Brownstone Institute
What Is Really Going on at Federal Agencies?
From the Brownstone Institute
The average pay in 109 of 125 federal agencies was more than $100,000 per employee and after just three years federal employees received 44 days – 8.8 full work weeks of paid time off.
Years ago as an intern in D.C., and long before the agencies all locked their doors to visitors, I had the occasion to putter around the Department of Transportation and the Department of Housing and Urban Development.
These were obviously not normal workplaces. To my amazement, they were mostly dark, empty, and quiet, and the employees did not seem in the slightest bit busy doing anything at all. It was all kind of spooky.
It then occurred to me that these many hundreds of agencies and millions of employees are not really covered well by the media much at all and certainly not in any detail. They mostly operate without any oversight but for the periodic reporting done for Congress and the sporadic accounting reports from the Government Accounting Office that are mostly ignored.
It’s rather strange, isn’t it? The business pages are packed with details on the hirings and operations of every publicly traded company. We know sales, products, locations, and management structures and changes. But as regards these agencies that are supposed to be responsible to the people, there is a strange lack of curiosity about what they really do and how they do it.
There is at least one organization that takes a deeper look. It is called OpentheBooks, and started with an idealistic idea of telling people what the operations of these agencies are really like. They aren’t trying to unearth classified information or otherwise do whistleblowing. They focus on the mundane accounting and goings-on at normal civilian agencies.
What they found would never be tolerated at any private company.
- The average pay in 109 of 125 federal agencies was more than $100,000 per employee and after just three years federal employees received 44 days – 8.8 full work weeks of paid time off.
- In a report to Congress, the Biden Administration redacted (hid) 350,000 names and 280,000 work locations from the payrolls. And these employees aren’t spies or intelligence officers – they are rank-and-file workers within the alphabet soup of traditional federal agencies like Education, Health and Health Services, EPA, or IRS. As a result, the organization couldn’t tell “who” was working, “where” they were located, and “what” they were doing!
- At the Department of Commerce, the Inspector General found 23% of employees sampled were overpaid.
- Employees took nearly a year in some instances to update their duty station, which dictates their locality pay. The Department couldn’t verify whether employees were showing up to the office as required.
- The Commerce Department has 47,000 employees. The Inspector General sampled only 31 employees and seven of those were overpaid by a combined $43,000!
You are not surprised, right? And you probably assume that this is just the tip of the iceberg also. Indeed, one supposes so. I’m looking at the Federal Register. It lists 429 agencies in the government now, with only a tiny number mentioned in the US Constitution. The rest have been legislated into existence by Congress, going far beyond anything the Founders ever imagined.
Thanks to nearly a century and a half of gradual accumulation, these agencies have a permanent life. The employees cannot be fired except for egregious actions. And the elected president has no control over them. The president can appoint agency heads but then the battle becomes hundreds vs millions, and the hundreds of appointees are new at their jobs and easily driven out with a hint of financial impropriety, real or made up. The permanent class of middle-state bureaucrats with all the institutional knowledge know precisely where the power resides. It is with them.
This system of administrative hegemony has not been seriously tested in court. It is likely contrary to everything the Constitution ever imagined. True, Congress created these agencies but they exist within the executive branch. Congress cannot simply outsource its job to another branch and then wash its hands of the result. That practice makes a mess out of the original Constitutional structure.
Leaving those fundamental issues aside, what’s striking is how little oversight of these agencies really takes place. Very little reporting is done on them at all apart from perfunctory reprinting of agency press releases by major media. The reason is that many reporters rely on the permanent government for information sources and protection after the fact. There is a hand-in-glove relationship going on here and it’s been building for many decades, even dating back to the Great War.
Every once in a while, we get a glimpse of the reality on the ground. The work of OpentheBooks makes life briefly hard for agencies that never like to be in the news but very little if anything is ever done about the problem.
There has been some much-welcome talk lately of untangling the cozy relationships between these hundreds of agencies and the industries they oversee. That’s good. We really should not be building a corporatist system that runs contrary to the ideal of free enterprise. But the idea of ending agency capture is also not a permanent solution to the problem.
We must think more fundamentally. With an ideal president and legislature, we would pursue something like what is going on in Argentina today. Whole agencies need to be deleted entirely from the federal budget. And then let the chips fall where they may. So long as I can remember, every Republican president has promised to get rid of the Department of Education. Great. But why does it never happen? I would like to know the answer. Plus, that is only a starter: there are hundreds of such agencies that should be on the list.
The real solution is a complete rethinking of government itself. Every single candidate should be asked to explain their answer to a basic question: what in your view is the role of government? Whatever the answer is, all existing practices of government need to be assessed in light of that. Also, voters should evaluate their answers with an even more fundamental question: what kind of society do we want to live in, a free or centrally managed one? That’s the core question.
The goings-on at the Department of Commerce provide a slight glimpse but the real scale of the problem is far more vast. I have no doubt that if a serious think tank really looked at the details, provided fully and transparently, we would be astonished at what we find. As some news organization has been saying for a while, democracy dies in darkness. Let’s shine the light of truth on the vast complex of civilian agencies that purport to manage our lives better than we can ourselves.
Final note: this column is dedicated to Adam Andrzejewski, who has died at the age of 55. He was a good friend to Brownstone and to transparency in government. He ran a different kind of nonprofit, not a puffy do-nothing bureaucracy but a production-driven research institute doing what desperately needs to be done. May he rest in peace and may his legacy inspire many more such visionaries.
Author
From the Brownstone Institute
Way back in the B.C. era (Before Covid), I taught Medical Humanities and Bioethics at an American medical school. One of my older colleagues – I’ll call him Dr. Quinlan – was a prominent member of the faculty and a nationally recognized proponent of physician-assisted suicide.
Dr. Quinlan was a very nice man. He was soft-spoken, friendly, and intelligent. He had originally become involved in the subject of physician-assisted suicide by accident, while trying to help a patient near the end of her life who was suffering terribly.
That particular clinical case, which Dr. Quinlan wrote up and published in a major medical journal, launched a second career of sorts for him, as he became a leading figure in the physician-assisted suicide movement. In fact, he was lead plaintiff in a challenge of New York’s then-prohibition against physician-assisted suicide.
The case eventually went all the way to the US Supreme Court, which added to his fame. As it happened, SCOTUS ruled 9-0 against him, definitively establishing that there is no “right to die” enshrined in the Constitution, and affirming that the state has a compelling interest to protect the vulnerable.
SCOTUS’s unanimous decision against Dr. Quinlan meant that his side had somehow pulled off the impressive feat of uniting Antonin Scalia, Ruth Bader Ginsberg, and all points in between against their cause. (I never quite saw how that added to his luster, but such is the Academy.)
At any rate, I once had a conversation with Dr. Quinlan about physician-assisted suicide. I told him that I opposed it ever becoming legal. I recall he calmly, pleasantly asked me why I felt that way.
First, I acknowledged that his formative case must have been very tough, and allowed that maybe, just maybe, he had done right in that exceptionally difficult situation. But as the legal saying goes, hard cases make bad law.
Second, as a clinical physician, I felt strongly that no patient should ever see their doctor and have to wonder if he was coming to help keep them alive or to kill them.
Finally, perhaps most importantly, there’s this thing called the slippery slope.
As I recall, he replied that he couldn’t imagine the slippery slope becoming a problem in a matter so profound as causing a patient’s death.
Well, maybe not with you personally, Dr. Quinlan, I thought. I said no more.
But having done my residency at a major liver transplant center in Boston, I had had more than enough experience with the rather slapdash ethics of the organ transplantation world. The opaque shuffling of patients up and down the transplant list, the endless and rather macabre scrounging for donors, and the nebulous, vaguely sinister concept of brain death had all unsettled me.
Prior to residency, I had attended medical school in Canada. In those days, the McGill University Faculty of Medicine was still almost Victorian in its ways: an old-school, stiff-upper-lip, Workaholics-Anonymous-chapter-house sort of place. The ethic was hard work, personal accountability for mistakes, and above all primum non nocere – first, do no harm.
Fast forward to today’s soft-core totalitarian state of Canada, the land of debanking and convicting peaceful protesters, persecuting honest physicians for speaking obvious truth, fining people $25,000 for hiking on their own property, and spitefully seeking to slaughter harmless animals precisely because they may hold unique medical and scientific value.
To all those offenses against liberty, morality, and basic decency, we must add Canada’s aggressive policy of legalizing, and, in fact, encouraging industrial-scale physician-assisted suicide. Under Canada’s Medical Assistance In Dying (MAiD) program, which has been in place only since 2016, physician-assisted suicide now accounts for a terrifying 4.7 percent of all deaths in Canada.
MAiD will be permitted for patients suffering from mental illness in Canada in 2027, putting it on par with the Netherlands, Belgium, and Switzerland.
To its credit, and unlike the Netherlands and Belgium, Canada does not allow minors to access MAiD. Not yet.
However, patients scheduled to be terminated via MAiD in Canada are actively recruited to have their organs harvested. In fact, MAiD accounts for 6 percent of all deceased organ donors in Canada.
In summary, in Canada, in less than 10 years, physician-assisted suicide has gone from illegal to both an epidemic cause of death and a highly successful organ-harvesting source for the organ transplantation industry.
Physician-assisted suicide has not slid down the slippery slope in Canada. It has thrown itself off the face of El Capitan.
And now, at long last, physician-assisted suicide may be coming to New York. It has passed the House and Senate, and just awaits the Governor’s signature. It seems that the 9-0 Supreme Court shellacking back in the day was just a bump in the road. The long march through the institutions, indeed.
For a brief period in Western history, roughly from the introduction of antibiotics until Covid, hospitals ceased to be a place one entered fully expecting to die. It appears that era is coming to an end.
Covid demonstrated that Western allopathic medicine has a dark, sadistic, anti-human side – fueled by 20th-century scientism and 21st-century technocratic globalism – to which it is increasingly turning. Physician-assisted suicide is a growing part of this death cult transformation. It should be fought at every step.
I have not seen Dr. Quinlan in years. I do not know how he might feel about my slippery slope argument today.
I still believe I was correct.
From the Brownstone Institute
Many news outlets reported the announcement of the Nobel Peace Prize on Friday by saying President Donald Trump had missed out (Washington Post, Yahoo, Hindustan Times, Huffington Post), not won (USA Today), fallen short (AP News), lost (Time), etc. There is even a meme doing the rounds about ‘Trump Wine.’ ‘Made from sour grapes,’ the label explains, ‘This is a full bodied and bitter vintage guaranteed to leave a nasty taste in your mouth for years.’
For the record, the prize was awarded to María Corina Machado for her courageous and sustained opposition to Venezuela’s ruling regime. Trump called to congratulate her. Given his own attacks on the Venezuelan president, his anger will be partly mollified, and he could even back her with practical support. He nonetheless attacked the prize committee, and the White House assailed it for putting politics before peace.
He could be in serious contention next year. If his Gaza peace plan is implemented and holds until next October, he should get it. That he is unlikely to do so is more a reflection on the award and less on Trump.
So He Won the Nobel Peace Prize. Meh!
Alfred Nobel’s will stipulates the prize should be awarded to the person who has contributed the most to promote ‘fraternity between nations…abolition or reduction of standing armies and…holding and promotion of peace congresses.’ Over the decades, this has expanded progressively to embrace human rights, political dissent, environmentalism, race, gender, and other social justice causes.
On these grounds, I would have thought the Covid resistance should have been a winner. The emphasis has shifted from outcomes and actual work to advocacy. In honouring President Barack Obama in 2009, the Nobel committee embarrassed itself, patronised him, and demeaned the prize. His biggest accomplishment was the choice of his predecessor as president: the prize was a one-finger send-off to President George W. Bush.
There have been other strange laureates, including those prone to wage war (Henry Kissinger, 1973), tainted through association with terrorism (Yasser Arafat, 1994), and contributions to fields beyond peace, such as planting millions of trees. Some laureates were subsequently discovered to have embellished their record, and others proved to be flawed champions of human rights who had won them the treasured accolade.
Conversely, Mahatma Gandhi did not get the prize, not for his contributions to the theory and practice of non-violence, nor for his role in toppling the British Raj as the curtain raiser to worldwide decolonisation. The sad reality is how little practical difference the prize has made to the causes it espoused. They bring baubles and honour to the laureates, but the prize has lost much of its lustre as far as results go.
Trump Was Not a Serious Contender
The nomination processes start in September and nominations close on 31 January. The five-member Norwegian Nobel committee scrutinises the list of candidates and whittles it down between February and October. The prize is announced on or close to 10 October, the date Alfred Nobel died, and the award ceremony is held in Oslo in early December.
The calendar rules out a newly elected president in his first year, with the risible exception of Obama. The period under review was 2024. Trump’s claims to have ended seven wars and boasts of ‘nobody’s ever done that’ are not taken seriously beyond the narrow circle of fervent devotees, sycophantic courtiers, and supplicant foreign leaders eager to ingratiate themselves with over-the-top flattery.
Trump Could Be in Serious Contention Next Year
Trump’s 20-point Gaza peace plan falls into three conceptual-cum-chronological parts: today, tomorrow, and the day after. At the time of writing, in a hinge moment in the two-year war, Israel has implemented a ceasefire in Gaza, Hamas has agreed to release Israeli hostages on 13-14 October, and Israel will release around 2,000 Palestinian prisoners (today’s agenda). So why are the ‘Ceasefire Now!’ mobs not out on the streets celebrating joyously instead of looking morose and discombobulated? Perhaps they’ve been robbed of the meaning of life?
The second part (tomorrow) requires Hamas demilitarisation, surrender, amnesty, no role in Gaza’s future governance, resumption of aid deliveries, Israeli military pullbacks, a temporary international stabilisation force, and a technocratic transitional administration. The third part, the agenda for the day after, calls for the deradicalisation of Gaza, its reconstruction and development, an international Peace Board to oversee implementation of the plan, governance reforms of the Palestinian Authority, and, over the horizon, Palestinian statehood.
There are too many potential pitfalls to rest easy on the prospects for success. Will Hamas commit military and political suicide? How can the call for democracy in Gaza and the West Bank be reconciled with Hamas as the most popular group among Palestinians? Can Israel’s fractious governing coalition survive?
Both Hamas and Israel have a long record of agreeing to demands under pressure but sabotaging their implementation at points of vulnerability. The broad Arab support could weaken as difficulties arise. The presence of the internationally toxic Tony Blair on the Peace Board could derail the project. Hamas has reportedly called on all factions to reject Blair’s involvement. Hamas official Basem Naim, while thanking Trump for his positive role in the peace deal, explained that ‘Palestinians, Arabs and Muslims and maybe a lot [of] people around the world still remember his [Blair’s] role in causing the killing of thousands or millions of innocent civilians in Afghanistan and Iraq.’
It would be a stupendous achievement for all the complicated moving parts to come together in stable equilibrium. What cannot and should not be denied is the breathtaking diplomatic coup already achieved. Only Trump could have pulled this off.
The very traits that are so offputting in one context helped him to get here: narcissism; bullying and impatience; bull in a china shop style of diplomacy; indifference to what others think; dislike of wars and love of real estate development; bottomless faith in his own vision, negotiating skills, and ability to read others; personal relationships with key players in the region; and credibility as both the ultimate guarantor of Israel’s security and preparedness to use force if obstructed. Israelis trust him; Hamas and Iran fear him.
The combined Israeli-US attacks to degrade Iran’s nuclear capability underlined the credibility of threats of force against recalcitrant opponents. Unilateral Israeli strikes on Hamas leaders in Qatar highlighted to uninvolved Arabs the very real dangers of continued escalation amidst the grim Israeli determination to rid themselves of Hamas once and for all.
Trump Is Likely to Be Overlooked
Russia has sometimes been the object of the Nobel Peace Prize. The mischievous President Vladimir Putin has suggested Trump may be too good for the prize. Trump’s disdain for and hostility to international institutions and assaults on the pillars of the liberal international order would have rubbed Norwegians, among the world’s strongest supporters of rules-based international governance, net zero, and foreign aid, the wrong way.
Brash and public lobbying for the prize, like calling the Norwegian prime minister, is counterproductive. The committee is fiercely independent. Nominees are advised against making the nomination public, let alone orchestrating an advocacy campaign. Yet, one laureate is believed to have mobilised his entire government for quiet lobbying behind the scenes, and another to have bad-mouthed a leading rival to friendly journalists.
Most crucially, given that Scandinavian character traits tip towards the opposite end of the scale, it’s hard to see the committee overlooking Trump’s loud flaws, vanity, braggadocio, and lack of grace and humility. Trump supporters discount his character traits and take his policies and results seriously. Haters cannot get over the flaws to seriously evaluate policies and outcomes. No prizes for guessing which group the Nobel committee is likely to belong to. As is currently fashionable to say when cancelling someone, Trump’s values do not align with those of the committee and the ideals of the prize.
Author
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