What does the term red tape mean, and how does …



What does the term red tape mean, and how does it relate to the federal bureaucracy?

“Red Tape” originated far before the United States Congress. For hundreds of years, all papal proclamations – orders that had to be followed -- were bound in red tape. It continued in England and was carried to the United States. The first major discussion of it here was that all Civil War Veterans had their records bound in red tape and it was difficult to get access to them.

It is considered, in the modern federal bureaucracy, to mean something where you need to follow the rules fastidiously in order to get something accomplished. Many public and private organizations – especially those providing grants – tend to make the rules very specific and if you miss even one thing, you will not be granted the money to use. Many small towns that do not have someone with a lot of experience applying for such money lose out to the federal government and other groups that offer funds for specific projects.

Red tape can also be used as a catch-all phrase for those situations where you need to complete multiple forms for the same thing, or have to get approvals from multiple committees, or anything else that can tie up and constrict your efforts to move ahead with your projects or plans.

To what extent is Congress to blame for bureaucratic red tape?

All government seems to be tied to having red tape. There is something about the structure that makes setting rules, some of which are redundant, without looking back to see if they are duplicating efforts, tens to occur. Especially in a situation like the U.S. Congress, where the House and the Senate, supposedly working together but often looking at the same results and drawing two different conclusions, often set up their own processes to make sure things are approved correctly.

Red tape has become a formalized system within the system, and it seems to follow a basic law called: RULE DENSITY. If there are not enough rules governing something, red tape will flourish and grow to do the regulation for the government. This is usually done by developing a bureaucracy, a group of federal employees who, it is implied, are required to do nothing more than “push papers around” to justify their work and payroll.

Many disparage these bureaucrats and their seeming desire to have someone else approve the piece of paper you need to get your process completed, but to many these are also the “memory” of the government, the people who continue to work from administration to administration and who always are able to tell you what happened in the past and what its results were.

What are some of the benefits of the federal bureaucracy?

Those paper pushers just described are a very important part of the government. This bureaucracy can prevent things from being enacted that will cause the government problems. They can also be the whistle-blowers, the ones who realize something is wrong and who can protest and try to get it changed. These are the people who make the daily functions of government work, and they are the ones that every politician likes to demonize when they are trying to talk about streamlining government. (What, you thought that congressperson was talking about eliminating HIS staff?) Recently, however, they have been able to do several things – blow the whistle on the Clinton sex scandal, realize that Iraq may not have nuclear material for weapons, find out that private lenders were ripping off the government when they processed student loans, and more.

And in fact, it was the loss of some of these bureaucrats in an early retirement scheme that caused some of the missteps in international policy in the Clinton administration. One man referred to them as the “Blue-haired sneaker wearing memory of the government” as he complained that no one was available any longer who even knew what he was supposed to be doing.

What are some of the drawbacks to the current bureaucratic system?

One is just as described – these people who do the work of government, are the mainstay of the business of government – are unable to pass their years of experience on when they leave their positions, and the replacements are literally learning from scratch how to do jobs that allowed government to work like a … well, not well-oiled but at least slightly greased… machine before they left. In addition, these are people who do need to be paid, and government needs to be smaller to be able to work more quickly and react faster to situations as they arise. A large, unwieldy bureaucracy tends to slow the processes of government down, sometimes so much that something you apply for today is no longer available by the time it is approved.

Government has always needed some bureaucrats; they are a necessary part of the government process. Even Cicero had a bad opinion of bureaucrats, calling them, “petty, dull, almost witless…a holder of little authority in which he delights….” So, as long as modern types of government have existed, so have bureaucrats, doing the little bits and pieces of work that make them important.

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