Government's Greatest Achievements of the Past Half Century

This report—based on survey responses from 450 history and political science professors—suggests that the federal government did more than aim high, however. It also suggests that the federal government often succeeded in changing the nation and the world. Although many Americans still believe that the federal government creates more problems than it solves, this report suggests that government deserves more credit than it receives.

This Reform Watch does not address whether Congress should have asked government to undertake the endeavors discussed below, nor whether the federal government should have given greater energy to fewer priorities. It is first and foremost a report about what the federal government actually sought to accomplish between 1944 and 1999, and therefore about what government did, not what it should or should not have done. Simply asked, what did the federal government try to do, and what did it achieve?

What the Federal Government Did

The footprints of federal endeavor can be found in a host of accessible documents, including the Federal Register, Catalog of Domestic Assistance, the Budget of the United States, Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States, United States Code, Code of Federal Regulations, and the U.S. Constitution. Because almost all tracks lead back to Congress, this report is based on an analysis of major laws passed by Congress since the end of World War II. Not only are the major laws easy to identify through public sources such as the Congressional Quarterly Almanac, they authorize much of the activity that occurs elsewhere in government, most notably by setting budget and regulatory priorities.

Building upon previous research by congressional scholars such as Yale University's David Mayhew, this project identified 538 major statutes as a starting point for building the list of greatest endeavors. Selected on the basis of their significance, visibility, and/or precedent-setting nature, the laws run the gamut of legislative activity, from the creation of new programs and government agencies to the passage of constitutional amendments and ratification of foreign treaties, and cover virtually all areas of federal endeavor, from child health care to economic deregulation, food and water safety to national defense.

After validating the list against other inventories of major statutes from the era, including Mayhew's list of more than 300 major laws and my own list of more than 150 management reforms, the 538 statutes were sorted into sixteen policy areas: agriculture, arts and historic preservation, civil rights, crime, the economy, education, health, housing and urban development, foreign policy and defense, government performance, income security, natural resources and energy, safety, science and technology, trade, and transportation.

Once divided by area, the statutes were sorted again based on the specific problem to be solved. Of the 27 statutes dealing with civil rights, for example, three focused on discrimination in public accommodations, seven on discrimination in the workplace, and ten on barriers to voting rights. Of the 81 statutes dealing with energy and natural resources, six focused on endangered species, eight on hazardous waste, 12 on wilderness protection, and 14 on the nation's energy supply. The result of this second sorting was an initial list of the federal government's 67 major endeavors of the past half century.

That list was further winnowed to the final 50 based on the level of effort involved in each of the endeavors. This is not to suggest that the 17 endeavors cut from the list were unimportant. They included ending discrimination in the armed services, providing help to the victims of natural and man-made disasters, promoting the arts, developing the nation's river valleys, and reforming the federal campaign finance system. Important though these endeavors are, they earned less attention from the federal government than the 50 items that made the final inventory. (See Figure 3 for summaries of the 50 endeavors. More detailed information on each endeavor and links to the relevant government agencies involved can be found at www.brookings.edu/Endeavors.)

All but a handful of the 50 endeavors involve tight collections of laws organized around a consistent strategy for addressing a focused problem such as crime, water quality, or arms control and disarmament. Hence, the Civil Rights Act of 1964 fits naturally with the Age Discrimination Act of 1967 and Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990 in the effort to end workplace discrimination; the Omnibus Crime Control and Safe Streets Act of 1968 and its 1970, 1984, and 1994 amendments fit tightly with the Organized Crime Control Act of 1970 in the effort to reduce crime; the Bretton Woods Agreement of 1945 fits well with the Trade Expansion Act of 1962, the Trade and Tariff Act of 1984, and the North American Free Trade Agreement of 1993 in the effort to expand foreign markets for U.S. goods.

Some endeavors will still strike readers as overly broad, however, whether because they involve such eclectic collections of individual statutes or a more diffuse problem. The effort to improve mass transportation includes a mix of statutes covering everything from the creation of Amtrak to urban mass transit and light rail, the effort to control immigration involves four statutes that share little beyond the word "immigration" in their title, and the effort to reduce disease combines the Polio Vaccination Assistance Act of 1955 with the National Cancer Act of 1971 and a variety of medical research bills.

Unfortunately, splitting these endeavors would have added more items to an already exhaustive survey, which, in turn, would mean further demands on the individuals who would be asked to do the rating. The result would be a lower response rate and weaker results. Moreover, it is reasonable to ask whether the mix of strange-bedfellow statutes in efforts to improve mass transportation or control immigration is an indicator of confusion in either defining the problem to be solved or creating an effective strategy for achieving results. Whereas efforts to end discrimination or expand markets shared a common strategy, the effort to control immigration focused on a mix of contradictory goals that may help explain its relatively low success rating.

Lessons of Endeavor

The list of government's 50 greatest endeavors is best viewed as the product of a good-faith effort to identify the problems that the federal government tried hardest to solve over the past half century. As such, the list offers three initial lessons about how the federal government has sought to achieve results. (See Figure 1 for the complete list of mean scores by importance, difficulty, and success, and the final summary scores that determined the top ten list.)