Politics & Power Quote by Alexis Herman

A bureaucratic truth dressed up as reassurance: yes, the public sector is shrinking, but look over here - the parts that matter (or at least, the parts that sound like the future) are growing. Alexis Herman’s line does two jobs at once. It concedes the politically palatable headline of the era, “decline in government,” while carving out a safe exception for the kinds of state capacity nobody wants to admit they still depend on: specialized enforcement, technical expertise, and data-driven administration.

The phrasing is careful. “Actually” signals a corrective, as if she’s pushing back against a caricature of runaway bureaucracy. Then comes the pivot: “but the growth is in high-tech.” That “but” is the whole strategy - a rhetorical firewall between the old stereotype of government bloat and a newer image of government as a lean, skilled operator. It’s Clinton-era triangulation in miniature: accept the premise that government should be smaller, then argue it must also be smarter.

Her specific mentions matter, too. “Labor Department and other departments” hints at the less glamorous reality behind “specialty areas”: compliance, workplace rules, benefits systems, the machinery that keeps markets from becoming pure improvisation. The subtext is that modern governance isn’t about headcount; it’s about capability. You can lay off clerks and still hire technologists, analysts, and investigators - and quietly reshape what the state is for.

Read as context, it’s an answer to two audiences: fiscal hawks who want contraction and workers who need protection. Herman sells both by reframing growth as modernization, not expansion.