Fiscal showdowns have become the new normal in Washington -- covered in the media like horse-race politics, with a breathless focus on who is winning, who is losing, and which side might go over the cliff in a game of budget chicken. But that coverage has largely ignored the bigger story: the degree to which budget brinkmanship has damaged governance itself across the widest range of policy areas.
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The showdowns, of course, are a reflection of America's deeply dysfunctional politics, but it's more than just the political system that is broken. The repeated bluster, hostage-taking, and eleventh- (or twelfth-) hour short-term deals -- often followed by more confrontation and threats -- have made it almost impossible for government managers to plan for the future, innovate, recruit, or do that most essential and fundamental responsibility required of appointed leaders -- execute policy.
The sequester, a set of across-the-board spending cuts due to go into effect on March 1, is the most immediate problem for managers; in many cases it will mean furloughs and serious disruption in services. Take, for example, the plight of the federal executives charged with managing the Department of Agriculture's meat and poultry inspection service. Last year, the department's roughly 10,000 inspectors took more than 9 million pounds of tainted meat and poultry off supermarket shelves and out of restaurants. Since personnel make up well over 90 percent of the service's budget, however, an 8 to 10 percent budget cut imposed by this year's sequester will mean furloughs for as many as 900 inspectors.
Fewer inspectors, even for a few weeks, will mean postponed inspections and, ultimately, less meat on the market. At the same time, it will likely result in more tainted meat and poultry on shelves and in menus -- meaning more outbreaks of E. coli, salmonella, and listeria (with fewer experts at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to help contain and manage them). It will also mean more pressure on the remaining inspectors to do more with less.
Perhaps more immediately alarming is that the sequester will have the same impact on Border Patrol agents, transportation security, embassy security, and myriad programs designed to ameliorate diseases in Africa and elsewhere.
But the sequester is just one of two short-term management migraines. The second is the real possibility that managers will have to navigate through a government shutdown for days, weeks, or even months beginning in late March -- or if the past is any guide, multiple shutdowns. Some agencies and bureaus will be shuttered, others scaled back to skeletal staffs, with little idea of how long the shutdown will last.
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