"Heckava job, Brownie!" Remember that from nearly twenty years ago, which became a "gallows-humor" punch line? That moment of regulatory failure should remind us why it is a BAD IDEA to politicize the US civil service. Yes, this reference concerned a FEMA department head, which was and remains a political appointee position. However, FEMA itself was not destroyed by that bad appointment because the department had, and continues to have, so many great people with practical and technical expertise. This proposed set of rules to re-establish political appointments throughout the civil service will do such serious damage and potentially destroy the entire civil service that our ancestors fought so hard to create.
The fight for a non-political and professional civil service has its roots in political battles during the 1870s and 1880s. People across political worldviews recognized there was a need for expertise in various matters important to human existence. They recognized there was a need to care about having people in department positions who knew how to reasonably follow existing regulations, and write new regulations with good faith and professional understandings and motivations. As there are always ways people try to get around various laws or regulations, the need for new regulations, creating exceptions, closing loopholes that were not anticipated, etc. becomes a very difficult task. It requires people who have knowledge of how regulations function, how people behave, and looking beyond common prejudices and passions.
Partisan politics tends to result in rewarding short-term thinking and often have bad faith motivations that undermine confidence in the rules which govern our daily lives. A professional civil service provides what people ultimately demand from government, and in society, namely fair and equitable rules to function on an everyday level. So many times, one may read a regulation and say, "What is that about? Why so onerous?" and come to find out WHY the regulation was promulgated in the first place. I myself have had many an "ah-ha!" moment where I recognized, "So THAT's why this regulation exists." Partisan politics never gets that far and would rather jettison a regulation that went through a painstaking writing and hearing process.
The argument that executive agency rule-making is a modern "thing" is simply and historically wrong. In George Washington's first administration, Treasury Secretary Hamilton wrote regulations for his department to assist the department in executing laws Congress had passed. Hamilton recognized the actual functioning of the government, and HOW to follow the laws Congress passed, required regulations. He recognized there was a need for expertise in understanding how different situations required more minute, and often more complicated, rule-making. The administrative state was born in that administration, and Attorneys General in the Washington administration understood this as well. Hamilton even used the courts to determine what was a proper regulatory interpretation of a congressional law, sometimes, in those early ethics days, hired lawyers for both sides of a question and helped write the briefs for both sides so the most forceful arguments were able to be made.
The so-called "spoils" system that was formally established under the Jackson administration in the 1830s proved to make for a very inefficient, very wasteful, and very corrupt government, and while railroads grew during that time, nobody who lived through that era nor studied that era would say that this was a good way to run a government. It is why, after the US Civil War, so many from across the political spectrum saw civil service reform as an important reform to undertake. It was an anti-Civil Service reform President , Chester Arthur, who "saw the light" and signed the law creating what became the modern civil service in the mid 1880s. Our nation's civil service thereafter became the envy of the world over decades. Yes, there will always be human frailties that create bad regulators and bad civil servants. But anyone who knows public servants over decades also sees pride in those civil servants who truly do wish to serve the public, and do their best to offer the knowledge and experience they have.
Partisan politics tends to result in rewarding short-term thinking and often have bad faith motivations that undermine confidence in the rules which govern our daily lives. A professional civil service provides what people ultimately demand from government, and in society, namely fair and equitable rules to function on an everyday level. So many times, one may read a regulation and say, "What is that about? Why so onerous?" and come to find out WHY the regulation was promulgated in the first place. I myself have had many an "ah-ha!" moment where I recognized, "So THAT's why this regulation exists." Partisan politics never gets that far and would rather jettison a regulation that went through a painstaking writing and hearing process.
The argument that executive agency rule-making is a modern "thing" is simply and historically wrong. In George Washington's first administration, Treasury Secretary Hamilton wrote regulations for his department to assist the department in executing laws Congress had passed. Hamilton recognized the actual functioning of the government, and HOW to follow the laws Congress passed, required regulations. He recognized there was a need for expertise in understanding how different situations required more minute, and often more complicated, rule-making. The administrative state was born in that administration, and Attorneys General in the Washington administration understood this as well. Hamilton even used the courts to determine what was a proper regulatory interpretation of a congressional law, sometimes, in those early ethics days, hired lawyers for both sides of a question and helped write the briefs for both sides so the most forceful arguments were able to be made.
The so-called "spoils" system that was formally established under the Jackson administration in the 1830s proved to make for a very inefficient, very wasteful, and very corrupt government, and while railroads grew during that time, nobody who lived through that era nor studied that era would say that this was a good way to run a government. It is why, after the US Civil War, so many from across the political spectrum saw civil service reform as an important reform to undertake. It was an anti-Civil Service reform President , Chester Arthur, who "saw the light" and signed the law creating what became the modern civil service in the mid 1880s. Our nation's civil service thereafter became the envy of the world over decades. Yes, there will always be human frailties that create bad regulators and bad civil servants. But anyone who knows public servants over decades also sees pride in those civil servants who truly do wish to serve the public, and do their best to offer the knowledge and experience they have.
I am a person who worked in the private sector for over forty of my forty-five years of my adult life. However, over most of my 67 years, I have dealt with many public servants and they were, by-and-large, outstanding and caring about the work they do. It was rare to meet someone who fit the stereotype that is so ingrained in so many jokes and partisan attacks. Please do not undermine our civil service system. Having a professional civil service is one of the things that has made our nation great. Don't undermine that greatness.