Commentary: Headcounts should never count

Branded by Gov. George W. Bush as the candidate of big government, Vice President Al Gore responded last week by pledging not to add even "one new position" to the federal workforce as President. The pledge is not only unwise, but will be impossible to keep.

The problems start with using employment as a measure of government's size. Unlike the federal budget, which can be adjusted for inflation or expressed as a percentage of Gross Domestic Product, federal employment is always expressed in absolute numbers. Had Gore promised not to add even one new position per 1,000 Americans, thereby allowing government to grow with the U.S. population, he would have been laughed out of the campaign. Yet, that would have been a perfectly responsible approach to take.

The number of federal employees can also be manipulated to look bigger or smaller at will. Gore proved the point by including contractors in his "no new employees" pledge, simultaneously adding 5.6 million "off budget" workers to the 1.8 million civil servants already on the federal payroll, while undermining President Clinton's longstanding claim about the end to the era of big government.

The federal government's new 7.4 million workforce may be 800,000 employees smaller than it was when Clinton took office, but it still looks four times bigger than it did a little more than a week ago.

Intentionally or not, Gore also obliterated his own claim about reducing the federal workforce to its smallest size since 1960. The claim was true only if Gore focused solely on civil service employment, only if he included the Defense Department in the totals, and only if he could somehow argue that reinventing government was responsible for the end of the Cold War. Subtract DoD from his calculations, and the rest of the civil service workforce grew by almost 500,000 from 1960 to the present.

Add in contractors, and Gore's pledge is even more far-fetched. Measured in inflation-adjusted expenditures, federal purchases of goods and services grew from roughly $250 billion in 1960 to $411 billion last year. Subtract Defense again, and the figures grew from just $31 billion to $142 billion last year. Although much of that growth occurred at NASA, which grew from just 3,500 contractors in 1960 to 423,000 in 1999, virtually every department and agency of government added contractors over the past four decades.

The real problem with Gore's "no new employees" pledge, however, is that he just might have to live with it. First, Gore has already made a long list of labor-intensive promises that would require new federal employees to keep. His prescription drug program would require at least some growth at the Health Care Financing Administration, while his defense buildup would add thousands of contractors to the workforce. Under Gore's promise, those would have to be offset by cuts elsewhere in government, including agencies hollowed out by eight years of downsizing.

Second, Gore's pledge would weaken efforts to recruit the next generation of federal employees. Much as Gore deserves credit for acknowledging that the federal government even has a contract workforce, his pledge would pit civil servants and contractors in a death-match for jobs that can only make federal service even less attractive than it currently is. That is no way to fight and win a talent war.

Gore hardly helped matters with an uncharacteristic blast of bureaucrat-bashing in making his pledge. Asked why voters should believe him, Gore explained that he had been in charge of reinventing government for eight years and knows "where the rats in the barn are." And federal employees thought that the only rats in the 2000 campaign were in Bush's early Medicare commercials.

Third, Gore's pledge would likely encourage federal agencies to use other shadows for adding employees. Gore's pledge did not cover jobs created under federal grants, which accounted for an estimated 2.5 million jobs in 1999, or mandates to state and local government, which accounted for an estimated 4.6 million jobs in 1996. Forced to manage ever-growing missions with a shrinking workforce, federal departments and agencies will do what they have done since time immemorial: shift the jobs to off-budget accounts.

Gore is not alone in promoting the illusion of smaller government. Even as he excoriates Gore as a big government liberal, Bush is making his own promises that will require new employees to keep. His agenda would require a new state and local mandate for student testing, while his Social Security retirement accounts would require some augmentation of the Social Security Administration workforce.

The reality is that the federal government needs a big workforce precisely because it has a big mission. Whether the employees are carried on budget in the civil service and contract workforce, or off budget in the grantee and mandate workforce, someone has to honor the promises that government makes. That's why promises to limit federal employment are so often followed by increases in the shadow workforce, and are best not made in the first place.