Obstacles to Job Creation
December 1, 2009 6 Comments
Sorry to be quote-mining Megan McArdle two days in a row, but man, that girl can write! Today she discusses obstacles to a WPA-style jobs program. Longtime readers know I love the works programs from the New Deal. Unfortunately Megan makes a very good case as to why this is near-ompossible today.
For one thing, there are powerful public sector unions, who are going to fiercely resist any attempt to create low paid temporary jobs that could be done by well paid government workers who have excellent benefits and job security. I doubt the Republicans would be willing to take this one on (or well disposed to a New WPA). But with Democrats in control, this is pretty much a fatal objection.
Even if you could surmount union opposition, the federal government has an ever-increasing thicket of red tape that makes such a thing impractical. It takes months to get hired for a job with the federal government. It takes months to ramp up a new program. By the time you’d gotten your NWPA through Congress over strenuous union objections, appointed someone to head it, set up the funding and hiring procedures, and actually hired people, it would be 2011. Maybe 2012. Perhaps you could waive all the civil service and associated procedure surrounding federal hiring, but I don’t see how.
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Every so often I’ll read some description of a project out of the olden days–the battle against malaria in Panama, the handling of the Great Mississippi Flood, or the creation of the WPA–and just marvel at how fast everything used to be. The WPA was authorized in April of 1935. By December, it was employing 3.5 million people. The Hoover Dam took 16 years from the time it was first proposed, to completion; eight years, if you start counting from the time it passed Congress.
Contrast this with a current, comparatively trivial project: it has been seventeen years since the Southeast High Speed Rail Corridor was established by USDOT, and we should have a Record of Decision on the Tier II environmental impact statement no later than 2010. This for something that runs along existing rail rights of way, and in fact, uses currently operating track in many places.
I imagine this all sounds like a nattering nabob of negativity. If there are procedural hurdles to jobs programs and high speed rail, we should challenge them, not resign ourselves to subpar policy!
Look, I may be skeptical that health care reform will be a net positive, but I do concede there’s some chance I’m wrong (and I will be glad if it is so). But this is not merely unlikely; is is the next nearest thing to impossible, short of armed revolution. Many of the procedural hurdles involve court rulings, concerning law which Congress cannot overturn in some cases (due process), or isn’t going to (civil rights legislation, civil service protections). The obstacles arise out of things that individually, people, specifically Democrats, like: transparency, due process, environmental care, civil rights, unionism. Cumulatively, they are devastating to federal productivity.
OUCH!
As always, Meghan gets it half right: Individuals do care baout these things, though that care is not confined to Democrats. Where she goes wrong – and working inside the federal government, I know this first hand – is on her cumulative impacts assessment. What is devastating to federal productivity is the perverse fascination America has with requiring govenrment by federal law to do many, many things, but not providing the resources to do nearly any of them, and those few poorly at best. My office doesn’t skim 50% productivity in our main actions because we’re lazy or incompetent, or because of due process, unionism, or the need to account for environmental costs. Our office performs at that level because we don’t have enough people to do more, we don’t have enough moeny to paythem overtime to do more, and our workload far outstrips what we can handle.
We didn’t do that to ourselves – the American People did that to us through Congress. Sadly no self-respecting conservative pundit will ever lay blame where it actually rests.
Phillip,
I’m all for efficency in government. If that means the government does less so it can do better, so be it. I can’t help but ask though, if a WPA or CCC could be formed again and your department was flooded with able-bodied youngsters…couldn’t you accomplish a lot more?
Indeed we could. And I’m not objecting to that at all.
But I can tell you that, for what we do, there isn’t much efficiency left. The blood, so to speak, has been wrung from the turnip. And without Congressionally directed change in the form of new or revised statutes, we’ll continue to be perpetually behind. Same with many of my federal colleagues. SImply put, unless we’re no longer REQUIRED to do so many things, we’ll keep doin gthem in a mediocre fashion.
Yet to hear Meghan tell it, we’re the sole source of the problem. Not Congress; not the American people; not all the groups that legislate through the courts by federal civil lawsuits. Nope, it’s all about federal workers and their unions . . . .
Well the unions are obviously a huge problem, as is the amazing amount of red tape required to get a project up-and-running. That’s why an army of high-school graduates spending a year in public service isn’t the resource it could be. Where would they go? Think of the union challenges?
I do object to this point of hers: Perhaps you could waive all the civil service and associated procedure surrounding federal hiring, but I don’t see how.
Why would you NOT go through a screening process for applicants? I’d rather take a month or two to hire someone who is qualified (and confirm it by doing the appropriate checks) than someone with a doctored resume who winds up causing public scandal and more harm than good.
yeah, cause swift private sector hiring is SO MUCH BETTER