Bush Unaware Of Port Sale

A lot of bloggers on the left have been commenting on the report that Bush was unaware of the port sale before it was approved.

Honestly, it makes me think of something Dennis Miller once said.

Blaming the President when something goes wrong is like blaming Ronald McDonald when you get a bad cheeseburger.”

That’s the unfortunate reality, but it’s true. Our government has become so bloated and runs on auto-pilot to such an extent that most people could never really grasp it. Consider this:

As of September, there were 2.7 million civilians employed by the US government.

There are an additional 1.4 million Armed Forces personnel.

That’s a total of 4.1 million government employees.

The budget of the US Government is nearly 2.6 trillion dollars.

Now consider this. A friend who used to work for National Geographic once told me he participated in a study on group size. They were tasked with determining the ideal size for an organization (the point at which returns on efficiency begin to drop off as a result of size). They concluded that 43 people was the ideal size – anything more than that and efficiency suffered.

To expect efficiency, or even knowledge about every contract for an entity that employs 4.1 million people, has an operating budget of 2.6 trillion, and maintains a diversity of operations that is unequaled by any industry is foolish.

To expect one man, or even the two dozen or so cabinet secretaries, and their immediate combined staff, to know about every single contract being executed within government is just not realistic. I don’t think Paul Allen could tell you the details of every contract in process at Microsoft, and the US bureaucracy is far more bloated.

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