Word: califano
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...readily admits. But they were easy to pass in those days because there was much more optimism, not to say naivete, about solving the nation's problems, and a booming economy made the money available. "In the 1960s," says Califano, "all these social programs didn't seem to cost the American people anything because they were all making more real income. Today, when we increase our investment in one group of people, we are taking it away from some other group...
When he first took over, Califano claims, "HEW was in a state of absolute organizational disarray." He cites the report by HEW'S inspector general that the department wastes $6 billion annually. To try to straighten out the programs and cut down the waste, Califano set up a watchdog bureau similar to the President's Office of Management and Budget. The office has department-wide oversight of budgeting, planning, procurement, and reorganization. Though HEW deals with human beings and not hardware, Califano wants to quantify program goals as much as possible. He has set up targets for reducing waste...
...Califano is famed for his inexhaustible drive, and something about him is always moving: if not his mind, then his feet or his fingers. He is used to taking command, to shoving decisions through, to getting things done. He has a habit of scrambling the chain of command?and confounding and angering the bureaucrats?by pumping information out of the person most directly involved in a program, whatever his rank...
...zeal, as he is the first to acknowledge, Califano is only a partial boss of his own house. Sometimes he talks as if he too were just another private citizen gazing in amazement at a bureaucracy nobody can quite fathom, much less control. Authority is so splintered that HEW seems to be run by nobody and yet run by everybody. And everybody wants something from...
...Says Califano: "I think we have reached the point where the greatest builder of bureaucracy in the world today is the U.S. Congress. And Congress is doing it because it wants to help the narrow-interest groups that feel they could not otherwise be protected...