Fred Thompson: Government On the Brink

First off, I am not Al Gore. I cannot read through pages and pages of policy details without falling asleep. However, I am providing links to Fred Thompson’s 2 volume report, titled Government On the Brink: The Root Causes of Federal Waste and Mismanagement. It has been recently republished for the campaign, but costs around $25.00. So if you are interested, here are the links, legal and free. Thompson has regularly brought up the report this year, and gives some insight into why he is well thought of in the GAO sector, and his experience in government waste management.

Here are some highlights of a seemingly prophetic letter to the editor of Government Executive Magazine, written by Paul C. Light, Director of governmental studies at the Brookings institute, dated August 1, 2001:

Tennessee Republican Fred Thompson done his share to help clean up American politics. Thompson has also done his share to make the federal government work. He has been a tireless watchdog of agency mismanagement, but has avoided the gimmickry that has characterized so much Republican rhetoric on fraud, waste and abuse.
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Moreover, short of some unanticipated disaster, George W. Bush will run for re-election in 2004, which means that Thompson will have to wait for 2008 to mount his own run for the presidency. Had Gore won the 2000 election, Republicans already would be coalescing around Thompson as a front-runner for 2004.
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Thompson no doubt is tired of talking about government failure, too. Two years ago, he identified $19 billion that federal agencies had misplaced. This year, he found another $25 billion. The names and agencies may change, but the stories remain the same. Medicare still pays for services provided to dead people and the Internal Revenue Service continues to send refunds to citizens who owe back taxes. The federal “high risk” list of programs most vulnerable to mismanagement has grown from 14 in 1990 to 23 today, with eight of the original 14 still on the list.
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It also is entirely possible that Vice President Dick Cheney will step down from the Republican ticket in 2004, opening the job for Thompson. Bush is not likely to forgive McCain for his flirtations with the Democrats, and Secretary of State Colin Powell has already had his chance. That leaves Thompson and a host of lesser pretenders, none of whom has his star quality or campaign ability.
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Thompson’s report, “Government at the Brink,” did more than just inventory the problems, however. It also provided an easily accessible analysis of causes and solutions, most notably the projected retirement of between a third and a half of the federal workforce. Unless the federal government figures out a way to get the right employees both hired and motivated, Thompson argues, the federal government will start to feel the pinch of poor performance in every corner, from mishandled Social Security checks to ever-lengthening delays at every point of citizen service.

Thompson’s report includes an analysis of the four biggest challenges facing the federal government:

• Workforce Management
• Financial Management
• Information Technology Management
• Overlap and Duplication

Here is some insight written by Thompson as to what to look for in the report:

• Political leadership: The President and Congress must make clear in word and deed that resolving these management problems is one of their priorities, and that they will keep after the agencies and the government’s key management agency, the Office of Management and Budget (OMB), until the job is done.
• Agency follow-up: OMB must establish specific performance goals, measures, strategies, and timetables to resolve the problems. They should use as a starting point potential solutions that have already been identified.
• Investing in improvements: As part of their improvement strategies, agencies and the OMB must identify funding needed to resolve the problems and Congress must be willing to provide it. If done right, relatively modest investments in improvements will repay themselves many times over.
• Linking funding to results: Both the President and the Congress need to insist on reliable performance information to determine what’s working and what’s not, and then hold agencies and programs accountable where it counts - in their budgets. Where programs overlap, we should concentrate our resources on those that work best or can be made to work best. The fact that a program isn’t performing well doesn’t automatically mean it should be defunded. Maybe it needs a legislative fix or even more funding. However, letting non-performing programs simply continue as is should not be an option.

So, without further ado, here are the links to the report by then-Chairman of Government Affairs Fred Thompson (pdf warning):

Volume I: Urgent Federal Government Management Problems Facing the Bush Administration (70 pages)

Volume II: An Agency by Agency Examination of Federal Government Problems Facing the Bush Administration (135 pages)