In case you missed it, the president issued an Executive Order mandating a “renewed effort to hunt down misspent tax dollars in every agency and department of this government.” In signing it, he said we need to cut “pointless waste and stupid spending that doesn’t benefit anybody.” But the president didn’t sign it last week. He signed it in 2011, as it was former President Barack Obama, not President Donald Trump, who launched the “Campaign to Cut Waste.”
In the end, though watchdog groups recommended cuts totaling $1.8 trillion, relatively little was cut. Though it’s easy to now take pot shots at President Obama, that’s not the point.
Many presidents—both Republican and Democrat—have tried to expose, reform, and clean up the administrative state, but all failed. The bureaucracy and entrenchment—the “deep state”—was too much. As the joke went—presidents come and go, but the career bureaucracy remains forever. The tail wagged the dog.
Not everything in the administrative state is fat and waste. But before delving into anecdotes—like feeding terrorists in Syria—we need to understand how we got here. Most of what we see being exposed is not part of a conscious cabal. Instead, it’s akin to Adam Smith’s “invisible hand,” but with a twist.
Smith’s “invisible hand” is capitalism unconsciously working in efficient ways. But the administrative state is the quiet hand of cronyism working for decades in the most inefficient, sinister ways. Though most bureaucrats in the system are not part of any conscious cabal, the result—DEI scholarships in Burma and green energy projects in Timbuktu—is often much the same.
Trump can now succeed where others (including himself) have failed for two basic reasons.
First, he is determined like no other. It is practically religion for him. Plus, he learned valuable lessons his first term and doesn’t want to repeat them.
Second, he now has the nerds and technology—Elon & Co.—who know what they’re doing. They also are committed. It’s not a side hustle or boondoggle for them. Elon sleeps on the floor of his office and doesn’t need the dough.
Trump has already done in three weeks what others have been unable (or unwilling) to do in decades.
But predictably, some Democrats criticize his efforts. It proves the point that Trump could cure cancer, yet some would complain it discriminates against cancer cells.
Imagine if long ago Congress approved a lemonade stand with five workers. It has now grown to 50 workers, but doesn’t serve more or better lemonade. Hiring a consultant to do an audit, make changes, and recommend job cuts is not unconstitutional or illegal. It is sane and reflects common sense.
In government speak, that lemonade stand is called the administrative state.
Criticizing DOGE is like a teenager complaining his parents shouldn’t have been in his bedroom when they found the kid’s drugs.
You might like parts of your old house, but if it’s filled with rot, any builder will tell you that tearing it down is cheaper and will result in a better house than rehabbing it.
When the house is rebuilt—because we are a generous people—we will still fund clinics to save babies from disease in Africa. But we hopefully won’t fund boondoggles in Bohemia anymore.
What made the administrative state grow particularly dangerous over time is not just that it was inefficient, wasteful, and often violated Congress’ enumerated powers. Rather, it’s that it often did indirectly what can’t be done directly—indoctrinate—as shown by the many USAID grants now being exposed.
Former Nebraska Senator Ben Sasse had a funny riff to explain it: “There’s no verse of Schoolhouse Rock that says give a whole bunch of power to the alphabet soup agencies and let them decide what the governance decisions should be for the people because the people don’t have any way to fire the bureaucrats.”
Sasse went on: “Congress has decided to self-neuter … and when the Congress neuters itself and gives power to an unaccountable fourth branch of government, it means that people are cut out of the process. All the power right now, or almost all the power right now, happens offstage. And that leaves a lot of people wondering who is looking out for me.”
Well, someone is now looking out for the American people—Donald Trump. He won because he’s determined to do what those before him failed to do—make government more accountable and more responsive.
William Choslovsky, born and first raised in Gary, Ind., is a Harvard Law School graduate and now a lawyer in Chicago.
The views expressed in this article are the writer’s own.
The post With President Trump, This Time It’s Different appeared first on Newsweek.
