Philip K. Howard Essays
Yes, the bureaucracy in Washington is a clogged-up tangle. That’s why two-thirds of Americans think it needs a major overhaul.
But slashing away at Washington’s many stupidities won’t fix much — like trying to prune a jungle. The way to drain the swamp is to pull the plug on its flawed operating philosophy — the post-1960s red tape compliance model. Americans are swimming in red tape. Is your paperwork in order?
In a report published by Manhattan Institute, Philip Howard argues that Washington needs to abandon the bureaucratic compliance model, and replace it with a simpler framework that empowers designated officials to make tradeoff judgments to modernize infrastructure and achieve public results.
Governing structures created after the 1960s are designed to fail because they presume legal rules and processes can validate correct choices. But law can't think. The proper role of law is to provide a framework that delineates the authority to make that decision, and provides public transparency and oversight.
The litmus test for a good school is its culture—its caring, energy, mutual trust, and commitment to a common mission. Good cultures require teachers to feel ownership of the classroom and principals to enforce standards and values, while red tape and entitlements undermine the authority and human spirit that are essential. Fixing K–12 education requires stripping away bureaucratic and union controls and empowering educators to build good school cultures.
Most Americans know that Washington is overdue for a Department of Government Efficiency. But what should such a commission fix?
The civil service certainly needs an overhaul to establish accountability from top to bottom. The point, however, isn’t to inject a sense of terror in government employees but to instill trust that everyone is held to the same standards.
The lynchpin of Donald Trump’s “plan to dismantle the deep state” is to assert authority to dismiss senior civil servants at will: “First, I will immediately re-issue my 2020 executive order restoring the president’s authority to remove rogue bureaucrats. And I will wield that power very aggressively.”
Trump’s diagnosis is correct in part but his reform proposal badly misses the target.
The "rule of law" sits high on the altar of American culture as a core national value. Law in America is as pure as law can be—impartial, precise, and therefore unquestioned, like the 10 Commandments. The mandarins of law debate fine points such as judicial deference but almost never ask doctors, teachers, employers, or civic leaders whether law supports or hinders them.
But Americans in their everyday activities see a different reality. Law is so dense that it is unknowable, and so complex that even large companies with huge legal staffs can't comply—more like the 10 Million Commandments.
American government is suffering a breakdown of authority. It is unable to give permits for transmission lines and housing, deal with homelessness, fix broken schools, or even fire a civil servant who doesn’t show up for work.
Red tape has supplanted official responsibility.
The accretion of detailed codes, procedures and regulations among numerous agencies at federal, state and local levels are like layers of sediment that have silted over a harbor. It’s hard to get anywhere because it’s basically unlawful to make sensible decisions.
Public sector unions wield outsized influence over American government. That power prevents effective managerial control and fosters cynicism toward democratic processes. Successful statutory reforms to address outsized union power are unlikely because of the political resources amassed by these unions. To combat the influence of public sector unions, which serve their own interests instead of the common good, this brief explores five possible constitutional challenges that might dislodge union controls and weaken their grip on power.
Look at American culture. Something basic is missing. Americans know it. Nothing much works as it should. Simple daily choices seem fraught with peril. In the workplace, we walk on eggshells. Big projects—say, modernizing infrastructure—get stalled in years of review. Endemic social problems such as homelessness become, well, more endemic. Oh, there goes San Francisco. Doing what’s right is not on the table. Who’s to say what’s right? Extremism grows.
Powerlessness has become a defining feature of modern society. Americans at all levels of responsibility feel powerless to do what they think is needed.
Here we are, led like sheep into an election to choose whether Joe Biden or Donald Trump should lead America at this perilous time. A clear majority disfavor the choice. Nor do the hot buttons of political debate between woke progressives vs. right wing conspiracists align with the views of most Americans.
Out in the real world, nothing much about government works as it should, with porous borders, broken schools, and homeless encampments. The list is long. Mandatory speech codes and other indignities of the nanny state fuel growing resentment.
Americans have lost confidence in America. It’s not hard to see why. Broken schools, unaffordable health care, homelessness, decrepit infrastructure, and student mobs at universities readily come to mind.
The last three presidents have come to office promising “change we can believe in,” to “drain the swamp,” or to “build back better,” but government institutions seem beyond their control.
Pundits blame political polarization. But most public failures have little to do with policy or politics: They’re failures of execution.
Trust in institutions is at all-time lows. Schools and hospitals are distrusted by two-thirds of Americans, large companies by even more, and Congress by almost everybody.
The one trust bright spot is small business, with a 65 percent trust level. What is it that small business has that other institutions do not? Small business retains the human connection. The guy in the local hardware store will talk with you about how to fix the problem. The lady at the cleaners will discuss the stain. The book shop proprietor will describe why she liked a book.
Trump carried every county in Iowa except one, and now a solid majority in New Hampshire. What accounts for the Trump juggernaut? He obviously embodies something that many voters want.
My take is that all his serious rivals, now just Haley and Biden, have promised to be better leaders of the established order. But Trump embodies rejection, even disdain, for the establishment. As in 2016, he is lapping his challengers with his contempt for the Washington establishment and, indeed, for democracy itself. Americans are angry, and traditional campaigns based on character, policy proposals, and baby-kissing are not resonating.
Put simply, democracy’s hierarchy for managing government no longer exists. Elected executives are largely powerless to manage public employees or redirect public resources. The people below them in the chain of responsibility, such as school principals, police chiefs, and supervisory officials, are similarly powerless. Every day, government employees across America do things that are designed to waste money and be ineffective.
Leaders from both parties for decades have kicked the can of federal deficits down the road. The Simpson-Bowles recommendations from 2010 — widely endorsed by responsible observers — were never seriously considered either by President Obama or by Republican leadership. Then huge COVID-19 subsidies came along, and the fiscal road now faces a dead end. Unless the deficits are dramatically reduced, Social Security payouts will risk cuts of around 25 percent within a decade.
Amendment 1 to the Illinois Constitution, approved by referendum in November, was promoted as guaranteeing basic fairness for all workers. But it does something else — by prohibiting any new laws that might impinge on worker collective bargaining, Amendment 1 disempowers future elected officials from changing how government operates.
What can we do about our country? That’s the question I hear most often. Washington is mired in a kind of trench warfare, with no prospects of forward movement. And Americans today can be divided into two camps: discouraged or angry.
In Sludge, Sunstein shines a light in the bureaucratic darkness, and, by calling for “sludge audits,” adds his moral authority to the growing demand to clear out the bureaucratic underbrush.
Since the 1960s, the main political dividing line in the United States has been over the scope of government. Democrats have called for more public services and more regulation to address current challenges. Republicans have called for de-regulation and fewer services, backed by ample evidence of public failures, inefficiencies, and overreach. But government keeps getting bigger and generally more inefficient, without dealing with past and present needs.
Washington is overdue for a spring cleaning. Only Congress has the authority to do this. But neither party has a vision about how, or even whether, to fix broken government. Congressional leaders are so dug in arguing about the goals of government that they have no line of sight to how laws actually work.
Most political leaders and reformers see government failures as a management problem. In reality, those failures result from something more like a philosophy problem. That problem does not concern the scope of government or the goals of public policy, but the belief that governing decisions should be guided by prescriptive rules, rather than by human judgment acting within proscriptive boundaries.
The conviction of Minneapolis policeman Derek Chauvin for killing George Floyd may elevate trust in American justice, but it will do little, by itself, to repair trust in police.
Breathtakingly ambitious: That’s how many observers describe the $2 trillion infrastructure proposal unveiled by President Biden last week. It contains scores of programs aimed at updating America’s obsolete infrastructure and addressing climate change.
It’s time to rethink the role of public employee unions in democratic governance. Public union intransigence has contributed to two of the most socially destructive events in the COVID-19 era. Rebuilding the economy after the pandemic ends also will be more difficult if state and local governments have to abide by featherbedding and other artificial union mandates.
The Biden administration can reverse this dangerous decline of trust by launching an independent commission to report on why government performs so poorly. By focusing on public operating systems, the commission could address broad discontent in ways that transcend party lines.
The Progressive Movement succeeded in replacing laissez-faire with public oversight of safety and markets. But its vision of neutral administration, in which officials in lab coats mechanically applied law, never reflected the realities and political tradeoffs in most public choices. The result, after fifty years, is public paralysis. In an effort to avoid bad public choices, the operating system precludes good public choices. It must be rebuilt to honor human agency and reinvigorate democratic choices.
“America is deeply divided”: That’s the post-mortem wisdom from this year’s election. Surveys repeatedly show, however, that most Americans share the same core values and goals, such as responsibility, accountability, and fairness. One issue that enjoys overwhelming popular support is the need to fix broken government.
Something vital is missing in the presidential debate so far: Neither candidate has a vision on how to make government work better.
The Democratic convention reveals that the Biden-Harris ticket will try to appeal to voters with progressive promises dealing with racial disparities, healthcare, and the environment. But the expansive Democratic platform largely ignores one issue that most voters care about: the need to overhaul government.