John J. DiIulio Jr.: Big Government, Then and Now

Conversations with Bill Kristol

News, Society & Culture, Government, Politics

4.7 • 1.7K Ratings

🗓️ 1 July 2019

⏱️ 84 minutes

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Summary

Surveys tell us that Americans are increasingly dissatisfied with government institutions—from Congress and federal agencies to state and local governments. Given our aversion to taxes and bureaucracy, why do we demand the government do so much? And what can be done to improve the quality of our government's performance? In this provocative Conversation, University of Pennsylvania political scientist John J. Dilulio, Jr. argues that America does not have enough government workers to accomplish the tasks we demand of our government. Dilulio points to the paradox that we have not witnessed any increase in the federal workforce since the mid-1960s, while government spending has exploded since that time. Instead, the federal government has increasingly outsourced work to for-profit contractors, state and local employees who are de-facto federal workers, as well as non-profit workers. Making matters worse, we do not give the federal workers the discretion and oversight necessary to achieve good results. This “government by proxy,” according to Dilulio, is plagued by a lack of accountability, out-of-control spending, and poor outcomes. This is a must-listen podcast for anyone interested in the inner workings of American government.

Transcript

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0:00.0	And the Welcome to Conversations, I'm Bill Crystal. I'm joined today by my good friend John
0:19.7	D'Eulio, distinguished political scientist, first at Princeton and then at Penn,
0:24.6	after getting your PhD at Harvard with James Q Wilson and ending up being a great
0:29.9	collaborator of his on that great American government textbook that he began and you're
0:33.7	still are you now the I'm still hanging on you hang on this is still the most
0:37.3	popular textbook in well I think it should be yeah totally deserves to be the
0:42.0	most popular American politics
0:43.7	textbook.
0:44.2	Johns, I'll just give the title.
0:45.3	It's the Frederick Fox Leadership Professor of Politics
0:48.2	at Penn and the founding director of the Partnership
0:50.7	for Effective Public Administration and leadership at Penn and great teacher and a great political scientist and so there's so many things I could ask you about today and I'd like to pick your brain on but maybe you brought this little book that you wrote four or five years ago.
1:05.0	I remember when you sent this to me, bring back the bureaucrats.
1:09.0	Really? Really?
1:10.0	So let's begin with that provocative thing, because I think one of the great things about your work is it's been so reality-based, if I can put it that way.
1:16.0	You know, you're good at occasionally disabusing people like me of our dreams of transforming things, or you have a good understanding a very good
1:25.0	understanding of how the government works so why do we need more bureaucrats
1:28.0	what's what's okay well first of all I apologize for my voice being a
1:32.0	little horse.
1:33.0	But, so let me put it this way.
1:36.8	If you go back to 1965, okay, and roll the camera forward to the present, We've had about five or six times growth, real, inflation
1:47.3	adjusted in the amount of government spending, federal spending, national spending. We've
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