75-09-A3
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Italian Bureaucracy and the U.S. Treasury[edit]
Transcript[edit]What do Italy's bureaucracy and the Treasurer of the United States have in common? I'll be right back. On an earlier broadcast you may have heard me say that if we in the United States doubled our troubles we'd still be better off than most any other country in the world. It's probably true even when it comes to the bureaucracy, though i've given some examples of mind-boggling bureaucratic inefficiency here in the United States, the world's championship apparently rests with Italy, but the Italians are working hard to lose it. For generations, Italy has been adding bureaus on top of bureaus on top of bureaus there are now nearly 60,000 separate government agencies, each with its own head man, one for every 900 Italian citizens. Jurisdictions overlap, civil service jobs are treated as lifelong senate cures, and once an agency is created it seems to go on forever despite the end of its usefulness. The welfare agency for the veterans of the Garibaldi campaigns is still in operation despite the fact that the last campaign ended 115 years ago. There's also the Commission to aid the victims of the eruption of Mount Vesuvius, the Assistance Board of Midwives and the agency to administer relief funds from the United States after World War II, which still has 30 employees in 10 rooms of a Roman palace even though relief stopped years ago. Finally after seven years working on it the Italian parliament has passed a law designed to prune some of the dead wood and, it hopes, bring new efficiency to the remaining agencies. The law provides that a new commission will, over the next three years, mark for extinction those agencies which are no longer needed such as some of the ones I've mentioned. But we have in the United States at least one federal office that is about as superfluous as some of those Italian government bureaus. It's the Office of the Treasurer of the United States. As you probably know, the Treasurer is the person whose signature appears on all our currency. Traditionally for the last two decades or so the treasurer has been a woman. That signature on the dollar bills by the way is itself only a tradition it is not required by law. Until a year ago, the Treasurer of the United States did have something other than this ceremonial function. The office had the responsibility of keeping track of the federal checking account but Congress has now shifted that duty to the new Bureau of Government Financial Operations. What does the treasurer do now? Her days are spent giving speeches in support of savings bonds and, according to a recent newspaper report, to communicate the programs and policies of the administration. As for signing her name, when the current occupant, Mrs. Francine Neff, came aboard she provided some samples of her signature to the Bureau of Engraving and Printing. They selected the one they liked and that was that. It's been on your folding money ever since. The treasurer's salary is 36,000 a year and she has a staff of six including a press secretary and a private secretary. They help her organize and publicize her speaking schedule. The rest of her time, she says, has spent autographing dollar bills that people send to her. Now I have no quarrel with the Mrs. Neff herself, but in the face of an incredible Federal deficit budget somewhere between 60 and 80 billion dollars, you have to start trimming somewhere. Do we really need a 36,000 dollar a year lady to sign dollar bills and tub thump for saving bonds and the president and does she need six people to help her? Maybe we should ask the Italian commission on superfluous commissions to come over and give us a recommendation. This is Ronald Reagan. Thanks for listening. |
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