AMERICA NEEDS A NEW OPERATING PHILOSOPHY built on the bedrock of individual responsibility and accountability. Rebuilding a governing framework on that core principle will transform society: Americans can make things work again; apathy will disappear, replaced by the knowledge that you and others can make a difference; trust will start to build when there’s a backdrop of accountability; democracy will be energized when leaders have the room to try new approaches. Public debate and private debate will also be transformed: People will argue over what’s the right thing to do, not parse legal language or demand self-interested rights.
The following principles focus on how public choices are made, not what the priorities of modern government should be. Bringing choices down to the ground will allow people to solve problems in a practical way instead of fighting over abstract theories. Studies show that people with sharply different political views usually agree on the right thing to do in a particular situation.
Each of these principles is grounded in one simple idea: People must be empowered to achieve public goals sensibly and fairly, and be accountable for how they do. Law will become a framework, and no longer be an instruction manual. For public choices, officials and citizens should be free to act on this question: what’s the right thing to do here?
Principle One: Restore Individual Responsibility. Regulatory structures must be radically simplified to provide goals, guiding principles, and a hierarchy of responsibility. The focus must be on public goals, not detailed dictates on how to achieve them. The structure must define the scope of responsibility for citizens and officials in a way that gives them ample room to achieve these goals.
Examples: Designated officials should be authorized to make decisions on permits if agencies with overlapping jurisdiction cannot agree.
Detailed rules should be used only when rigidity and uniformity are more practical than flexibility—for example, speed limits, or a checklist protocol before surgery.
Principle Two: Revive Individual Accountability. Officials must be accountable based on judgment of supervisors and co-workers, without legal proceedings except in cases of misconduct. Personal accountability is essential for a functioning democracy, and also for a healthy institutional culture. Accountability provides an essential backdrop for mutual trust; people can fulfill their responsibilities with reasonable assurance that others will do the same.
Examples: The standard for personnel decisions should not be due process, but what’s best for the common good. Government should aspire to excellence, not the bare minimum. Accountability always requires judgment, and cannot be compartmentalized into metrics or objective proof.
Overhaul civil service. Civil service should be remade to provide neutral hiring, but not tenure. Collective bargaining by public unions should be abolished on grounds that it is unconstitutional infringement of executive power under Article II of the Constitution, and also on policy grounds. Aside from supervisory misconduct, the only legal protection against termination should be review by an independent board to guard against politically motivated termination (as was provided in the Lloyd-Lafollette Act).
Use federal spending power and new legal theories to dislodge the iron grip of state and local public unions and teachers unions. States and localities should abolish collective bargaining and, instead, appoint periodic review commissions to recommend changes in compensation and work rules.
Principle Three: Bureaucracy Is Evil. Slavish attention to rules, metrics, and objective proof dehumanize government. Bureaucracy causes failure by disabling human ingenuity and willpower. Bureaucracy polarizes society by preventing people from dealing flexibly with each other and the problem at hand. Bureaucracy suffocates the human spirit in every setting, causing burnout and alienation. Bureaucracy causes unfairness by encouraging people to “game” the rules for selfish purposes. Bureaucracy is too dense to be understood by those expected to abide by it. Bureaucratic structures must be abandoned and replaced by ones grounded in human responsibility.
Principle Four: Reboot Government Programs. Few government programs work as intended. Many are obsolete. They need to be repealed or rebuilt in light of current needs, and to replace bureaucratic micromanagement with a simpler framework of human responsibility. Congress should authorize recodification commissions to propose new codes, including new agency regulations.
Examples: Create one-stop shops for small business and citizens. The multiplicity of agencies is impossible for small businesses to navigate. These one-stop shops should have the job of coordinating regulatory requirements for different businesses, such as farms, restaurants, and other small businesses.
Experiment with privatizing regulatory enforcement, with “certified regulatory experts” serving a similar role as certified public accountants.
For many regulatory goals, such as patient privacy, substitute a “rule of reason” standard instead of perfect compliance. Often people can accomplish 95 percent of the goal for a fraction the cost and diversion of energy. With health care, freeing up those human resources can achieve better health care.
Principle Five: Appoint Recodification Commissions with the Job of Proposing New Codes in Each Area. Congress can then vote a recodification proposal up or down. To avoid partisan politics to the extent possible, the leadership of Congress should appoint outside experts to nominate members of the recodification commissions.
Principle Six: Courts Must Defend Boundaries of Reasonableness. What people can sue for establishes the boundaries of everyone else’s freedom. Judges must act as gatekeepers, dismissing or limiting claims that might interfere with the freedoms of all citizens. For example, letting parents sue a teacher who restrained a misbehaving student will lead to future disorder as students correctly read the teachers’ lack of authority.
Examples: Congress should create expert health courts to restore reliability and trust in malpractice litigation. Every year, doctors waste an estimated $45–$200 billion in “defensive medicine.” The resulting lack of candor means that the quality of care is also compromised.
Congress should appoint a special committee to recommend guidelines on children’s play and autonomy. In part because of fear of litigation, child development experts say America’s children are not given the challenges needed to learn how to be resourceful as adults. In the words of one expert, we are creating a “nation of wimps.”
Principle Seven: Reorganize Congress. Congress has abdicated its responsibility to oversee whether laws and regulations are serving the public good. Changes include giving committees authority to amend programs when certain conditions are met; sunsetting all laws with budgetary impact, and requiring a public report by an independent body before any program is reauthorized; and giving Congress authority, by constitutional amendment if necessary, to veto agency regulations created under statute.
Principle Eight: Give Communities Ownership of Local Services. Federal mandates for schools and social services should be turned into broad principles, with leeway for communities to provide the services in their own way. Special education, for example, is notoriously bureaucratic and leaves little room for balancing the needs of all students. Letting people make a difference in their own communities will awaken citizen commitment to the common good.
Principle Nine: Move Agencies out of Washington. The bureaucratic culture of Washington is so inbred that it is unlikely that most people there can adjust to taking responsibility to achieve goals. In the age of instant communication, there is no reason why most agencies should be in Washington. Combined with breaking apart the monopoly of civil service, moving agencies will allow government to be run by Americans not afraid to take responsibility.
Principle Ten: The Litmus Test for Public Choices Must Be the Common Good. Every public dollar involves a moral choice: spend it on an obsolete subsidy from the New Deal, and it is not available to provide prenatal care to an underprivileged mother. Rights have become a synonym for selfishness. Constitutional rights should return to their role as protecting freedom against state coercion, not a tool of coercion for one person over another. No one should have rights superior to anyone else.