Opinion -- Washington Needs to Lead. Now.

By Lee H. Hamilton

 

A few weeks ago, I had a conversation with a group of prominent business leaders that I’m still mulling over. We were talking about the intersection between business and government, and they were pretty unhappy. The chief target of their displeasure wasn’t any of the usual suspects, though.

 

Instead of lambasting taxes or regulations, they were most worried about uncertainty in Washington. Their business prospects, they argued, are being hurt by the inability of the political class — and in particular Congress and the White House — to come to terms on pretty much anything: from the year-end package of tax hikes and spending cuts known as the “fiscal cliff” to fixing the health care system to resolving our disagreements over immigration.

 

Now, uncertainty is baked into our political system. As soon as a law passes, hundreds of lobbyists head for Capitol Hill to try to change it, and scores more descend on executive-branch agencies to see if they can nudge the rules implementing the law as they’re written. Legislation that seems buried for good in Congress can abruptly rise from the dead and pass both houses, while laws that passed easily a few years ago suddenly find themselves imperiled.

 

“Nothing ever gets settled in this town,” George Shultz once told the House committee on which I sat when he was secretary of state. “It’s a seething debating society in which the debate never stops, in which people never give up.” Given the nature of our representative democracy, certainty and finality are simply not achievable.

 

Yet the businessmen I met with had an important and valid point. The range of really crucial issues on which Congress has been unable to find common ground is immense. It has yet to decide what to do about tax cuts that are about to lapse. It has a budget in place only until March and has not come to terms with the threat of deep cuts to spending that were part of the debt ceiling deal of 2011. It’s left issues like the future of estate taxes, a new agriculture bill, ensuring the security of our information infrastructure, and a rickety postal service on the table. And it hasn’t given a clue as to how it might want to address issues that are key to our economic competitiveness in coming decades: education, infrastructure, taxes, immigration and the like.

 

As we near the end of the year, anyone trying to plan ahead has to confront the fact that government policy for both the near and long terms is wildly unforeseeable. And no one expects the upcoming election to clarify much of anything.

 

This interminable gridlock in Washington produces a signal lack of leadership. Unable to formulate policy, let alone think strategically about the future, Congress punts. Which is terrible for the country. As The New York Times noted a few months ago, “A rising number of manufacturers are canceling new investments and putting off new hires because they fear paralysis in Washington will...undermine economic growth in the coming months. Executives at companies making everything from electrical components and power systems to automotive parts say the fiscal stalemate is prompting them to pull back now, rather than wait for a possible resolution to the deadlock on Capitol Hill.”

 

The problem is that politicians in Washington get so wrapped up in their own world that they seem unable to recognize the consequences of their inaction and last-minute antics. The bad habits they’ve developed in recent years — an inability to enact a budget or address taxes, the omnibus bills that concentrate power in the hands of just a few people, the lack of transparency and overabundance of partisanship — all have brought us to a point where people who depend on government to create a stable policy environment can no longer do so.

 

Yes, uncertainty may be built into our representative democracy, but so is the assumption that our elected leaders will take responsibility for bringing solidity to the policies that affect our society and economy. Politicians of both parties simply must step up their game, or they’ll create chaos.

 

Lee Hamilton is Director of the Center on Congress at Indiana University. He was a member of the U.S. House of Representatives for 34 years.

Opinion: We’ll Never Agree on the Role of Government...And That’s Fine

The conventional wisdom has settled on the subject of this year’s presidential campaign: it’s about the proper role of government in our nation’s life. This is a good argument to have, but don’t expect it to be resolved by the election. Americans have been debating the question since before the Constitution was drawn up, and we haven’t come to terms on it yet.

 

At the moment, we’ve got a Republican challenger who embraces the conservative conviction that government must be as limited as possible. In this view, much of what government spends is wasted; Ronald Reagan’s comment, “Government is not the solution to our problem; government is our problem,” is its mantra. Conservatives want to reduce regulation, make cutting taxes the highest priority, propose handing Medicaid and other responsibilities to the states as block grants, and consider a more active government the wrong answer in almost every case. Privatization, contracting out, and a private sector freed from the intrusive hand of government will be the engines of a stronger society.

 

Against this view we have a Democratic incumbent, backed by liberals who see value in government’s role. They are concerned about social inequality, support a publicly funded safety net, and are prepared to levy the taxes needed to pay for it. In this view, public spending is necessary to stimulate the economy when needed and regulation is vital to checking the excesses of the market. There are times, this side would argue, when a muscular government is indispensable to our national fortunes — properly deployed, government can expand opportunities to achieve the American dream.

 

The gap between these views seems unbridgeable — especially in the midst of a presidential contest between two parties whose interest lies in highlighting their differences. Yet in the end this fundamental political gulf is not as wide as it appears.

 

This is because the real question in governing is rarely, “What is the ideologically proper thing to do?” Instead, it’s how do we run the country day-to-day? And how do we get a diverse group of politicians to make progress on our current problems while putting aside the problems they cannot solve? When Wall Street crashes or natural calamity strikes or schools fail, the pragmatism of the moment always comes to the fore, no matter what ideology elected officials espouse.

 

Which is where most Americans find themselves. They don’t consider government to be all good or all evil. They want it to work well and efficiently, be as productive as the private sector, exert itself to keep the market functional but not so much that it over-regulates business, and get a handle on entitlements so that they’re sustainable over the long term. Most Americans believe that we cannot prosper unless government builds infrastructure, protects property rights, helps develop the economy, sustains basic scientific research, undergirds the development of human capital, and protects the social safety net.

 

In essence, government is a tool — it’s one of the ways that we as Americans meet the challenges that confront us, whether it’s fighting a terrorist attack or educating our children, safeguarding our retirement, undergirding commerce, and protecting the country’s natural treasures for everyone to enjoy. Government may not be the highest, broadest purpose of the nation, but most people recognize that without it, we cannot prosper.

 

So while many people may feel that Washington has too much power, they still want it to protect their interests. This is why we’ll probably never reach a consensus on the proper role of government. We are more likely to work out solutions issue by issue, trying to reach a pragmatic solution for the problem we face.

 

The nation’s current fiscal difficulties will surely force government to do less than many people want, and the public sector will have to become smarter, more productive, and more efficient.  This is not a bad thing. But no matter who is in charge, we are unlikely to veer too far left or too far right, because the debate over the proper role of government will remain unsettled. And that’s not a bad thing, either.

 

Lee Hamilton is Director of the Center on Congress at Indiana University. He was a member of the U.S. House of Representatives for 34 years.

Opinion: The Problem With Government Isn’t A Few Bad Apples

By Lee H. Hamilton

 

Americans get angry when they learn of government bureaucrats spending lavishly at a Las Vegas hotel or Secret Service agents consorting with prostitutes. As well they should. Such conduct wastes money and drains Americans’ respect for their government.

 

Washington’s routine for such embarrassing revelations is for executive and legislative officials to express shock, demand an investigation, and vow that such shenanigans will never happen again. A legislative tweak or two, some heightened oversight for the agencies in question, and then all is forgotten until the next scandal — which invariably comes along.

 

The problem with all this isn’t how we react to the occasional revelation of bureaucratic malfeasance. It’s how we don’t act the rest of the time.

 

Our government is so huge and unwieldy that only robust, continuing scrutiny — by Congress and from within each department — will keep it on course. Yet somehow we seem unable to rise to that challenge. The result is not just widespread distrust of government but, as NYU professor Paul C. Light — a leading expert on the federal bureaucracy — put it recently, “enough evidence imbedded in recent governmental breakdowns, ethical breaches and outright fraud to feed the distrust.”

 

Simply put, our government doesn’t work nearly as efficiently and effectively as it could, and Congress and top leaders in the bureaucracy bear direct responsibility.

 

Most federal employees behave professionally and appropriately; I do not believe that the lapses unveiled in the GSA or Secret Service scandals are common. Nor, however, is misconduct entirely exceptional — it happens much too frequently in government, even in the military: think of our soldiers in Afghanistan burning Korans.

 

How do we rebuild Americans’ trust that the federal government can get things right? Four changes are needed, each demanding that officials take much more seriously the duty of oversight.

 

First, Congress and the agencies themselves must not just react to misconduct after the fact, but be alert to its possibility in the first place: they should expect it will occur, search it out, and act to prevent it. Agencies need to do regular spot checks on what’s taking place in the ranks; inspectors general need the staff and resources to carry out their jobs effectively; and agencies must instill high standards of ethical and professional behavior. Congress’s job is to ensure that this framework is robust and effective.

 

Second, Congress must insist that top layers of the bureaucracy take ethics and efficacy seriously. This is not as easy as it sounds. For one thing, Cabinet secretaries and agency heads understandably want to focus their attention on policy. The Secretary of State has world crises to attend to; the Secretary of Defense has wars to fight. Usually, they believe they don’t have time for organization and process.

 

And that is in part because infusing a culture of high ethical standards and ramrod efficiency is immensely difficult in the bloated managerial structure our leaders have allowed to grow. As Prof. Light put it in testimony to Congress in February, “There have never been more layers in government or more leaders per layer.”

 

Third, the civil service system needs overhauling. Performance ratings routinely get inflated, bonuses are passed out whether or not deserved, promotions are automatic, disciplinary actions are infrequent, few rewards exist for genuine excellence and even fewer penalties for shoddy performance.

 

Finally, huge problems are created by duplicate programs and overlap — there are 15 agencies assigned to food safety, for instance — along with wasteful spending, uncollected debts, unenforced rules, and unmanageable programs. Congress bears heavy responsibility: it regularly enacts programs with competing or similar objectives, adding unneeded layers to an already unmanageable government structure. It’s time for concerted attention to the big picture.

 

There’s no question where this attention must come from: Congress and the White House. It’s popular to say these days that “government is the problem,” but it is equally true that only government can be the answer. No one else can fix it. It will take dogged effort and a willingness to delve into the unglamorous details of bureaucratic process. But until that happens, scandals and bumbling will continue to undermine Americans’ trust in their government.

 

Lee Hamilton is Director of the Center on Congress at Indiana University. He was a member of the U.S. House of Representatives for 34 years.

Opinion: The Problem With Too Many Debates

By Lee H. Hamilton

What role should debates have in political campaigning? That’s the question being raised by this Republican presidential primary season.

Some prominent Republicans are worried that the nonstop series of GOP debates has done their party more harm than good by showcasing all the differences among the candidates. But others disagree precisely because the debates have given the candidates a chance to air their opinions. “I think they’ve been the most important primary debates in our history. Certainly the most important I’ve ever covered,” CNN’s Wolf Blitzer said on the night of the Florida primary.

The debates’ impact on the campaign is interesting, but they raise a larger issue that shouldn’t get lost in presidential horse-race coverage. It has to do with how the average voter gets to know a candidate, whether for the presidency or for a seat in Congress — and what we ought to know about a candidate before we make up our minds. Can we devise a political campaign in this country that allows us to get beyond the debates’ one-liners, superficial answers and stage-managed images, to an in-depth, wide-open discussion with opportunity for extensive follow-up?

There’s no question that debates have some value. Structured properly, they make a candidate put forth his or her ideas, give us a glimpse of how they behave under pressure, and allow us to get a sense of what the candidates — and sometimes the party as a whole — believe the campaign is about. If there’s a series of debates, they also allow us to become familiar with the candidates’ personalities and style.

But there can be too much of a good thing. Preparing for many debates cuts hugely into the time a candidate spends with actual voters (rather than the media who control the debates), listening to their concerns, taking the temperature of the electorate, deepening the campaign’s message and building its organization and outreach. It’s important for candidates to get to know the electorate in the work place, at diners, in places of worship, at service-club meetings and shopping malls and even political rallies. Debates move the candidate toward the television screen and in some important ways away from the voter.

More fundamentally, it’s worth asking to what extent debates give voters the information they need to make discriminating choices. You want a politician to be able to think on her feet and to be articulate, of course; agility with both words and ideas is a valuable political skill. But in public officials we want more than a good debater. Debates tend to harden candidates’ positions, rewarding indignation and forcefully stated convictions. They show us nothing of a candidate’s ability to work toward common ground with people who disagree — which is, of course, the essence of governing. And debates steer candidates away from in-depth exploration of complex issues — witness, for instance, the almost total lack of foreign-policy discussion in the series of GOP presidential debates.

There are ways to handle some of these shortcomings, of course. Debates could benefit from avoiding the one-minute-statement, 30-second-rebuttal format, and instead allow for true discussion in a format that would allow voters to see how the candidates address major issues in reasonable juxtaposition with one another. After all, that’s what elected officials have to be able to do — so why not let the electorate see them at it before they get elected?

There are many important qualities that debates do not test: the ability to build consensus, to work with people of differing opinions and backgrounds, to make sound judgments about what’s best for the country, to sort through complex issues and arrive at proposals that move the nation forward. These are qualities that voters can gauge only by seeing candidates in action on the stump, by hearing them explain in depth how they would approach our big challenges, and by watching them as they encounter people from all walks of life.

Televised debates are a part of the modern campaign. They seem to be popular with voters and are undoubtedly good theater. But we should not mistake them for the best way to get information to the discriminating voter.

Lee Hamilton is Director of the Center on Congress at Indiana University. He was a member of the U.S. House of Representatives for 34 years.