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Charles’ Note: If you need a driver’s license in Texas… then God help you. Because no one else will. 

My driver’s license was recently up for renewal. The nearest available appointment was five months away. That’s a problem because my license was about to expire, and I only live in the Lone Star State part time. It’s not exactly convenient to plan an international flight around a driver’s license renewal. 

There was a workaround, of course. (There’s always a workaround!)

I could drive two hours into the hinterlands to a small country town that time forgot. It seems that the Texas government, in its infinite wisdom, provided the manpower to serve rural counties where no one lives… yet not Dallas, Houston, or Austin… the engines that actually drive the Texas economy. 

Texas being Texas, this led to conspiracy theories. Was this a plot by Austin to suppress urban voters? 

I don’t think so.

It’s not that I consider the Texas government beyond reproach. The corruption on open display is one small step removed from Boss Hogg of Dukes of Hazzard fame. 

Attorney General Ken Paxton was impeached two years ago for, among other things, bribery, mishandling public funds, obstruction of justice, and pressuring a political donor to give his side piece a cushy job. Far from being punished, he’s now the leading candidate to be the state’s next senator. 

It’s that they’re too incompetent to pull off any conspiracy. 

But might things be getting better, at least in Washington?

Maybe. 

My fellow libertarian traveler James Hickman notes that parts of the federal bureaucracy, notably Social Security, really are working more efficiently than in the past and delivering a better experience. 

But does any of that matter if the program is about to go bankrupt anyway?

Read on to find out. 

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At Least Social Security Will Go Bankrupt With Good Customer Service

By James Hickman, Co-Founder, Schiff Sovereign

I know it’s cliche, but one of the happiest days of my life was a bit more than four years ago when my daughter was born in Cancún, Mexico.

My wife and I chose Mexico deliberately… given all the Covid craziness that was going on (especially in the U.S.). We wanted to be in a place where the pandemic wasn’t going to factor into our lives at all. Cancun was perfect.

Add in world-class healthcare at affordable prices, and it was an easy call. 

Plus, babies born in Mexico automatically become citizens, and both parents and grandparents receive permanent residency.

Pretty much everything about her birth went smoothly. The Mexican paperwork was shockingly easy. And we were able to get her passport and our residency cards very quickly.

The most difficult part by far was the U.S. side.

We couldn’t fly back to Puerto Rico until she had a U.S. passport. But thanks to the State Department’s broken online system (which crashes constantly and conjures bizarre errors) we were scrambling for a slot.

(It’s also bizarre that, despite millions of Americans traveling to Cancun each year, the U.S. government put its consulate more than four hours away in Merida… not exactly convenient.)

Once there, storm-trooper style security treated a newborn’s bottled milk as a threat. Then we sat for more than an hour while bureaucrats invented reasons to say “no” to her passport application.

In the end, we finally got what we needed. But the whole process revealed the deeper truth: in the U.S., government offices act as if citizens work for them. 

They’ve forgotten their purpose is to serve. So citizens are left with inefficient, indifferent, even borderline inhumane experiences.

Some other countries take a different approach. They treat citizens like valued customers, and bureaucrats are measured on the efficiency and quality of their service.

When the U.S. first launched the Department of Government Efficiency – DOGE – I thought this should be a critical piece of the reform.

Yes, of course, slash fraud, waste, and abuse. But even more urgently, reset the entire culture of how the U.S. government does business with its citizens.

I recently found a glimmer of hope that this may actually be happening.

Late last week, Social Security marked its 90th birthday since being signed into law in 1935 at the height of the Great Depression.

Ever since, generations of Americans have accumulated stories of painfully navigating this massive institution – too often about waiting rooms, endless forms, and mind-numbing incompetence.

But something unusual has happened in the last few months. 

Frank Bisignano is the new commissioner. He comes from a CEO position in the private sector, and seems to be running Social Security like a business.

He’s pushed a digital-first strategy, incorporated AI tools, and focused on simple things that most people in the private sector would take for granted.

Processing backlogs are coming down. Efficiency is up.

Barely a year ago, you had to spend nearly 30 minutes on hold when you called Social Security. Today, the agency says the wait is under five minutes – while serving nearly twice as many people.

You can also now schedule appointments before going into an office. Imagine that. 

And the average wait time at a Social Security office has also been slashed down to just six minutes.

The Social Security website has been overhauled as well. Now taxpayers can get much more information and handle their service needs online. 

Crazy that it took until 2025 to make this happen.

Oh, and it turns out that the Social Security website – until very recently – used to be offline nearly 30 hours per WEEK for scheduled downtime. They’ve now eliminated this and MySocialSecurity is available 24/7.

Frankly, the bar for government performance is so low that saying “the website now works” is heralded as a massive breakthrough.

Still, it’s encouraging to see what’s possible when someone with a private-sector mindset actually tries to fix things. 

In just a few months, one of the worst bureaucracies in Washington has shown major improvement.

Unfortunately, there’s one thing the Commissioner can’t control: Social Security’s looming insolvency. 

Social Security’s finances are up to Congress, and that picture is bleak.

The fund is almost out of money. Everyone in Washington knows it. 

At best, there’s less than eight years until Social Security’s major trust fund runs out of money. It will probably take place sooner than that.

Just like fixing bad government service, fixing Social Security’s solvency is not complicated. At this point there are only a few levers to pull: either raise taxes, or roll back retirement age.

The trustees and Social Security’s own actuaries have spelled out these solutions for years, practically begging Congress to act.

They’ve also been clear – the sooner that Congress works to solve the problem, the less painful the solution will be.

If they raise payroll taxes now, the tax hike will be minor. If they wait until 2032, the increase will be brutal.

Similarly, if they pass a law today to phase in an increase to the retirement age, the change will be minor. If they wait a decade, the increase will be much more dramatic.

Yet Congress is – predictably – the least capable group on the planet when it comes to handling obvious problems.

Sure, most likely they won’t let Social Security fail. But the longer they wait, the more likely the eventual fix will simply be a multi-trillion-dollar bailout funded by “printing” money.

The national debt will continue its upward surge, taxpayers will fork over more money, and inflation will quicken.

Bisignano shows what is possible when the government changes its posture.

Instead of the usual “F-you, take a number” attitude, Bisignano’s team worked to serve people more efficiently and respectfully. 

That massive cultural shift moved the needle almost instantly – wait times fell, backlogs shrank, and an agency long known for dysfunction suddenly became usable.

It shouldn’t stop there. 

The same mindset could be applied to bigger problems – Social Security’s solvency, immigration, debt. 

None of these are mysteries. The solutions already exist. It’s not rocket science. 

What’s required is competence and a willingness to act early, before the problems metastasize.

But that’s the catch. The most incompetent body of all – Congress – is the one charged with making those decisions.

And until voters stop sending the same clowns back to Washington, nothing changes.

These are people who can’t balance a budget, can’t read a balance sheet, and can barely string together a coherent thought – yet they’re entrusted with fixing the nation’s most critical programs.

It’s no wonder every solution comes too late, costs too much, and creates another crisis in the process.

James Hickman

Co-Founder, Schiff Sovereign