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By Mark Trahant
News From Indian Country 11-09
M ore than twenty years ago the BBC captured the essence of bureaucracy in a sitcom called, “Yes, Minister.” The basic plot was the Minister for Administrative Affairs, Jim Hacker, would come up with an idea – sometimes wonderful, sometimes odd – only to have its implementation sidetracked by civil servants.
Hacker’s nemesis, Sir Humphrey Appleby, once described his task as
“the traditional allocation of executive responsibilities has always
been so determined as to liberate the ministerial incumbent from the
administrative minutiae by devolving the managerial functions to those
whose experience and qualifications have better formed them for the
performance of such humble offices, thereby releasing their political
overlords for the more onerous duties and profound deliberations which
are the inevitable concomitant of their exalted position.”
Of course bureaucracy in the United States is different. Our civil
servants have far less power than they do in the United Kingdom. Then
again, I remember a long-time Washington bureaucrat who once told me,
“I’ve seen ‘em come, I’ve seen ‘em go.”
Every president is challenged by the nature of bureaucracy, and the
agency that best reflects that power is the Office of Management and
Budget. OMB is where many good ideas all but disappear from public
discourse. The agency is a budget traffic cop, saying “no” to any
agency request that it thinks cost too much.
These days the Nixon administration gets much credit for the
president’s July 1970 Indian affairs message that called for a sharp
break with the past. “This policy of forced termination is wrong, in my
judgment,” the president said. “We have turned from the question of
whether the Federal government has a responsibility to Indians to the
question of how that responsibility can best be furthered.”
But Nixon’s words were not all that different from President
Johnson’s message to Congress in 1968. LBJ also said it was time to end
“the old debate” about ‘termination and he stressed self-determination.
But the president’s words fell flat because there wasn’t support in
Congress or the bureaucracy for such substantive change.
This is
the context for President Barack Obama’s meeting with tribal leaders
Nov. 5. “I know that you may be skeptical that this time will be any
different,” the president said. “You have every right to be and nobody
would have blamed you if you didn't come today. But you did. And I
know what an extraordinary leap of faith that is on your part.”
And
that leap of faith was matched immediately with the sort of action that
doesn’t draw headlines. The president picked the OMB as the key agency
to implement the government’s new policy. “I hereby direct each
agency head to submit to the Director of the Office of Management and
Budget (OMB), within 90 days after the date of this memorandum, a
detailed plan of actions the agency will take to implement the policies
and directives of Executive Order 13175.”
OMG the OMB! (That’s “oh my god!” for those who aren’t receiving texts from a teenager with a cell phone.)
This
is the same agency that urged President Ford to veto S. 522, the Indian
Health Care Improvement Act, in 1976 because “substantial” funds had
already been spent on Indian Health. “We believe S. 522 is a
particularly egregious example of unnecessary legislation that will
result in high unrealistic expectations among the very group it is
intended to help.”
I like the idea of unrealistic high
expectations. Now that the order is published in the Federal Register
we should expect a real consultation process with agencies ranging from
the office of U.S. Trade Representative to the Internal Revenue
Service. Consider this process mechanism: Because the OMB is
responsible for this policy, the spending for tribal consultation by
every government agency already has a green light.
On top of
that, the task ahead will be easier because so many cabinet-level
officers were at the meeting with tribes at the Interior Department.
They already know, and get, why consultation is a big deal.
President
Obama’s directive doesn’t guarantee success. But it is a significant
step because it incorporates the bureaucracy itself into the way ahead.
This may not make sitcom fodder, but it’s important because bureaucrats make much better partners than opponents.
Mark
Trahant is a Kaiser Media Fellow examining the Indian Health Service
and its relevance to the national health care reform debate. He is a
member of Idaho’s Shoshone-Bannock Tribes. Comment at
www.marktrahant.com
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