What is the purpose of the Campaign for Common Good?
Our aim is to build broad support for overhauling government to make it work sensibly. America needs a simpler framework that sets goals and holds people accountable for results—rather than micromanaging daily life. The COVID-19 pandemic is a wake-up call that red tape cannot deliver results. It caused tragic delays and forced government to temporarily throw out the rulebooks to get things done. We propose a new governing vision built on the solid foundation of individual responsibility, like the Constitution, instead of mindless bureaucracy.
Who is behind the Campaign?
The Campaign is organized by Common Good, the nonpartisan government reform coalition founded by Philip K. Howard, civic leader, author, and adviser to four presidents. Some of America’s most respected citizens are involved, including 100 prominent leaders from both political parties who have signed the Campaign’s petition calling for spring cleaning commissions. The signatories to the petition include the following:
Former US Senators, Governors, and Mayors from both parties including Mitch Daniels, Bill Bradley, Alan Simpson, Kit Bond, Arne Carlson, Dave Durenberger, Wyche Fowler, Stephen Goldsmith, and Tom Kean.
Former college and university presidents Bill Brody (Johns Hopkins), Gerhard Casper (Stanford), David Mathews (University of Alabama), and Paul Verkuil (College of William and Mary).
Business leaders including John Abele (Co-founder of Boston Scientific), Linda Avey (Co-founder of 23andMe), Michael Critelli (former CEO of Pitney Bowes), James Kilts (former CEO of Gillette), Shelly Lazarus (Chairman Emeritus of Ogilvy & Mather), Joe Lonsdale (Co-founder of Palantir), Dan Lufkin, Al Rankin (Chair of NACCO Industries), John Tickle (Chair of Strongwell), and Josh Weston (Honorary Chairman of ADP).
Leading experts in different fields, including economists Glenn Hubbard, Alain Enthoven, Eugene Steuerle, and Bob Litan, law professors Peter Schuck, Gillian Hadfield, and David Schoenbrod, former officials Admiral Bobby Ray Inman (former NSA Director), Bob Stone (Reinventing Government administrator), and Chris DeMuth (former head of OIRA), social philosophers Jonathan Haidt and Yuval Levin, education experts Richard Arum and Frederick Hess, political scientists Robert Heineman, Bryan Jones, Don Kettl, and Paul Light, healthcare experts Jeremiah Barondess, Marshall Kapp, and Donald Palmisano, social activists Rohan Pavuluri, Lenore Skenazy, and Heather Higgins, infrastructure expert Tom Wright, and management experts Richard Foster and David Osborne.
What does the petition call for?
It calls for independent “spring cleaning commissions” to clean out unnecessary laws, rules, and programs.
Is the Campaign a response to COVID-19?
COVID-19 proves the need to clean out stifling procedures, so that government can get the job done. The Campaign was conceived in early 2019, in response to broad public anger and frustration with government, which has been steadily mounting for years.
Wasn’t the COVID-19 response a problem of leadership?
Yes, that too. But no matter who is in office, they will be bogged down in the red tape. That’s why Americans keep electing leaders who promise change, yet not much happens. The operating system of government prevents everyone—from the White House to the schoolhouse—from making sensible public choices.
What does your proposed operating system look like?
It would have far simpler codes, focused on goals and guiding principles. Instead of thousand-page rulebooks, prescribing “one correct way” of doing things, it would provide a hierarchy of accountability and checks, more like the Constitution.
What is the advantage of that?
Our governing vision would unleash human initiative at every level of responsibility. That’s the only way for things to work sensibly and fairly. Find any good organization, and you’ll find people who roll up their sleeves and make things happen without worrying about the rulebook.
Is this de-regulation?
No, government oversight is vital for freedom in a crowded society—to preserve clean air and water and protect against pandemics. This is re-regulation—aimed at making government more effective, not getting rid of it. But Congress can barely pass a budget; cleaning out dense laws requires that a special commission or authority be appointed to propose simplified codes. That’s the only way it happens. Congress would then vote on it. The closest example in federal law is “base-closing commissions,” which recommend which military bases are no longer needed.
Why does fixing red tape require a campaign like this?
Every president since Jimmy Carter has promised to rein in red tape, and all have failed. Think of the slogans: “Change we can believe in.” “Drain the swamp.” They failed because they didn’t challenge the flawed premise of modern bureaucracy—to dictate “one correct way” to do everything. We need a movement because the Washington establishment has a vested interest in the current system. Neither party will lead these changes unless forced to by outside pressure.
How would your reforms help recovery from COVID-19?
We have proposed “recovery authorities”—at the federal and state levels—that would remove barriers for getting businesses and schools up and running again. The only way that hospitals were able to deal with the surge of COVID-19 patients was by tossing rulebooks to the winds.
How would a simpler governing vision help health care?
Almost a third of the healthcare dollar goes to administration. A simpler framework would eliminate much of this. Healthcare delivery has been paralyzed by accumulated restrictions—barring telemedicine, limiting the scope of practice of nurses, obsessively focusing on privacy, and dictating granular requirements of virtually every detail.
Schools?
A simpler governing vision could transform schools by re-empowering teachers, principals, and local communities. Today, 21 states have more non-instructional personnel than teachers, mainly to fill out forms and comply with regulatory dictates. All the bureaucracy gets in the way. Teachers have even lost the authority to maintain order in the classroom. It would be far better to have regular evaluations of schools than to suffocate them in red tape.
Infrastructure?
Red tape has made it difficult and costly to rebuild America’s decrepit infrastructure. The lengthy permitting process more than doubles the cost. Long environmental reviews are also bad for the environment, by prolonging polluting bottlenecks. Creating clear lines of authority to make decisions will enable a reasonable process of one or two years, more in line with other developed countries.
Does this operating vision require trusting people to do the right thing?
There’s no need to trust a particular person. Trust instead would be placed in a governing framework, which—like the Constitution—has clear lines of authority and checks and balances on important decisions. A simpler governing framework gives people responsibility—specifically responsibility to accomplish a public goal—not discretion to do whatever they want. They can then be held accountable.
Why should Republicans/Democrats support such a campaign?
Almost two-thirds of Americans, according to recent surveys, agree that Washington needs “very major reform”—almost double the number from 20 years ago. Republicans are right to criticize the financial and psychological cost of bloated government and red tape. But they’ve lost the argument on “de-regulation.” Americans want clean water and air, access to healthcare, and a government capable of reacting to a pandemic. Democrats are right about the need to address issues such as climate change and income inequality. But they’re wrong to think we can fix problems just by adding programs and money to a broken governing system. We also can’t afford reforms for the future without a spring cleaning of the accumulated baggage from the past.
Americans know Washington is broken. The winner at the polls in 2020 will likely be the party with a coherent vision to fix it.
Are there successful historical examples of what the Campaign is proposing?
There are. In the 1980s, Australia simplified nursing home regulations, replacing dense rulebooks with general principles like maintaining a “homelike environment.” Quality quickly improved because regulators, owners, and residents were all empowered to focus on big-picture goals, rather than meaningless compliance.
British health and safety regulations, first consolidated and streamlined in the 1970s, are similarly simple and focused on the big picture; studies have shown that they achieve better safety results than those of countries like France that rely on highly detailed rules dictating workplace safety requirements.
There are many others. These types of legal overhauls have typically taken the form of “recodifications” to clarify and simplify law. From Justinian to Napoleon to post-World War II Germany, history has many examples of small groups of dedicated experts working to bring sense and simplicity to unworkable legal systems. It's time for the United States to follow suit.