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Cutting Government Is Easy... If You Go After McKinsey

Why take on management consultants? Well, for starters, the government spends far too much on people giving it advice. In it's 2024 budget, the Biden administration requested $70 billion for management consulting, aka “professional services,” which is 5% of all discretionary spending. The Defense Department alone asked for $32.9 billion. So just cutting all management consulting would be a big chunk of savings. But it goes beyond just the raw spend on consultants, to how consultants misdirect other monies. An important study in 2023 on what it costs to resurface roads at a state level - a very simply and standard need everywhere - showed why procurement waste in America is so persistent. A key reason is consultant bloat. It turns out, when you hire government employees for long-term planning, costs go down, but when you use third party consultants, they go up.
McKinsey has indeed offered some of the worst advice in the annals of business. Enron? Check. Time Warner’s merger with AOL? Check. General Motors’s poor strategy against the Japanese automakers? Check. It told AT&T in 1980 that it expected the market for cellphones in the United States in 2000 would amount to only 900,000 subscribers. It turned out to be 109 million. The list goes on.