Barack Obama to ask Congress for powers to shrink US government

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/jan/13/barack-obama-congress-powers-shrink-government

President Barack Obama will ask Congress on Friday for greater power to shrink the federal government, and his first idea is merging six sprawling trade and commerce agencies, a senior administration official told the Associated Press.

In an election year and a political atmosphere of tighter spending, Obama's motivation is about improving a giant bureaucracy – but that's hardly all of it.
To voters sick of dysfunction, Obama wants to show some action on making Washington work better. Politically, his plan would allow him to do so by putting the onus on Congress and in particular his Republican critics in the House and Senate, to show why they would be against the pursuit of a leaner government.

Obama will call on Congress to give him a type of reorganisational power last held by a president when Ronald Reagan was in office. The Obama version would be a so-called consolidation authority allowing him to propose mergers that promise to save money and help consumers. The deal would entitle him to an up-or-down vote from Congress in 90 days.

Obama has an imperative to deliver. He made a promise to come up with a smart reorganization of the government in his last state of the union speech. That was nearly a year ago.

Not in decades has the government undergone a sustained reorganisation of itself. Presidents have tried from time to time, but each part of the bureaucracy has its own defenders inside and outside the government, which can make merger ideas politically impossible. That's particularly true because "efficiency" is often another way of saying people will lose their jobs.

The official said 1,000 to 2,000 jobs would be cut, but the administration would do so through attrition; that is, as people routinely leave their jobs over time.

The administration said the merger would save $3 billion over 10 years by getting rid of duplicative overhead costs, human resources divisions and programmes.

The administration official presented Obama as the CEO of an operation who should have more power to influence how it is designed. According to the White House, presidents held such a reorganizational authority for about 50 years until it ran out during Reagan's presidency in 1984.