There has been considerable blather since... oh, around mid-2016 or so... about when Donald Trump announced he was interested in becoming President of the United States... about how he would 'drain the swamp'. That didn't happen to anything like the extent most of his supporters expected it would, and it might be instructive to ask why those exalted expectations never seemed to come to pass.
A new President coming into office typically receives the resignations of all political appointees of the prior administration. Often, this includes the Directors of FBI, NSA, and CIA, but not always. A newly-elected President who really wants to drain the DC swamp will signal that resolve by immediately accepting those proffered resignations — and summarily dismissing any who do not resign — and then cancelling the security clearances for all those persons. Given the atrocious condition of the military currently, several high-ranking flag officers should likewise be relieved of command and separated from the service.
All such persons, military and civilian, should be relieved of their passports. Why their passports? Because a President, the head of the Executive Branch, also heads the Justice Department that would be potentially prosecuting other heads-of-departments (possibly including the DoJ itself), and it is necessary that those high-ranking (and therefore wealthy) defendants not be able to flee the jurisdiction. The President also heads the Department of State that owns those passports. The President is thus entitled to recover State Department property.
That's insufficient, unfortunately. The next three (at least) management levels below those Directors need to be furloughed. They may not be able to be fired outright if they are 'civil service', but they can be placed on administrative leave, minus their security clearances, pending an investigation to determine if they are safe to have in sensitive positions. The personnel remaining will be charged with operating their functions without the encumbrance of the upper echelons. It strains credulity to wonder if those organizations cannot function effectively when run by the people who actually run them day-to-day.
Such actions following hot on the heels of Inauguration would send tremors through the halls of Congress. There are — I have not the slightest doubt — many Congressional staffers who, seeing U.S.Marshals and State Department functionaries stripping the highest ranks of DC Officialdom of their badges of office, would begin to consider 'turning state's evidence' before it was too late. A President truly set on draining the DC swamp would only need one or two such turncoats, and even the New York Times could not decline to publish the news of the forthcoming indictments.
All that is needed is a President who doesn't care that somebody who hasn't yet been sufficiently neutralized is going to leak pictures 'in bed with a dead girl or a live boy', as one unfortunately forgotten wag once predicted.
Does such a person exist?
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Remember Pournelle's Iron Law of Bureaucracy. Our problem is runaway bureaucracy. The problem is that when bureaucracy completes its mission or fails, it looks to grow. We've passed the point where more people are working for government than private industry. This cannot go on forever and will not. Past empires and governments have reached this point and collapsed. The Soviet Union and the British Empire are but two recent examples.
ReplyDeleteIn the past Congress & the President have jealously guarded the budget against overspending. Now the professional politicians profit from it. I believe we need a fourth branch of government to perform this task.
The Lean branch will seek out outdated, ineffective, corrupt agencies and programs then shut them down. Lean will do their job because the only source of budget for the Lean Branch will be from the programs and agencies they shut down. Lean can draft bureaucrats from agencies they shut down. This would be an agency where the most hide bound, officious bureaucrats would actually be of use as they seek to grow the agency.
I would offer FDRs Interstate Commerce Commission, the dreaded ICC, as a first candidate. Ronald Reagan removed any regulatory powers from the agency but they're still their gathering information in case they're needed again. Take them out behind the barn and they don't come back.
The Department of Education is another agency I suggest wiping out in entirety. Never has a country spent so much for such poor results. Let the states manage education as they did before.
Anyhow you get the drift. We have federal agencies that date back to the first approval of our constitution. They're out of date, ineffective, etc. Time for a house cleaning.