Paper And People

                                                                           

Many people, and that includes me, believe that the government is too big, but they fear that the solution to the problem that many in Congress will suggest will be another department, charged with the responsibility of making it smaller. And of course that will make it bigger. For example, the full title of the Paperwork Reduction Act of 1995 (the PRA of 1980 apparently didn't do the trick) was “A bill to further the goals of the Paperwork Reduction Act to have Federal agencies become more responsible and publicly accountable for reducing the burden of Federal paperwork on the public, and for other purposes.” Even the title is too long. But the real test is whether the act did its job, to which the answer is an unequivocal “Yes and No.”

Q. Doesn't the PRA cause more paperwork, not less?

A. For government employees, yes. The objective of the law is to reduce the paperwork burden on the public. The process of trying to do that adds to government paperwork.ⁱ

So, the real goal, notwithstanding the professed aim of all the politicians, is not to decrease the amount of paperwork, but only what the public sees. (That used to be called “secrecy” and was decried. Now it's an important goal of government to “help” everyone. Congress has gone out of its way to find a method by which it is unnecessary for the public to read so much of what will affect them. Perhaps the title “Paperwork Reduction Act” is misleading, but it all sounds very noble.) How can the public not respond positively in the next election to anyone who voted for an act with that name.ⁱ It's the usual disconnect between what Congress wants us all to believe, and what is reality.ⁱⁱ

An example of the results of the Paperwork Reduction Act is the universal health care initiative passed during the previous Congress, which, nominally, is aimed at lessening our health care costs and providing care for all. The act was passed long after legislation to reduce paperwork – at a time when the government should have honed its skills at succinctness – but it is quite long and consumes a large amount of paper. After extensive time, money, personnel, and paper were utilized to draft legislation, Congress passed the “Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act” and the “Health Care and Education Reconciliation Act of 2010.” In bill form they amounted to between 2,000 and 3,000 pages (I don't know the actual number) but by reformatting, the bulk was reduced to 961 pages in the printed statutes. That's 425,116 words.ⁱ

But that's only the basic framework. Implementation of the statutes requires that the specifics be spelled out with regulations since the bills only indicate the goals, and the regulations bring wonder to all who see them. They amount to over 2,800,000 words.^v To bring that into perspective, “War and Peace” is about 560,000 words long – far fewer than “Remembrance of Things Past” (1.2 million words. But the statutes and associated regulations and more than five and three quarter times the length of “War and Peace.” ^vi) It's hard to believe that all those who voted for them even read the original bills, let alone the regulations that followed. It is likely that the costs involved in writing and administering this legislation will increase paperwork, the number of bureaucrats needed to manage it, and the National Debt, while there are many questions about the ultimate effect on health care and its costs.

That long but necessary introduction aside, however, legislation like this – and while these statutes are not typical in size, they are far from unique in form – illustrates the extent of Congress's adherence to the spirit of the Paperwork Reduction Act. It demonstrates that the problem is far larger than we might have imagined.

With all of that as background then, it seems obvious that Congress is incapable of simplifying or unwilling to undertake it voluntarily, but legislators can only make things more complex and more costly. Even assuming that all of our legislation were necessary and honest – which it isn't – it can only lead to enlarging government costs. Inevitably the debt will continue to rise, as will the burden on those who follow us.

That's the way our government works. We increase costs while we need the to reduce them; we enlarge it while claiming to make the bureaucracy smaller. Increased revenues are certainly worth seeking, but until we lower the bills we're paying,^vii we won't be able to start on the long path to balance the budget no matter how much we raise.

I'll start talking about that next week.

Next episode: “And For Other Purposes” – Too big to read and too important to fail.

i      U. S. Department of Health and Human Services. Human Services. An interesting choice for the responsibility to lessen paperwork and, presumably, the size of the beaurocracy charged with producing it.

See: http://www.hhs.gov/ocio/policy/collection/infocollectfaq.html

ii      Not surprisingly, it passed unanimously in both houses of Congress.

iii    More on that subject when I discuss some aspects of legislation. For the moment, note the “ ... and for other purposes” in the full title of the act.

iv     It's about ninety-two times the length of the Constitution.

v     Blaise Pascal wrote: “I apologize that this letter is so long. I did not have the time to make it short.” (The quotation has been, from time to time, attributed to others but it is generally accepted that Pascal authored it in its current form.) In the case of Congress, however, the absence of time was not the main motive, I fear, but there was an intentional desire to make the legislation unreadable, especially since some of its contents might be viewed negatively by other legislators. I suspect, as well, that Congress has neither the will nor the ability to do so.

vi    Indeed, the United States Constitution, on which our entire system of government is based, is under 4600 words in length. Of course that doesn't include the signatures of the Founders or the text of subsequent amendments. And the Declaration of Independence, by which we became a nation, is under 1400 words.

vii    In part by shortening the bills we're passing.