OPINION:
Republican presidential contender Vivek Ramaswamy is running as a conservative on a mission.
“I’m the candidate, I think, the sole candidate who is actually unapologetically on the side of revolution,” Mr. Ramaswamy explained last week in a meeting with The Washington Times’ editorial board. “The idea that the people we elected to run a government actually run the government, that’s not the extreme idea. That’s the essence of the American experiment.”
Last week in New Hampshire, Mr. Ramaswamy unveiled his proposal to close the FBI, the Department of Education and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission if elected president.
Sound pie in the sky? Mr. Ramaswamy is armed with specifics, and he’s serious.
“If George Washington or Thomas Jefferson or Alexander Hamilton or John Adams were walking the streets of Washington, D.C., today, they disagree with each other on a lot of things, but they would be equally aghast at what they see,” Mr. Ramaswamy said.
Mr. Ramaswamy cited the Presidential Reorganization Act as an example of the tool he would use to deliver on his promised reshaping of the federal bureaucracy. The act allows the president to submit plans to Congress to reorganize or eliminate executive agencies.
He has pledged to get rid of collective bargaining for federal employees and set term limits for federal workers.
At the top of the elimination list would be the Department of Education, which Mr. Ramaswamy called the “head of the snake” for its role in spreading “wokeism,” transgenderism and the leftist indoctrination of our children.
“I think many of the reasons why we see the rise of racial and gender orthodoxies in public schools is not just because of the school boards,” he said. “I applaud parents who have become more engaged in their school boards, but in many cases, those school boards are responding to economic incentives, dare I say requirements, imposed by the federal government by the U.S. Department of Education.”
Mr. Ramaswamy’s campaign pointed to the department’s 2023 budget request for $1.5 billion in higher education grants to be distributed based on race. This request alone runs contrary to the Supreme Court’s latest ruling striking down affirmative action at the university level.
Mr. Ramaswamy would transfer some educational grants to the Department of Labor to advance vocational training in the belief that not everyone needs to attend a four-year liberal arts college. His idea is to return nearly half of the Department of Education’s budget to state and local education authorities — providing governors have adopted school choice reforms.
Mr. Ramaswamy would like to go further by allowing parents to decide where their children go to school and potentially be reimbursed for that choice, noting the often inverse relationship between school funding and student performance.
For example, a child attending a failing public school with annual expenditures of $40,000 per student could transfer to a different school that receives $20,000 per pupil, with the student’s family keeping half the savings ($10,000).
This step, he argued, would make schools more competitive and achieve better outcomes. Mr. Ramaswamy would also favor school districts that hire teachers not associated with the teachers unions. He would mandate transparency by having classroom instructional material posted online.
Under Mr. Ramaswamy’s proposal, the Department of Education’s loan program would be given to the Department of the Treasury to manage. A quarter of the Education Department’s current $83 billion discretionary budget would be redirected to putting three armed marshals in every school across America to keep the children safe.
Mr. Ramaswamy contrasted himself with the other “outsider” in the Republican primary, former President Donald Trump, by pointing out that the former president thought he could reform the federal government by putting Betsy DeVos in charge of education.
Mr. Ramaswamy said he intends to start fresh because federal institutions like the Department of Education and a few others are beyond saving.
Unlike politicians quick to make grand promises, Mr. Ramaswamy provided details on how he would accomplish each move to replace inefficiencies and politicization with innovation and competitiveness.
If voters are serious about paring back America’s bloated deep state and restoring that power to the people, Mr. Ramaswamy’s campaign is one to watch.
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