OPINION:
It is improbable that Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy could have imagined last year the consequential role that a revived Trump presidency would offer them.
Both of them are truly accomplished. Mr. Musk is an audacious innovator and successful global entrepreneur. Mr. Ramaswamy is a brilliant investor who also displayed his energy while campaigning for the Republican nomination for president.
To be sure, their support for President-elect Donald Trump has been rewarded with very important work, reining in the bureaucratic leviathan. Mr. Trump, as usual, thinks outside of the box. He surely did so when he conceived his Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE.
It’s a bit of an oxymoron. If average Americans have learned anything in recent history, it is that government has been anything but efficient. A better title for this endeavor would be the Department of Government Restraint.
Indeed, when the founders of our nation settled on the federalist model of government envisioned in our Constitution, they had in mind a balance of power between the states — that created the federal government — and a national polity that would bring constitutional order to the intended federation.
At no time did the founders have in mind a federal government like what we have today, one that is bloated, overbearing and inefficient. To be sure, they actually feared such a national government but felt that they had secured a safeguard between the federal republic and the 13 states that regarded themselves as individual republics.
That is why the 10th Amendment to the Constitution was approved shortly after the states ratified it. Recall those words for a moment. “The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.”
Unfortunately, for years, federal encroachment on the several “republics” has taken a toll on states’ rights. The supremacy clause found in Article 6, Section 2 of the Constitution declares that laws promulgated under it are the “supreme law of the land.”
Today, however, unelected bureaucrats — with the tacit approval of Congress — have hijacked that language to justify their ability to make laws by regulatory fiat over states and citizens alike. This is a problem that Mr. Musk and Mr. Ramaswamy must address.
Recent press accounts suggest that the Musk-Ramaswamy effort will eliminate certain governmental practices such as telecommuting, insisting that government employees must be compelled to return to their desks in Washington. In fact, if departments and agencies were eliminated or moved out of Washington altogether, we might well retain telecommuting to reduce unnecessary office space in the remaining federal structure.
Nonetheless, we’re getting a glimpse into how the efficiency czars might reduce wasteful and debt-laden spending that’s bankrupting America. Those actions are necessary but possibly not sufficient. As the saying goes, don’t major in the minors.
What should be their ultimate objective? It’s tempting to focus on the nation’s balance sheet and identify marquee or big-ticket items to begin wielding the efficiency sickle. That might produce some results, particularly the low-hanging fruit of agencies that should never have been created initially, but for the affectionate invention of some legislator or president who imagined yet another way to spend our money on dubious endeavors. Have at it, DOGE. Swing that sickle.
The key to success is less glamorous and requires more diligence. If we’re to rein in the government, we must begin with the regulatory state. Mr. Trump made a good effort at this in his first term. But deregulating here or there, while helpful, must be comprehensive to have the desired effect he seeks today — namely, reducing the size of government.
In reality, Mr. Musk and Mr. Ramaswamy must walk the efficiency process backward from identified expenditures to the underlying problem. That problem is the deeply rooted regulations planted and nourished by the bureaucracy, requiring both a budget appropriation to expand them and the manpower to harvest their bitter fruit.
If we kill the regulations, we will save taxpayer money, and the unnecessary enforcement manpower will wither away. In doing so, one kills two birds with one stone.
For years, the unelected bureaucracy has relied on the loosely worded legislation from Congress that empowers the administrative state to create regulations that not only burden the public unnecessarily but also further enshrine and empower bureaucratic satraps to regulate our lives. Such is truly a self-licking ice cream cone.
Bureaucrats write regulations that require our tax money to pay the salaries of people who subdue all of us. The Musk-Ramaswamy team must tackle the regulatory state first and, in doing so, reduce spending and the size of government.
Maybe they could rename themselves the Department of Regulatory Withering.
• L. Scott Lingamfelter is a retired Army colonel and combat veteran (1973-2001) and former member of the Virginia House of Delegates (2002-2018). He is the author of “Desert Redleg: Artillery Warfare in the First Gulf War” (University Press of Kentucky, 2020) and “Yanks in Blue Berets: American UN Peacekeepers in the Middle East” (UPK, 2023).
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