Bring Back the Bureaucrats

Why More Federal Workers Will Lead to Better (and Smaller!) Government (New Threats to Freedom)

By: John DiIulio Jr.

Narrated by: Joel Richards

Length: 3 hrs and 33 mins

Publisher's summary

In Bring Back the Bureaucrats, John J. DiIulio, Jr., one of America's most respected political scientists and an adviser to presidents in both parties, summons the facts and statistics to show us how America's big government actually works and why reforms that include adding a million more people to the federal workforce by 2035 might actually help to slow government's growth while improving its performance.

Bring Back the Bureaucrats tells us what our elected leaders won't: There simply are not enough federal workers to do work that's critical to our democracy. The lack of enough competent, well-trained federal civil servants figured in the failed federal response to Hurricane Katrina and in the troubled launch of the Obamacare health exchanges. Bring Back the Bureaucrats is further distinguished by the presence of E. J. Dionne, Jr. and Charles Murray, two of the most astute voices from the political left and right.

The book is published by Templeton Press.

©2014 John J. DiIulio, Jr. (P)2016 Redwood Audiobooks

Critic reviews

"A brisk, lively polemic that surprisingly calls, on conservative grounds, for an enormous increase in the federal civil service.... " ( American Prospect)

"An eye-opening account of the hollowing out of American government. DiIulio, an expert on public administration at the University of Pennsylvania, points out that the US has fewer full-time federal officials than it did in 1960, while the amount of money they dispense has increased fivefold. In their place is a legion of for-profit contractors and non-profit NGOs with highly mixed motives, about which we know very little." ( Financial Times)

"A reproof to everyone who hates government or loves government without understanding what it does - which covers most of the American ideological spectrum." ( Washington Post)

challenges your preconceptions

the author opens up the federal government in a way that exposes how truly large it is, how truly inept it is, and yet how it could be better if we had more overt federal employees (instead of the proxy contract employees that currently run the system). The author demonstrates how more (federal employees) can truly result in less (overall spending and overall federal government size). He also starkly compares the per capita ratio of federal government employees in the 1960s to now, to show just how much smaller our federal bureaucracy has become all while federal spending has ballooned.

Very Insightful.

Easy to follow and understand. I read this for a class and it really taught me a lot and highlighted aspects of our current state of government that I was not privy to. A lot of data is used to substantiate the literature which I enjoyed.