Bureaucratic Oversight Quotes

Progressives think progress depends upon (that is, they sometimes define progress as) the concentration of power as high as possible in government’s regulatory apparatus. Hence, between 1960 and 2019, the 900 percent increase in federal grants to states — from $70 billion (adjusted for inflation) to $700 billion — came with strings, resembling chains, attached.

At first, when California started winning its water lawsuits and shutting off cities, the displaced people just followed the water-right to California. It took a little while before the bureaucrats realized what was going on, but finally someone with a sharp pencil did the math and realized that taking in people along with their water didn't solve a water shortage.

When government programs fail, it is often because public officials are clueless about how human beings think and act.

We have seen a central government taking more and more control over public education, over communications, over transportation, over every detail of our daily lives.

... government by commission is a boon to all members of Congress, who cringe at facing no-win situations.... It gets the job done.

When we ask bureaucrats to identify who is responsible for fixing anything, they reassure us that there are 'procedures in place.'

In almost all matters, the real question should be: why are we letting government handle this?

The modern State exists not to protect our rights but to do us good or make us good - anyway, to do something to us or to make us something. Hence the new name 'leaders' for those who were once 'rulers'. We are less their subjects than their wards, pupils, or domestic animals. There is nothing left of which we can say to them, 'Mind your own business.' Our whole lives are their business.

With the growth of Harvard from a small provincial college into a great University, a unique paranoia has swept the ranks of local officialdom, furrowing brows throughout University Hall. The lurking fear is that somehow, in the operations of the gigantic administrative machine, a student might get lost in the shuffle.

University of California students can look forward to the same authoritarian management style Secretary Napolitano brought to the Department of Homeland Security, hardly a bastion of free speech and open government.

Bureaucrats shouldn't be in charge of comedy.

When you are dealing with the United States Government and the Department of Justice you have to always be looking over your shoulder.

I'm not a big fan of regulation: anyone who likes freedom of the press can't be.

The more the government plans fail, the more the planners plan.

The job of mayor and Governor is becoming more and more like the job of university president, which I used to be; it looks like you are in charge, but you are not.

I am a firm believer that federal agencies exist to administer laws passed by Congress, as intended.

We don't need unelected federal agency bureaucrats in Washington telling our states what they can and can't do with respect to protecting their limited taxpayer dollars in private enterprises.

I don't know about you, but I'm betting that when it comes to doing the right and good thing, the Little Sisters of the Poor know better than the regulators at the Department of Health and Human Services.

If the Congress is going to spend its whole time hauling up regulators and bureaucrats and looking like they're focusing on tiny, trivial things, instead of jobs and the economy, it could be a problem for them.

With any bureaucracy, an accountable bureaucracy, we need the press and we need critics to keep us on our toes…. we do wish the press to continue to report and continue to criticize because it is only in that way that the government can continue to improve and meet the aspirations of an increasingly affluent society.

Once you put yourself in the hands of the government, you could end up in Utah.

The Director of the FBI is paid to take risks where the security of the country is at stake.... What Hoover is doing here is putting himself above the President.

Government shouldn't try to dictate what art looks like or what it portrays. Last thing we want is government screwing it up, which is what they would do.

We really must keep under control, and pretty strict control, the area within which 'The Man in Whitehall' knows best.

When I embarked in the government, it was with a determination to intermeddle not at all with the legislature.