Wednesday, July 13, 2022

Should I Apologize?

 Reading comments in the FSA Employees Group in Facebook. One noted the proliferation of programs, arguing that Congress should restrain itself.  

One of the things I tried to do during my time on the program side was to make things more efficient, particularly on the software side.  I also got involved in crash efforts when Congress or the administration came up with new programs (1983 payment-in-kind and 1986 disaster I remember particularly). I think I was reasonably successful, so why might I need to apologize?

Isn't there a parable of the  beast of burden which is always able to handle the loads which it's given, until one day the master adds the last straw? (Can't find it in wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Straw_that_broke_the_camel%27s_back, but it seems as if there should be one.)

My point: I was just part of a long tradition in AAA/ASCS/FSA of employees taking pride in implementing programs quickly, which created a reputation among policy makers, which led to more and more programs. 

To some extent this is democratic policy making--IRS, SBA, etc. had similar problems in responding to the economic impact of the pandemic. 

But the reality is if we had been screwing up programs in the 1980s and 90s, the employees today won't be overloaded. 

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