With a new party taking a major share of power in Washington, bringing with it smaller government priorities, it’s time to think about dramatic moves to reorganize the federal bureaucracy. It’s time, in other words, to consider abolishing the present merit-based system of federal employment, and bringing back the old spoils system of hiring and firing.
There’s nothing particularly revolutionary about a government system that employs people based on their relationship to a ruling party rather than merit. It’s the way things are done in many countries around the world. It also has a long history in our own.
Jefferson instituted a spoils system to get rid of Federalists obstructing his policies. Jackson greatly enlarged the practice. It served the country well enough in Lincoln’s time to win the Civil War. And had a disappointed office holder not assassinated President Garfield in 1881, we might not even have gotten the Civil Service Act two years later.
Ideas about getting federal payrolls under control today usually focus on firings or privatization. Just firing federal employees, however, would only increase unemployment — a problem you won’t have with a spoils system. No jobs would be lost here. Everyone now holding a federal post would simply be replaced, one-for-one, by a party hack or clubhouse gofer.
The privatization route to containing costs of federal employment could save taxpayers nearly $47 billion in 2011, according to one estimate. This sounds impressive. But consider:
Party hack replacement workers with no special qualifications would be willing to work dirt cheap. Moreover, as newcomers to government jobs, they would have no costly seniority. Since they won’t be around when a future election turns against them, there’s also no need to make pension contributions. All things considered, it’s easy to see that a $47 billion privatization saving is chump change compared to savings possible with a spoils-based federal employment system.
Saving aren’t the only benefit here either. If you’re worried that the government is too powerful, that it’s on your back and in your pocket, you need worry no more with a spoils employment system in place. Spoils replacement workers won’t understand their jobs well enough to be intrusive.
Americans want real change in the way their government operates. So I say: Let’s give it to them! An underpaid, inefficient, highly partisan government bureaucracy, subject to total replacement every few years, fills the bill perfectly.
More satire from this writer at http://blog.wallstreetpoet.com/