Federal deficits put the great American experiment in peril

OPINION:

As we celebrate the 248th anniversary of our independence, the great American experiment in self-governance “of the people, by the people and for the people” is in peril. Federal deficits are still at pandemic levels, debt burdens are at record highs, and interest costs have surpassed defense spending, creating a ticking debt bomb that threatens our national security, economic prosperity and domestic tranquility.

At the same time, Americans’ faith in our institutions is at or near an all-time low. From boardrooms to classrooms, Americans believe in our republic and a professional, effective and nonpartisan civil service. They are questioning, however, the value of what the government is doing and its ability to deliver real results.

Nearly 250 years ago, our founders decided not to be subjects of a monarch but shareholders of a nation. Our federal leaders, however, are not properly discharging their stewardship responsibilities to the American shareholders in the face of many complex and fast-moving international threats and domestic challenges.

Mounting debt burdens and losing faith in our institutions may seem unrelated, but they are symptoms of the same fundamental issue. Unlike China, our greatest global competitor, the U.S. lacks long-term national strategies focused on key economic, diplomatic, military and societal objectives. The federal government cannot also link its spending to the value it creates for the American people. If you do not know what something is worth, how would you know what you are willing to spend? This is the basic principle of return on investment, or ROI.

It is not hard to understand the value the federal government should be creating for the American people. The preamble to the  Constitution articulates its mandate (e.g., provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, secure the blessings of liberty, etc.), which could be translated into a suite of key national indicators to help measure the value the U.S. government is achieving for the American people.

Businesses routinely do this through ROI frameworks that provide the multifaceted insights necessary to balance activities, outcomes and returns across portfolios and over multiple time horizons simultaneously. They must and do execute comprehensive strategies with the speed necessary to meet market threats and opportunities, or they are out of business.

In contrast, our government produces an avalanche of individual agency strategic plans and annual budget justifications without links to desired national outcomes or the ability to articulate the value created for what they spend. Mired in a system that uses management science from decades ago, government leaders employ a fragmented and myopic approach that fails to produce a sustainable fiscal path, impairs the speed of action and obscures both the systemic risks and opportunities to dramatically improve performance.

To address both the fiscal and public confidence issues, it is time for our government to recognize the urgency and magnitude of the challenge and meet the moment with ingenuity, determination, and the clear-eyed understanding that this can and must be fixed. The government will need a comprehensive, integrated, outcome-based and resource-constrained strategic plan and far more sophisticated management science and systems to develop ROI-oriented frameworks that span the entire federal government and cascade through the agencies.

The Biden administration and Congress, supported by the Office of Management and Budget and Government Accountability Office, can then better exercise their leadership responsibilities with an evidence-based, analytic approach to planning, oversight, insight and foresight activities. This will help to determine what is working, what is not, and what is missing. The result would be comprehensive, transparent, integrated and executable national strategies, plans, budgets and performance measures to guide the needed transformation of the federal government to be more effective and credible today and fiscally sustainable and adaptable over time.

These problems are well known by both political and civil service leaders. The lack of outcome orientation and ROI frameworks undercuts the government’s ability to understand the impact of its actions on the American people’s interests and our global position. Americans are frustrated by the short-term focus of political leadership, partisan gridlock and constantly shifting priorities. Adopting a comprehensive strategic plan in cooperation with Congress and institutionalizing ROI-based frameworks can bring a rudder for planning, execution and oversight within and between administrations and Congresses.

Based on our current condition and future path, time is not on our side. Many current efforts around government address aspects of this issue, but they are fragmented and lack adequate national-level leadership and institutional staying power.

This need for strategic government transformation is so serious that it deserves to be added to the GAO’s next “High-Risk List,” which is scheduled to be published in January. With light comes heat and with heat hopefully action to restore Americans’ faith in our federal institutions to deliver “to ourselves and our Posterity” for the next quarter millennium.

• David M. Walker is a former U.S. comptroller general and director of the Federal Fiscal Sustainability Foundation. Jeanne M. DiFrancesco is chairman and CEO of ProOrbis.