The Warren Commission report on JFK's assassination, the 9/11 report and the senate report on CIA torture are examples of this. The best way to control what a bureaucracy is able to do is through the appropriations process. Congress has to set aside operating funds for most agencies and one of the best ways to get an agency to do less is by giving them less money to do things, or at least threatening to do so.

Of course the absolute best way to get an agency to do less of whatever it does is by limiting its growth, or in some cases getting rid of it altogether. Limiting its growth is sometimes called taming the bureaucracy but that makes it sound like some kind of wild animal and I don't know about you but wild animals are not the first thing that comes to mind when I think about IRS agents. Well, I mean, being attacked by a bear and being audited are similar, but let's go to the Thought Bubble. 

Of all the ways to limit the growth of bureaucracies, the absolute best is to get rid of the agencies completely. This is called termination and despite the calls of politicians to get rid of executive departments, it almost never happens. This is for two reasons. One is that bureaucracies create constituencies for themselves and they can often lobby persuasively for the continuation of the agency. 

More to the point, lots of agencies are useful and getting rid of them would mean that some important functions might not get done. Like who would oversee America's failing schools without the Department of Education.

More common than termination is deregulation which is when congress limits the number of regulations that an agency is allowed to enforce. Often the thought behind this is that market forces will step in and keep whatever the agency had been regulating under control. But often it doesn't work out as we, or congress, might expect. 

In the 1970s, congress deregulated the airline industry, and one result has been much cheaper airfares although it doesn't seem like it. Another result has been fewer airlines and greatly improves service. We can all agree that no one has ever had any bad service ever on an airline. 

The point of deregulation is that it's supposed to lower costs, but this isn't always the case especially when you figure in externalities which are the social costs of an activity that are not paid for by the industry. The best example of an externality is pollution but we'll talk more about that later. 

Another way of shrinking bureaucracies that has become popular since Nixon and new federalism is devolution. Devolution is when congress shifts, or devolves, the task, or burden, of regulation from a federal agency to states and local municipalities. Devolution is a bit of a bait-and-switch because while it may shrink the federal bureaucracy, the total level of bureaucratic function remains the same. Unless congress cuts funding along with the devolution, creating an unfunded mandate. Thanks Thought Bubble!

So, congress has attempted to scale back bureaucracy by privatization. This means turning over bureaucratic functions to private entities, usually corporations. What happened to my jacket? President George W. Bush proposed doing this to social security, essentially allowing individuals to invest their retirement funds with private companies. But this proposal went nowhere, mainly because it seemed risky and looked like a giveaway to banks, which may be even less popular than bureaucracies or congress. 

Another example has been handing out some of the jobs that had previously been done by the army to private military contractors. Privatization looks great politically to some and it gives the appearance of shrinking the size of the bureaucracy because employees are off the government's books. But they still have to be paid, so whether privatization actually works is debatable. 

In the long term it may be less costly because many federal employees receive deferred compensation in the form of pensions, but in the short run in can cost a lot more for a private company to drive a truck in a war zone than for an army to do it. So if you wanna limit the power of bureaucracies, those are some of the ways to do it. But before you get too excited about cutting government down to size, there are a few things to remember. 

First, bureaucracies are huge and they do a ton of things. Bureaucracies have grown since the new deal and they don't show much sign of slowing down. I blame the eagle. Stop it! Even under Republican presidents like George W. Bush, bureaucracies have grown and along with them, government spending. In fact President Bush even added a cabinet agency, the Department of Homeland Security. 

Second, once created, bureaucracies create political constituencies by making themselves necessary to people. Ugh, people. So annoying. It's so much easier without people! The idea of getting rid of social security just to limit social security is scary to a lot of people who rely on social security. I said social security a lot. 

The thing to remember here is that no matter what we think of them, bureaucracies are political entities and subject to political pressure despite efforts to keep them out of politics. But in case you haven't noticed, you can't really separate politics and government. But we'll talk about politics in another episode.

Thanks for watching, I'll see you next time. 

Crash Course Government and Politics is produced in association with PBS Digital Studios. Support for Crash Course Government comes from Voqal. Voqal supports non-profits that use technology and media to advance social equity. Learn more about their mission and initiatives at voqal.org. Crash Course was made with the help of these private contractors. Thanks for watching.