Disastrous Budget Cuts

A recent column by Michael Gerson (“The real world effects of budget cuts”), as well as the frequent predictions of disaster that we’ve seen in the media during the budget debates, reminded me of an experience I had almost forty years ago. I was serving on the USS Enterprise during Vietnam, when word came down of cuts that were expected in the military budget. We had a new photo officer on the ship. Most of his previous assignments had been in joint commands. As we discussed the cuts, he said: “Let me tell you how this works. When the Navy is told its budget will be cut, the response is: ‘Can do. It will be hard, but we will make do.’ When the Air Force is told its budget will be cut, the response is: ‘That’s too bad. We won’t be able to fly bombers and fighters.’ So the Navy budget is cut and the Air Force budget is restored.”

I have thought of that occasion often over the years. Government departments and agencies at all levels seem to have learned from the Air Force. When the National Park Service was told a few years ago that its budget would be cut, it immediately announced that the Washington Monument would be closed. When the state DOE is threatened with a budget cut, we are told that will mean no books for our children’s classes. When the Agriculture Department is threatened with cuts, they announce that will be the end of the school lunch program. So when the administrator of USAID announces that a cut in his budget will mean 70,000 additional deaths as a very successful program is cut, I’m not surprised. Bureaucrats have learned that the way to preserve their budgets is to threaten to cut their most visible, critical and/or popular programs. No one suggests cutting personnel in middle management or eliminating programs or expenditures that would hardly be missed by the public.

Had I been in that House committee hearing, I would have said: “So you are telling me that the malaria control program is the least important program that you have and that there are no other places your agency could make cuts that would have a lesser impact?”

We need leaders in government that have something of the old Navy “Can do” spirit. Government, after all, is not a “jobs program.” Government agencies need to prioritize, focus on their most important functions and be willing to cut and streamline bureaucracies and programs so as to accomplish as much as possible at the least cost to the public. I have no use for administrators who threaten to cut their most important programs as a ploy to avoiding cuts in their budgets.