A Fighting Chance

From the day I arrived at Treasury, I was amazed by how many résumés were pouring in. First dozens then hundreds of them, so many that we lost count. Freshly minted college grads and experienced lawyers. Consumer advocates and military veterans. Bankers and bank protesters. We even had a cowboy apply. I was overwhelmed, and I felt just a bit of awe. Who knew that so many people were so eager to work for the government?

Government service had once been a proud profession. The jobs were widely respected. True, not all government service conjured up the heroism of working as a firefighter or a teacher. But I think positions in government were seen as requiring a little more dedication and loyalty than ordinary jobs. “Public service” evoked images of people with integrity, and the “service” part meant something real.

But over the past generation or two, many Americans had come to believe that government service was synonymous with bureaucracy and complacency. Ronald Reagan’s famous line—“The nine most terrifying words in the English language are: ‘I’m from the government and I’m here to help’”—had inflicted an injury, all the more painful because it came from the president of the United States. Every dismissive comment (“Well, what do you expect—it’s the government”) had left a small cut.

As I got to know more people in government service, it seemed to me that those complaints were pretty unfair. I met many, many dedicated people who obviously cared about doing a good job, people who had turned down higher-paying jobs in the private sector, people who spoke with pride about helping others. Even so, the bad rap persists. Just ask a bunch of the brightest college kids: “How many of you dream of working for the federal government someday?” Not enough hands go up.

I hoped that the new agency might have a chance to prove the cynics wrong. Sure, government fails sometimes. (By the way, corporations fail sometimes, too.) But I don’t believe that the response to government failure—such as the inept response to Hurricane Katrina or the slew of failures that led to the financial crisis—should be a snarky “I told you so” or a heavy sigh of resignation. No: the response should be outrage. The government—our government—should be held to a higher standard.

Let’s be honest: America is facing some really, really big challenges. Climate change, educating kids for the jobs of the future, taking care of an aging population—the list is long and daunting. And let’s also admit that our government isn’t perfect, and it can’t solve everything. But we’re going to need a well-functioning government if we’re to have a prayer of tackling these very complex problems.

America has faced difficult problems before—and we’ve solved them together. We passed laws to get children out of factories. We set up a system that allowed aging workers to retire with dignity. We built schools so that every child would have a chance for a better life, and we created a network of highway and mass transit systems so people could get to work. We built an astonishingly tough military, superb police forces, and squadrons of first-class professional firefighters.

No, the market didn’t build those things: Americans built them. Working through our government, we built them together. And as a consequence, we are all better off.

We can’t bury our heads in the sand and pretend that if “big government” disappears, so will society’s toughest problems. That’s just magical thinking—and it’s also dangerous thinking. Our problems are getting bigger by the day, and we need to develop some hardheaded, realistic responses. Instead of trying to starve government or drown it in the bathtub, we need to tackle our problems head-on, and that will require better government.

As I started setting up the agency, America was still in the depths of the Great Recession, and a lot of people needed jobs. But as I began to interview people, I realized that many of the candidates saw the consumer agency as a small beacon of hope, a sign that Americans really can work together to make things better. For many, this was more than just a job. Coming to work for the agency would give people a chance to make a difference.

I began to see that we had a real opportunity to put together a team of passionate, tough-minded people who had a fresh vision for how to change things. Maybe, just maybe, this agency could serve as yet another counterpoint to the familiar complaint that the government can’t do anything right.

Don’t Believe in Government