OPINION:
A friend of mine — let’s call him Dave — has been with the federal government for about 30 years and manages the permitting section of a relatively large independent regulatory agency. He has about five dozen employees, many of them engineers. At the moment, Dave is taking incoming fire from various directions.
His immediate concern is that the mandated return to office, scheduled for April 7, will result in several staff departures. That poses a bit of a problem, in large measure, because it usually takes about a year and a half to train new employees.
Dave is also concerned about all the other ways people are discouraged from working for the federal government, especially in Washington because the pay is too low to recruit the necessary talent. There is now the ever-present risk of being fired (and the potential confusion of being rehired). There is the silliness of having to report on one’s activities weekly. Eventually, current and potential employees, particularly in the current employment market, take the hint and move to greener pastures.
Why should we care about all that? Suppose Dave works for an agency that permits natural gas pipelines. No matter what you think about the world, we will need lots more electricity to meet the demand from data centers. Those centers will ensure we win the artificial intelligence race and take and hold the commanding economic and national security heights for the next two or three generations.
If Dave doesn’t have enough competent employees, we won’t be able to permit pipelines in a timely fashion. That means our ability to move natural gas to where it can be burned to generate electricity will be compromised. Consequently, our chances of winning the artificial intelligence battle will be reduced. That might be OK for some who are heavily invested in the slaving, genocidal regime in China, but it is not likely to be viewed as acceptable by most Americans.
Surely, President Trump can use the national energy emergency to grant pipelines whatever permits they need? Maybe, maybe not. The simple reality is that no one is likely to build pipelines under such conditions, not least because such pipelines will, of course, become targets for litigation and, eventually, targets of the very next Democratic presidential administration.
No company wants to take that risk, especially when its investments, such as natural gas pipelines, take decades to turn profits.
This same story could be told about finance, medicine, commodities, aviation, nuclear safety, etc. Some of the actions being taken now will eventually compromise the ability of these agencies to do their jobs. In some instances, that won’t matter much. In some instances, though, it will matter a great deal.
Moving fast and breaking things works only if you can successfully and quickly put them back together. Unfortunately, in the federal government, where what people can be paid is constricted and where laws and regulations set the tempo of work, it is a challenge to put things back together at all, let alone swiftly.
By the time the damage becomes obvious, those who moved fast and broke things without understanding what they broke will have moved on to their next grift, leaving the rest of us — and folks like my friend Dave — to clean up the mess.
So, next time you read a story about an agency that is broken, think about how long it might take to fix it and who will be there to fix it. Because quietly competent bureaucrats like Dave, having reached their breaking points, will likely be long gone.
• Michael McKenna is a contributing editor at The Washington Times.
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