Letters from an American - November 20, 2024

Episode Date: November 21, 2024

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November 20th, 2024. Remember how American voters so hated Project 2025, the playbook for a second Trump term written by the Heritage Foundation and other right-wing institutions, that Trump said he had nothing to do with it. And then one of its key architects, Russell Vogt, told undercover filmmakers that Trump was only running away from the project as political cover. It appears Vogt was right and the story that Trump had nothing to do with Project 2025 was, indeed, just political cover. Ed O'Keefe and Major Garrett of CBS News reported today that two sources close to the Trump transition team have told them that they expect Trump to name VOTE to lead the Office of Management and Budget, or OMB. VOTE wrote the section of Project 2025 that covers the presidency,

calling for aggressive use of the vast powers of the executive branch to bend or break the bureaucracy to the presidential will, and identifying the OMB as the means of enforcing the president's agenda. Vote was Trump's OMB director during the end of his first term and tried to remove the civil service protections that have been in place since 1883 to protect federal workers from being fired for political reasons. That plan, known as Schedule F, would have affected about 88% of the federal workforce. One of the first things Biden did when he took office was to rescind Trump's executive order making that shift. Like that earlier attempt, Project 2025 leans heavily on the idea that personnel is policy,

and that idea illuminates the choices the Trump team is making. Trump has refused to sign the official documents required by the 2022 Presidential Transition Act. Those documents mandate ethics commitments and require the incoming president to disclose private donations. They also limit those donations. Without the paperwork, Trump appointees cannot start the process of getting security clearances through the Federal Bureau of Investigation. The team says it's planning to do its own vetting of its candidates instead. Claiming they have a mandate, Trump's people have said they are launching a hostile takeover

of the American government on behalf of the American people. But as voting numbers continue to come in, Trump's majority has fallen below 50% of voters, meaning that more voters chose someone else than chose Trump on November 5th. Those results are far from being in mandate territory. The U.S. Constitution charges Congress with writing the laws under which the American people live, and the President with taking care that the laws be faithfully executed. Since 1933, Congress has created an extensive system of agencies that regulate business and provide a basic social safety net. Congress will say, for example, that the U.S. needs an agency to protect the environment, like the Environmental Protection Agency established under Republican President Richard M. Nixon, appropriate money for it, oversee its leadership, and then trust those leaders to hire the personnel

necessary to carry out its mission. Regulations and social welfare programs and the agencies that provide them are broadly popular. Think how hard it has been for members to get rid of Social Security, for example. So Congress trims at the edges rather than abolishing them. As the U.S. budget has grown, they often bear the brunt of accusations that the government spends too much, although what has really caused the budget to operate deeply in the red is the tax cuts for the wealthy put into place by presidents George W. Bush and Donald Trump. Right-wing leaders who want to continue cutting regulations and taxes are newly empowered by Trump's victory in the 2024 election and they're turning to a quirk of the government to enable them to work around Congress.

Since the first administration of President George Washington, agencies created by Congress have lived in the executive branch. If, as Vought and others argue, the president is the absolute authority in that branch, Trump can do whatever he wants with those agencies and the civil servants, the bureaucrats, who run them. In an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal today, billionaires Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy laid out their plans for cutting the U.S. government. Neither of them has ever held elected office, but they see that as an advantage, not a downside.

We are entrepreneurs, not politicians, they write. We will serve as outside volunteers, not federal officials or employees. Trump has named them to the Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGGI. Despite the department name, DOGGI is not an official government agency, which would require ethics disclosures, but rather an advisory panel. Their op-ed begins by redefining congressional authority to government agencies who view themselves as immune from firing thanks to civil service protections.

This, they say, imposes massive direct and indirect costs on taxpayers. Thankfully, they continue, we have a historic opportunity to solve the problem. On November 5th, voters decisively elected Donald Trump with a mandate for sweeping change and they deserve to get it. While politicians have abetted and entrenched in ever-growing bureaucracy, they write, they will work with the OMB to

identify regulations that they claim Trump can issue an executive order to stop enforcing. This would liberate individuals and businesses from illicit regulations never passed by Congress and stimulate the US economy, they write. Should Trump want to cut things that Congress wants to fund, they claim that Trump will simply refuse to spend those appropriations, challenging the 1974 Impoundment Control Act

that declared such withholding illegal. Musk and Ramaswamy reiterated their support for cutting programs that are not currently authorized, although budget experts note that such a lapse is a tool to permit adjustments to programs Congress has, in fact, authorized. And have also pointed out that one of the top items on that list is health care for veterans.

Cuts to all these programs will naturally mean extensive cuts to the federal workforce. With a decisive electoral mandate and a 6-3 conservative majority on the Supreme Court, they write, Doggie has a historic opportunity for structural reductions in the federal government. We are prepared for the onslaught from entrenched interests in Washington. We expect to prevail. Now is the moment for decisive action. They conclude by asserting that

there is no better birthday gift to our nation on its 250th anniversary than to deliver a federal government that would make our founders proud, which is one heck of a conclusion to a blueprint for taking the power of American lawmaking from the Congress, where the framers put it, and delivering it into the hands of an extraordinarily powerful president, acting on the advice of two unelected billionaires, one of whom wasn't born in the United States. In the vein of getting rid of regulations, today the chief executive of Delta Airlines

said he expected the Trump administration would be a breath of fresh air after the Biden administration's consumer protection laws that he called government overreach. Meanwhile, in Washington, the Senate has been confirming President Joe Biden's judicial confirmations easier.