Bundling of Legislation Bills

¶ … Mindset

When it comes to government administration and due diligence, there are two things that need to be kept in mind. First, any overall program or agency to manage an issue is not just one bill or one cog in the machine but is rather a system of legislation bills, agencies and frameworks. Indeed, the Department of Homeland Security, for example, is technically a single agency but it has a lot of sub-agencies and all of those agencies require their own personnel, funding and frameworks to function. Whether it be a single part of the government or a bigger swath of it, a portfolio approach is necessary to address all of the needs and concerns involved. Further, there needs to be a focus on what brings the greatest amount of good because no portfolio, no matter how well-intentioned or funded, is going to address concerns and issues. While it would be great if a portfolio approach would solve all problems, it is still the best overall approach and it does the greatest amount of good at the same time.

Analysis

Government is one of those things where mismanagement and corruption can be issues. At the same time, there are always going to be detractors to what government does due to people "falling through the cracks" or the perception that the wrong priorities are being followed. Even so, there are generally some major things that can be agreed upon including economic growth, helping the poor and so forth. To fully address social problems and the needs of the populace, a portfolio approach is often the best way to proceed rather than doing a piecemeal approach. Indeed, if every little thing was done one at a time, it would take entirely too long and would be extremely inefficient. This is not to say that nothing is missed or glossed over when a wider and more exhaustive approach is taken. Even so, the latter is much more productive over the long haul than nitpicking every fine detail (Duggal, 2008).

A sterling example of a portfolio approach would be the stimulus bills that were passed in the wake of the Great Recession that started in late 2007 and early 2008. When President Obama took office in 2009, one of the very first things the United States government did was to put together a series of stimulus bills that were actually packages of smaller actions and efforts put together in a single passed act of legislation (MMM, 2009). A more general and common example would be the budget bills, either stopgap or annual, that are passed while Congress does its work. Those bills fund a litany of agencies and they are done as a collective group and for more than one reason. For example, there was just an agreement to fund the government for 2016 and the collection of agencies and efforts to be funded were treated like bargaining chips to get a collective deal. Republicans asserted what they wanted added or removed and Democrats did the same. The final result was a revised set of funding and directive summaries that were negotiated to garner enough support to gain passage. If there is one major downside to this process is that the funding and so forth relies less on evidence-based practice and utility and more on party politics and pandering at times. Even so, the more important things are usually taken care of because it would be a black eye to both parties if that was not achieved. Just one example would be funding for 9/11 first responders (Benen, 2016).