Government Efficiency Is A Tall Order For Musk – OpEd

Former president Donald Trump says Elon Musk may serve as the “Secretary of Cost-Cutting,” and Musk foresees a Department of Government Efficiency under his command. The SpaceX boss might dial it back to a previous attempt during the Carter Era.

The victor over Gerald Ford in 1976, Carter tackled inefficiency in the federal bureaucracy with the Civil Service Reform Act of 1978. According to Office of Personnel Management, the “keystone” of the Act was the Senior Executive Service, (SES) established to “ensure that the executive management of the Government of the United States is responsive to the needs, policies, and goals of the Nation and otherwise is of the highest quality.”

SES leaders “possess well-honed executive skills and share a broad perspective on government and a public service commitment that is grounded in the Constitution.” The SES bosses also “serve in the key positions just below the top Presidential appointees. SES members are the major link between these appointees and the rest of the Federal workforce. They operate and oversee nearly every government activity in approximately 75 Federal agencies.” Taxpayers had a right to wonder how it worked out.

“When Jimmy Carter set up the Senior Executive Service nearly three years ago, it was touted as the ideal place for the government’s top managers, an elite niche where Uncle Sam’s best and brightest would toil at greater risk but with the promise of greater rewards,” wrote Karlyn Barker of the Washington Post in October, 1981, “but it hasn’t worked out that way.”

Many SES members complained about pay, promotions, and the bonus system. On the other hand, Barker provided little assessment of SES job performance that would merit higher pay.

The SES represented less than one percent of the federal workforce but between 2008 and 2011 SES bosses received more than $340 million in bonuses, on top of annual salaries that ranged from $119,000 to $179,000. The bonuses were not subject to budget cuts and SES influence continued to surge.

According to a 2015 report, the SES boasted 217 members in the army, 318 in the Navy, 179 in the Air Force, 473 in the Department of Defense, 594 at Homeland Security, and a full 786 at the Department of Justice. “All other” federal agencies accounted for 1,785 SES members, with a grand total of 7,791.

In his 2015 executive order, “Strengthening the Senior Executive Service,” President Obama set out to “facilitate career executive continuity between administrations.” By May 31, 2016, agencies with 20 or more SES positions were to develop a plan “to increase the number of SES members who are rotating to improve talent development, mission delivery, and collaboration.” And so on, all without any long-term assessment of job performance. For all but the willfully blind, the SES had become another bureaucracy, but hardly the only evidence of government waste, fraud, and abuse.

John C. Beale, once the highest-paid employee at the Environmental Protection Agency, told his bosses he was a CIA spy working in London, India, and Pakistan when he was actually holed up at his vacation home. Beale pulled off this ruse for 20 years, performing little if any work. The fraudster continued to draw his government paycheck and retention bonuses even after he retired.

SES Employees Are Still Government Workers

Like government employees in general, SES bosses enjoy an array of special protections against dismissal. Elon Musk would have a hard time firing them, but the SpaceX mogul may not get the chance. Donald Trump would have to win the election, hardly a done deal, and there’s more to consider.

The SES operates in 75 government departments including the Department of Homeland Security, which now controls the United States Secret Service, before 2003 part of the Treasury Department. As it turns out, the SES also deploys personnel in the Secret Service, responsible for protection of the president, and since the assassination of Robert F. Kennedy in 1968, presidential candidates as well.

At a July 13 rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, the Secret Service failed to prevent a 20-year-old with no tactical experience from scaling a rooftop and unleashing eight shots, one wounding former president Trump, and other shots killing one attendee and wounding two others. Not much SES efficiency was on display, but government agencies have succeeded in making the election season more exciting.

• This article was also published in The American Spectator