Overhauling the U.S. federal bureaucracy

When Gore's task force to reform the federal bureaucracy, called the National Performance Review (NPR), began its work in early 1993, it ran into a bureaucratic problem of its own. The vice president's team had planned to fund its efforts by raising money from the very agencies that it was reviewing. Gore, however, quickly discovered that federal law forbids one agency to give money to another. The episode brought home the intractability of the bureaucracy that Gore is hoping to streamline.

Gore's report on the federal bureaucracy is entitled, "From Red Tape to Results: Creating a Government that Works Better and Costs Less." It offers both a diagnosis of what is wrong with the federal bureaucracy and a method to correct it. It includes everything from eliminating notorious pork-barrel items like highway "demonstration" (construction) projects to consolidating some agencies and abolishing sign-in sheets so that federal workers will be measured by the jobs they do and not just the hours they spend at their desks.

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s real financial condition, including its hidden liabilities; and the federal budget should cover two years instead of one. One of the most positive aspects of Gore's plan is that it is supported by the Clinton administration. This is because the report shows that the administration is sensitive to Congressional demands to cut federal spending. When Clinton's budget was enacted in 1993, many congressional representatives vowed further cutbacks. Many see Gore's program as the best way of appeasing fiscal conservatives. Perhaps more important, the White House is looking to Gore's report as a way to allay voters' belief that government wastes their money. Indeed, in a recent poll, two-thirds of Americans believe that the government always manages to confound the problem. With this kind of distrust, it is difficult for an activist president like Clinton to sell his ambitious agenda. However, the Clinton administration sees Gore's program as a way of luring Perot voters over to the Democratic party. Clinton-Gore is not the first to propose federal bureaucracy reform. Lyndon Johnson's reform effort was called Programming-Planning-and-Budgeting Systems, Richard Nixon program was Management By Objectives, and Ronald Reagan prog
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Approximate Word count = 1464
Approximate Pages = 6 (250 words per page)

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