Final Thoughts About the Federal Government

To date I have talked a lot about what I believe could be changed to improve the effectiveness of Congress, the President, and the Federal Courts. Before I begin to discuss issues that I think the Congress should address to improve our lives, I want to talk a little about the civilian men and women who work for the government.

They are, for the most part, smart and dedicated individuals who are doing their very best to carry out, and improve, the programs created by legislation that was passed by Congress and signed into law by the President. For most laws that are enacted, a bureaucracy is created to carry it out. As a fairly recent example, the Occupational Safety and Health Act of 1970 required the creation of an entire agency, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA), to create safety and health standards and conduct safety and health inspections of workplaces to "assure safe and healthful working conditions for working men and women". So, it's the law itself that was created by the Congress and signed by the President that creates the bureaucracy and not the career government employees.

One of the major reasons it may appear sometimes that the federal bureaucracy is inefficient is because the Federal Government is the government of all of the people and, as such, there are strict rules and regulations that agencies are required to follow in order to ensure that all of the people who are interested and qualified, have a chance to compete for a government job or a government contract. So by their very natures, the processes of hiring people for government jobs or selecting a contractor to satisfy government contracting requirements is time consuming and cumbersome. But the reason for this, and I'm going to say it again, is that the government has to give everyone an equal chance. Company's in private industry, on the other hand, can hire anyone they want for a job or a contract and often do without any competition.

I think the points I'm attempting to make here are first, that, for those of you who do not work for the government, before you criticize too much, remember that the government serves all of the people and cannot operate the way you do or the company you work for does. Secondly, there are proportionately as many, or maybe even more dedicated and intelligent people working for the government as there are in private industry. Finally, although the government does not have the glitz and bling that a lot of companies in private industry have, it does have a mission to serve the American people and make the country safe and secure and so a career with the government can be rewarding, not only personally, but financially as the government offers very good benefits both while you are working and after you are retired. Think about it!