Toward a Political Economy of Government Waste: First Step, Definitions

Abstract

According to Vice President Al Gore's National Performance Review, latest blue-ribbon commission report on economy and efficiency in federal government, the average American believes we 48 cents of every tax dollar (Gore, 1993; 1). Not surprisingly, Rush Limbaugh's favorite source, Martin Gross, alleges that waste of enormous proportions is built into federal system, though most of it is expertly hidden; [it] is more prevalent than efficiency, more common than good works (Gross, 1992; 2). Even Osborne and Gaebler, authors of recent best-selling book on public administration, Reinventing Government, say that waste in government is staggering. Our governments are like fat people who must lose weight (Osborne and Gaebler, 1992; 23). Federal employees estimate that 25 to 50 percent of personnel in their offices are useless (p. 127). Washington Post editor Brian Kelly (1992) goes even further in his recent book, Adventures in Porkland: Why Washington Can't Stop Spending Your Money. He claims that 1992 budget contained $97 billion in pork-barrel projects that were entirely without merit and could be lopped out without harming in any way the welfare of nation. Government - and attacks on - are hardy perennials. Like weather, everyone complains about it, but no ever seems to do anything about it. There are good reasons why this is case. Government is persistent because there is a demand for it. Or, as Gramlich (1990; 226) puts it, one guy's pork is another guy's red meat. We have two objectives in this article: to explore concept and nature of government and to draw some tentative conclusions that will move us toward an understanding of its causes.(1) What Is Waste? In our survey of literature on government waste, we were surprised to find that few authors bother to define term. They offer plenty of examples, of course, but seem to assume that concept is well understood. That is almost certainly not case. Otherwise, foolish analysts would not insist that very idea of repudiates law of conservation of matter, which states that nothing in nature is ever wasted. (In fact, all organizational most natural processes produce in form of unwanted by-products, and some of these wastes are toxic.) Nor would usually wise analysts, such as Ellwood and Patashnik (1993; 22), blithely assert that waste, like beauty, is in eye of beholder. We found three notable efforts to define government waste. In a book devoted to now mantra-like trilogy of waste, fraud, and abuse, McKinney (1986; 5) defined as the unnecessary costs that result from inefficient or ineffective practices, systems, or controls. Recktenwald (1983; 52-53) identified six distinct kinds of government involving two kinds of welfare losses: costs unrequited by benefits (a situation he called Q-inefficiency) and excessive costs (X-inefficiency). In a similar vein, Baran (1959; 55) defined as difference between level of output of useful goods and services that would obtain if all productive factors were allocated to their best and highest uses under a rational social order and level that actually obtains.(2) Each of these definitions is helpful but also somewhat problematic. McKinney reminds us that is unnecessary - which is to say, avoidable - but fails to explain what he means by inefficient, ineffective, or even cost. Recktenwald emphasizes waste's protean nature and reminds us that its costs should be denominated in terms of opportunities forgone, but his categories of are neither mutually exclusive nor severally exhaustive. Baran adds that is gauged by gap between what we get of things we want and what we could get. However, Baran's counterfactual proposition is somewhat farfetched. It assumes an ideal state that can neither be achieved nor even approximated. …

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