‘Big government’ growing on the sly

In 1960, when John Kennedy was elected president, America’s population was 180 million and it had approximately 1.8 million federal bureaucrats (not counting uniformed military personnel and postal workers). Fifty-seven years later, with seven new Cabinet agencies, and myriad new sub-Cabinet agencies (e.g., the Environmental Protection Agency), and a slew of matters on the federal policy agenda that were virtually absent in 1960 (health care insurance, primary and secondary school quality, crime, drug abuse, campaign finance, gun control, occupational safety, etc.), and with a population of 324 million, there are only about 2 million federal bureaucrats.

So, since 1960, federal spending, adjusted for inflation, has quintupled and federal undertakings have multiplied like dandelions, but the federal civilian workforce has expanded only negligibly, to approximately what it was when Dwight Eisenhower was elected in 1952. Does this mean that “big government” is not really big? And that by doing much more with not many more employees it has accomplished prodigies of per-worker productivity? John J. Dilulio Jr., of the University of Pennsylvania and the Brookings Institution, says: Hardly.

In his 2014 book “Bring Back the Bureaucrats,” he argued that because the public is, at least philosophically, against “big government,” government has prudently become stealthy about how it becomes ever bigger. In a new Brookings paper, he demonstrates that government expands by indirection, using three kinds of “administrative proxies” — state and local government, for-profit businesses, and nonprofit organizations.

Since 1960, the number of state and local government employees has tripled to more than 18 million, a growth driven by federal money: Between the early 1960s and early 2010s, the inflation-adjusted value of federal grants for the states increased more than tenfold. For example, the EPA has fewer than 20,000 employees, but 90 percent of EPA programs are completely administered by thousands of state government employees, largely funded by Washington.

A quarter of the federal budget is administered by the fewer than 5,000 employees of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) — and by the states, at least half of whose administrative costs are paid by CMS. Various federal crime and homeland security bills help fund local police departments. “By conservative estimates,” Dilulio writes, “there are about 3 million state and local government workers” — about 50 percent more than the number of federal workers — “funded via federal grants and contracts.”

Then there are for-profit contractors, used, Dilulio says, “by every federal department, bureau and agency.” For almost a decade, the Defense Department’s full-time equivalent of 700,000 to 800,000 civilian workers were supplemented by the full-time equivalent of 620,000 to 770,000 for-profit contract employees. “During the first Gulf War in 1991,” Dilulio says, “American soldiers outnumbered private contractors in the region by about 60-to-1; but, by 2006, there were nearly as many private contractors as soldiers in Iraq — about 100,000 contract employees, not counting subcontractor employees, versus 140,000 troops.” Today, the government spends more (about $350 billion) on defense contractors than on all official federal bureaucrats ($250 billion).

Finally, “employment in the tax-exempt or independent sector more than doubled between 1977 and 2012 to more than 11 million.” Approximately a third of the revenues to nonprofits (e.g., Planned Parenthood) flow in one way or another from government. “If,” Dilulio calculates, “only one-fifth of the 11 million nonprofit sector employees owe their jobs to federal or intergovernmental grant, contract or fee funding, that’s 2.2 million workers” -- slightly more than the official federal workforce.

Many Americans are rhetorically conservative but behaviorally liberal. So, they are given government that is not limited but overleveraged — debt-financed, meaning partially paid for by future generations — and administered by proxies. The government/forprofit contractor/non-profit complex consumes 40 percent of GDP. Just don’t upset anyone by calling it “big government.” George Will’s email address is georgewill@washpost.com. By Robert Turner

How well does the commission form of government work? The Charter Review Commission, an independent and non partisan group of citizens, heard conflicting stories from the supporters and detractors of the commission form of government about whether it protects taxpayers and ensures accountability over our eight months of research. To make any meaningful recommendation to city voters, we needed data.

If you want to know how the Commission form of government, we thought, why not ask the employees who work in City Hall ever day how it functions? The Saratoga Springs Charter Review Commission conducted the first ever survey of 75 City Hall employees from November 25-December 8. The respondents were mostly long term employees; 60 percent had worked there 11 or more years. They have worked for Republican and Democratic commissioners, and every possible partisan configuration on the City Council.

Below are their answer to two simple questions. Do you believe the Commission form of government prevents wasteful spending and protects the taxpayers? Do you believe the Commission form of government ensures the accountability of commissioners for the performance of their departments? Their answers are shown in the charts.

A copy of the survey and the rest of the survey results are available on the Saratoga Springs Charter Review website at saratogacharter.org. Robert Turner is chairman of the Saratoga Springs Charter Review Commission.