Most federal government employees do not think of their budgets as money taken from you and I for the common good. Most of them do not think much at all. And that is why I end up reading infuriating stories like this one:
“Several big lending agencies were gaming the system,” Mr. Oberg said in a recent interview at his home in Rockville, Md.
He notified the Education Department’s inspector general’s office. He also told his superiors but felt they were brushing him off. So in November 2003, he wrote a memorandum for general distribution throughout the department warning that lender manipulations could cost the government billions unless stopped, and he recommended that the secretary could end the abuse with a letter to lenders clarifying government rules.
You see, in the mind of a bureaucrat, protocols and procedures, and their interpretation, are more important than actually accomplishing something on behalf of constituents. Anyone who threatens the entrenched mentality of a career bureaucrat is immediately assaulted with rules, regulations and memorandums. Not every bureaucrat has the mentality of a feudal lord, but the percentage is high enough that at least fifty cents of every tax dollar are wasted. That number is my own guess, primarily based on observation during more than seven years of service in the federal government.
Here is a typical bureaucrat’s mentality:
“Plus, I didn’t understand the issues,” Mr. Whitehurst said recently. “In retrospect, it looks like he identified an important issue and came up with a reasonable solution. But it was Greek to me at the time — preferential interest rates on bonds? I didn’t know what he was doing, except that he wasn’t supposed to be doing it.”
He told Mr. Oberg to stop because he wanted him to be monitoring grants, not lending practices. Officials also rewrote Mr. Oberg’s job description, documents show, barring him from further research into the subsidies. Although Mr. Oberg was a civil servant, the Bush administration may have seen him as a holdover from the Clinton administration.
What’s the lesson here? When your money is funneled into a system that doesn’t value personal accountability and responsibility, you are not going to see a good return on your involuntary investment. At least that is what I learned.