There’s a reason most Americans think the line “We’re from the government, and we’re here to help you” is funny. It’s because we’ve all experienced the run-around at some governmental agency, where we’ve been told to move from one line to another for inexplicable reasons or we’ve been unable to get a simple answer to a simple question.
The point is well made by a story about President Obama’s recent response to a farmer’s question at a town hall meeting in Illinois. The farmer asked about some impending regulations about dust, runoff, and noise that he had heard about, and the President — after gently encouraging the farmer to not believe everything he heard — confidently told the farmer to “Call USDA” because they would be able to answer his questions.
An enterprising reporter took the President’s advice. The resulting story is a classic example of governmental run-around that catalogs every call the reporter made and every non-responsive response the reporter received. Through nine phones calls over two days, the reporter is bounced from the USDA to the Illinois Department of Agriculture to the Illinois Farm Bureau, back to the Illinois Department of Agriculture and then to various departments within that agency. Everyone steers the reporter to someone else.
The reporter ends up at the media relations department at USDA headquarters in Washington, where he receives a statement that is a classic of both bureaucratic mumbo-jumbo and the CYA mentality found in many governmental entities: “Secretary Vilsack continues to work closely with members of the Cabinet to help them engage with the agricultural community to ensure that we are separating fact from fiction on regulations because the administration is committed to providing greater certainty for farmers and ranchers. Because the question that was posed did not fall within USDA jurisdiction, it does not provide a fair representation of USDA’s robust efforts to get the right information to our producers throughout the country.”
This story is all-too-familiar to anyone who has had to wrestle with governmental bureaucracies. It’s one reason why many people take no comfort in confident statements that more governmental programs and more regulations will solve our problems. And, it leaves the ultimate issue open: Who’s going to answer the poor farmer’s question?
Webner House 