I'm Beginning to Get It

It’s a couple of weeks after the 2024 election and I think I am beginning to get an idea of what is going on. President-elect Trump’s victory at the polls has stunned Democrats, many of whom look like that deer on a dark Texas highway who eyes reflect the headlights of their oncoming doom. They stumble around trying to find an answer to why the Republicans swept the White House and both houses of Congress, refusing to accept the most likely answer which is that most Americans really hate their crazy woke policies.

But the election results, while a bit surprising if you paid attention to all the polls, were not confusing. Americans did not like the direction the country was heading and Ms. Harris could only offer more of the same. So voters chose a different direction. But what direction will Mr. Trump take and are voters on board with all the changes he is proposing to make? Mr. Trump’s mandate for change is held by a thread. He did not get a majority but only a plurality of the popular vote according to Real Clear Politics. And the Republican majority in the House of Representatives is only by the thinnest of margins (with a few seats still to be determined).

On November 20th, Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy published an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal about their plans to create a Department of Government Efficiency as requested by Mr. Trump (The DOGE Plan to Reform Government, November 20, 2024). They assert that unelected bureaucrats in the executive branch have formulated rules and regulations beyond those authorized by Congress and have used those powers to entrench an administrative state within the government. The purpose of DOGE is to root out these unlawful expansions of power and to eliminate those rules and regulations and the bureaucrats needed to enforce them. DOGE, according to Elon and Vivek, will “pursue three major kinds of reform: regulatory rescissions, administrative reductions and cost savings.”

If this all seems a bit familiar, it is because the DOGE Plan is very similar to the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025 that the left tried to pin on Mr. Trump during the election campaign (and which he said he knew nothing about). I have not read the entire policy agendas book they created (its 887 pages long) but one of the goals is to “Dismantle the administrative state and return self-governance to the American people.” The Heritage Foundation also developed a plan that they say, “The fourth pillar of Project 2025 is our 180-day Transition Playbook and includes a comprehensive, concrete transition plan for each federal agency.” Sounds like Project 2025 has already done a lot of the groundwork for DOGE.

But there is a lot of validity to this reform effort. Bureaucracies grow, not because the need is great, but because supervisors and managers are compensated based on the size of their budget and how many people they supervise. Environmental activists are hired to fill the offices of the Environmental Protection Agency which provides grants and funding to the environmental activists such as the Natural Resources Defense Council as featured in a recent video by John Stossel. The impact of these bureaucratic policies on American citizens is not a high priority, certainly not as high as moving from GS-15 step 5 ($139,445) to GS-15 step 6 ($142,546). And this is true throughout the many departments and agencies of the US government and the companies or non-profits they work with.

The budget cost of these vast bureaucracies and their intrusive and often unconstitutional rules and regulations is in the hundreds of billions of dollars, but the cost to the US economy is in the trillions. In the John Stossel video he points out that NRDC has blocked every new mining project in the US for decades. These mines are essential for the defense of our country but environmental activists keep us dependent on China for these materials. The average age of nuclear reactors in the US is 42 years according to the US Energy information Administration. One reason our infrastructure is so decrepit is because of unnecessary rules and regulations that multiply the cost and delay the development of new projects essential to our defense and prosperity.

A complex modern society such as ours cannot function without some rules and regulations. But we need rules and regulations that are in accordance to the laws passed by Congress. And while it is impossible to function without at least some bureaucracy we need to make sure that the bureaucracy is working for us citizens and not for its own bureaucrats.

The other thing I didn’t get was why Mr. Trump would name such unqualified and controversial people as his nominees to run these bureaucracies. Although the most controversial nominee, Matt Gaetz, has withdrawn his name from consideration, other Trump picks are almost equally as disturbing.

And Mr. Trump wants to seat his appointees without the advice and consent of the Senate. Mr. Trump fears that despite a Republican majority in the Senate and without the necessity of 60 votes for cloture to stop a filibuster over nominations, some Republicans with an ounce of common sense would vote against his bizarre MAGA nominations. Mr. Gaetz is a case in point. But the advice and consent of the Senate is not some privilege granted by the executive branch but a duty imposed on the Senate by the Constitution of the United States. Any Senator voting to recess so that Mr. Trump could appoint officials without the advice and consent of the Senate would be violating their oath of office. Senators are required to “faithfully discharge the duties of the office.” Mr. Trump may also be surprised when Supreme Court justices, including those he appointed in his first term, prove more loyal to the constitution than to him.

Mr. Trump wants to appoint people to high office who lack the skills or experience such positions require such that they will loyally do what he commands (loyal being very different from faithful). He wants lackeys and stooges that will fall on their swords to save his bacon when thing go cockup. He wants to run the country just like he ran his business. But he doesn’t own this country, it is our country. And I for one want someone in the highest office who “will support and defend the Constitution of the United States” and not someone who will toss aside the checks and balances that prevent the abuse of power.

Elon and Vivek state in their op-ed, “Our North Star for reform will be the U.S. Constitution.” Let’s hope they mean it.