By Dan Calabrese ——Bio and Archives--June 18, 2013
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The Declaration of Independence vested all sovereign power in the people alone, while the Constitution established a government to manage that power in a republican fashion. While the people still swear fealty to the founding ideals, they have not put much thought recently into the problems the Founders tackled. As society has become more complex, the government has, too; Americans have not reexamined the structure of government, in an age in which it accounts for more than 20 percent of the national economy, to ensure it still reflects the republican spirit. In fact, there has not been a serious public discussion about the organization of the bureaucracy since the 1880s, even as it has doubled in size many times over. And so today, it is a vast enterprise of millions of workers, with precious little oversight from the people’s elected representatives.
It’s no wonder that some agency somewhere in the bureaucracy could have worked so perniciously for so long against the people’s interests. Perhaps the only surprise is that we ever noticed the malfeasance at the IRS at all. Were it not for the over-the-top questioning from the IRS—asking one group to pledge not to protest abortion clinics, another to reveal what books their members were reading, another to say what they’re praying about—all this might still be hidden in the shadows, unbeknownst to an overburdened Congress and an incurious media. And it remains to be seen what will be done about it, whether the bureaucracy, now under attack, has the resources and wherewithal to block oversight and prevent reform.If there is a battle between the people and the bureaucracy to see who will maintain power, the bureaucracy has a huge advantage because it knows the inside picture, knows where the bodies are buried and knows how to lay hold of the public's resources. Elected officials are theoretically responsive to the voters, but the truth is they know the bureaucracy can make more trouble for them on any given day than some constituent. The IRS is far from the only bad actor here. We've all heard stories of the excesses at the EPA, and the truth is few really know what goes on in a broad sense within every little agency of the federal government. Even Obama's defenders - in a strange manner of defending him - acknowledge that the government is too big for anyone to really keep tabs on what it's doing. Congress could pass reforms that would make the bureaucracy more accountable, which would most certainly mean it would have to be smaller, but if Congress tries, you know the greatest resistance will come from the bureaucracy itself and its champions in Congress. This is a fight that needs to be waged at some point. I'm not sure how to fight it, and I don't see anyone willing to lead it. But someone needs to.
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