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From: Member of the Senate Staff
Date: 24 Jul 2000
Time: 07:42:12
I find your message on the historic and cultural roots of officer bloat to be important and interesting. This characteristic of the Pentagon explains much of its behavior.
It is also important that the reports you summarize refer to the cultural roots of the bloat. The same thing has occurred in other parts of US (modern?) society. One such place is Congress. Consider the following:
From the 1940s to the 1980s, the staff on Capitol Hill doubled each decade. Since the late 1980s, it has become so huge, it cannot grow without the public noticing and very probably objecting. There have even been cosmetic efforts to reduce Hill staff.
Having worked here since the 1970s and having observed some of the growth, I have also observed a very significant decline in the quality of Capitol Hill staff work output and a serious deterioration in the quality of debate and legislative output. A few points:
Few Senators speak on the Senate floor without a prepared speech or extensive talking points, and a staffer present. In the 1970s, and before, this was rarely the case. Before the 1960s, Senators' staff were not permitted on the Senate floor; before the 1940s, for the most part, they did not exist. The quality of "debate" in the Senate has drastically changed. First, there is rarely any debate. Much more frequently, it is a series of prepared speeches. In some cases, the "debate" (i.e. speeches in seriatim) are not even given, but are written by staff and inserted in the Congressional Record as if actually given. In other cases, the speeches do not occur in the same general time frame, and are given, or inserted, hours (sometimes days) after the event of the legislation being "debated." In short, Senate much of the "debate" has become bureaucratized.
The quality of individual speeches has been mediocre-ized. Few are terrible; few are excellent -- let alone historic. The large staff available to even the most junior Senator tends to create a leveling of the quality. There are no staffs so terrible they regularly produce terrible speeches for their bosses; there are none so good they regularly produce exceptional quality. The Senators tend to have come to rely on this work product. That washes out the terrible ones; it also deprives us of the spectacular ones. When the Senate had its "Golden Age;" the era of Clay, Calhoun, and Webster, there was no staff whatsoever -- a fact the contemporary staff tend not to mention. (Another interesting change is in the Senate chamber itself. The one used during the "Golden Age" was much smaller and had a intimate atmosphere. The one we have today is more a platform for the delivery of speeches.)
The huge Capitol Hill staffs have led to a decline in oversight. The famous investigations on Capitol Hill (Labor, Racketeering, Watergate) are a thing of the past. While all politicians crave the headlines such historic investigations produced, investigatory technique is not valued on Capitol Hill these days. Instead, legislating is seen as the way to success both for Members and staff. Ergo, everyone is busy producing bills, amendments, and new twists in the parliamentary labyrinth. Ask yourself when was the last great investigation you saw performed on Capitol Hill. They badly flubbed Iran-Contra, Clinton Campaigning, and many more when they tried. In one case, the investigating committee actually fired investigators and hired lawyers, who produced great volumes of briefing materials but uncovered just about nothing. In one good piece of defense investigating I know of in the last decade, the investigation was buried and the investigator was threatened with being fired. In another, the results were made public but were totally ignored by the press and the Senate: no payoff.
While the focus has been on legislating, the legislating has become worse. Gridlock is the most common work product of the House and Senate. It's not just the divided government between the legislative and executive branches. With everyone writing bills, amendments, etc. the system, especially in the Senate, is jammed with stuff, much of it minutia, much of it gotcha parliamentary tactics, driven, of course, by the staff. There has been created a whole range of staff-able parliamentary options to screw the other side. It used to be that when a Senator wanted to gum up the works because he strongly objected to what the other side (sometimes the majority) wanted to do, he had to make himself visible and do it himself (e.g. traditional filibuster). Now, for the most part, he/she can do it though the staff. It has become painless to impose pain on the parliamentary system.
This can go on, but not now. The point is the Army is not alone. On Capitol Hill we now have a system that is larger, better oiled, thoroughly bureaucratized, and much worse overall. I suspect that many other attributes of our society have been changed much like the armed forces and Congress.
More staff = more bureaucracy = less quality.