Obama hails ‘extraordinary sacrifice’ of bureaucrats
President Obama hailed the “extraordinary sacrifice” of government bureaucrats Tuesday, blasting “a political climate where folks too often talk down government for cheap applause.”
Speaking to a gathering of some of the best-paid and most senior civil servants in Washington, Obama bemoaned that “Americans don’t trust government like we used to.”
{mosads}In an apparent swipe at congressional Republicans, the president said the eroding trust could be partially attributed to “a very deliberate strategy of trying to undermine government” and “political opportunism” from “those who think the market is king and there isn’t any room for regulatory efforts.”
The president also criticized media coverage of the civil service, saying the federal government rarely garnered coverage when things were going well.
“Doing your job right often means nobody hears about you,” Obama said. “They only report when something goes wrong, or when there’s a shutdown and somebody notices, ‘Oh we need that.’ ”
“It’s easy copy for the press to focus on the one thing that goes wrong instead of the 99 things that go right,” he added.
Still, Obama said, those in government need to “constantly ask ourselves how can we serve Americans better.”
The president told the gathering of the Senior Executive Service — the career employees that serve just under presidential appointees in the bureaucratic hierarchy — that they needed “to constantly adapt to the demands of the 21st century” and become “smarter and faster and more responsive.”
To that end, Obama announced a trio of new White House initiatives intended to improve the operation of government, acknowledging that many departments and agencies were designed to support the needs of the country during the New Deal rather than in 2014.
Those will include a leadership initiative that rotates talented civil servants through different agencies in an effort to “cross-pollinate” effective ideas and techniques, as well as a new advisory group soliciting advice from top civil servants on how other talented people could be recruited into the bureaucracy. The administration will also begin awarding new non-monetary customer service awards for top employees.
“I’d like to come bearing raises and perks … but I can’t,” Obama quipped. “But what I can do is tell you how important you are not just to me, but the country.”
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