Environmental activists, freedom lovers, and those preferring a less intrusive government share a common perception. They see the government agencies responsible for natural resource management as bureaucratic parasites. Rather than steward our resources, they systematically advocate programs that are environmentally costly, are financially wasteful, and increase the scope of the federal government at the expense of voluntary exchange and coordination.

In an era when the best route to immortality is to become a government program, how can wasteful, dysfunctional bureaucracies be weeded out? I propose a "predatory bureaucracy."

A predator is an organism that captures and extracts its sustenance from other animals. We can learn a great deal about the federal budget and bureaucracy by, as a simple thought experiment, introducing a "predator" into the U.S. government.

First, imagine a bureaucracy, the Agency of Budgetary Control (ABC), established with funds to carry it for two years only. This constraint is critical. Its budget would come solely from the money it saves taxpayers by successfully eliminating waste inside other agencies' budgets. ABC's continued survival and growth depend on preying upon other agencies' budgetary requests.

Suppose, for example, that the Bureau of Reclamation requests $600 million for the Las Animas-La Plata dam-building project in Colorado, estimated to produce just $50 million of value to farmers. This dam's damaging ecological consequences and economic costs likely far outweigh its benefits.

The Agency of Budgetary Control would marshal evidence against the project, employing ecologists, economists, and local residents who prefer the river as it is. In this case they would join with groups like the Wilderness Society and the National Taxpayers Union to advertise the dam's high costs. Their voices would be in direct opposition to the testimony developed by the Bureau of Reclamation and its clientele groups, those who hope to benefit from subsidized irrigation.

With the dam defeated, the ABC would receive 10 percent of the project's net expenses. That 10 percent would be taken from the "prey" agency's operating budget. In the hypothetical case, the Bureau of Reclamation would be punished $55 million and the ABC would be $55 million richer. (These figures are only suggested and would benefit from experience.) The predatory bureaucracy would thrive only if it were successful at eliminating programs. The offending department, in this case the Bureau of Reclamation, would be punished not only by losing project funding, but also by losing an additional portion of its operating budget.

With its budgetary windfall, the predatory bureaucracy could do what all bureaucracies do: add more staff, buy expensive office equipment, and diligently pursue a bigger budget. Perhaps all those new staffers could then challenge certain U.S. Forest Service timber sales. Stopping below-cost timber sales is no easy feat, as some analysts have been arguing against them for 25 years, but if a predator bureaucracy stands to gain some of the $160 million the Forest Service annually loses in such sales, we might expect it to invest millions in an unprecedented campaign to bring fiscal prudence to Forest Service management.

We can harness the fundamental pathology of bureaucracies--that propensity toward perpetuation and growth--for social benefit. There are, of course, a few technical problems with this proposal, but they are likely to be minor when compared with the benefits.

The Long-Term Benefits

Sooner than later, other bureaucracies in Washington, D.C., will wise up. A series of successful attacks is very likely to have a profound effect upon the learning curve of the various agencies. Since the agencies are uncertain which programs will be subject to predation, they have strong incentives to avoid proposing projects of dubious value. Agencies will become more efficient and more productive, or else the predator will eat away at their budgets.

Clearly an agency such as the ABC would prey upon programs that are the most vulnerable to attack: those hardest to defend. The size of the ABC is, to put it crudely, a function of the stupidity of the prey agencies. Its size would vary just as predator numbers follow the size of prey populations. The old and bloated bureaucracies are easy prey for the ABC.

This system would provide incentives for government to police itself against waste and pork barrel projects, both by the predator and the prey, as projects are eliminated in anticipation of attack by the predator agency. Eventually, we would expect a dynamic equilibrium to evolve, where ABC predation would be balanced with Treasury waste.

The environmental metaphor is particularly telling. Ecosystems that lack predators become dangerously unbalanced, leading to overpopulation of prey species, and a ripple effect of ecosystem deterioration. Reintroducing the wolf to Yellowstone National Park represents attempts to rectify this imbalance. Introducing a predator bureau into the U.S. Treasury "ecosystem" would clearly parallel this. It is an idea whose time has come.