElEPS0xfFR5cGU9Mw==&t=1
2. AIG was a perfectly healthy and profitable company until the government, in the form of Elliot Spitzer, forced the firm to fire CEO Hank Greenberg. A decent chunk of the American economy was destroyed so a rich douche-bag could run for NY Governor.
Yeah – the truth is real tough.
Wow Poor Citizen, you live up to your namesake. You got pwned at 24 and 30. You are poorly informed, poorly prepared to debate, and just poor at debating. You lost the argument on those RICH EVIL CORPORATIONS “running” our health care system, so you quickly move the argument to blaming what an exec makes in bonuses.
Lemme check your level of HACKness too. All your Progressive leaders held hearings about their hearings about EVIL oil company profits when they made the largest recorded profits ever. I believe they raked in like 46 Billion. Hillary Clinton among other Progressives wanted to steal their profits as a windfall profits tax. Which I assume you support.
So, you obviously support hearings against the EVIL Fed right? Steal their profits too? Your Progressive central bank – which I believe should be abolished, recently reported their profits WELL above the level the big evil oil corporations earned. It was like 53.5 Billion. Are you gonna urge your progressive leaders, the ones that control the entire govt, to hold hearing on the EVIL FED’s profits? hell no you hack.
Enlighten me where the Constitution gives any federal beurocrat the right to dictate what a person makes too.
Poor Poor Citizen,
If the top ten AIG executives gave back all of their compensation, something you and I would never agree to, there could be less than 4 bucks to return to each of its policyholders. Most of its policy premiums are paid by other corporations as benefits to people like you and me, so very little benefit could go to you and me. Your inference seems to be that if these guys get their bonuses, they will being getting them at your expense. Don’t forget that these guys have huge payrolls to manage. How many people are you and I responsible for? I don’t think you are on to much of anything here.
With this in mind, your wonderful President is preparing to keep his government from spending 15 billion of the 3 trillion dollars it plans to spend this year. Our overspending will only be $1,435,000,000,000.00 instead of being the projected total of about $1,450,000,000,000.00. Try not to assert that this is going to be an unprecedented panacea, I just won’t believe you on that either. And try not to forget that, out of 308,000,000 people, 20-30 can be found who have done great things. That would be about 1 out of every 10,000,000 of us. Sorry to stray from my criticism of your remarks, Poor Citizen. I guess I hope I am preparing the gullible for the 159th teleprompter speech over the last year.
I am reminded of an anecdote related to me by a sociology professor in a class I took 25 years ago.
Visigoths, having overrun the Italian peninsula in the first decade of the 5th century, were astonished to discover, at Sienna nearly a century later, a completely functioning, completely staffed municipal apparatus, with Romanized bureaucrats staffing every position as they had done for the previous 800 years. The barbarians ridded themselves of this unwanted bureaucracy by the simple expedient of putting each and every one of its members to the sword. Within a year, however, the new governors had established their own new bureaucrats, to replace the now deceased Roman functionaries..
According to that long ago professor, that was the only time in recorded history that a bureaucracy has ever been successfully eliminated.
I’m not even sure if it even happened that way, but a fellow can dream, can’t he?
I lived in Roswell Ga at the time the tolls were being debated. I, (and others) said at the time, it will never go away…. they are lying. Sure enough, they lied. The tolls will never go away as long as people living north of Buckhead are viewed as cash cows for the state.