Redefining The Swamp

President Trump has often talked about draining the swamp in reference to extricating Washington of its slimy life forms: career politicians, bureaucrats and entrenched special interests. The symbolism here is obvious, let the water out of the swamp and all of its slithering denizens will disappear. Put a tourniquet on taxes and build a damn around spending and the life blood and water of Washington will quickly dry up. The hope being that government will be smaller, more effective and transformed for the better as a result.

Sounds great, even effective, for the many upper level appointed officials and lobbyists, many of whom can be drained off like water out of a bathtub. But when it comes to the federal bureaucracy, the administrative state, something more than a simple draining will be required. As swamp drainers know, in order to make the land productive once the water is gone, the hard work begins: removing trees, unearthing roots, and disentangling vines. All of this in a hostile environment infested with snakes, poisonous plants and muck, lots of muck. My late professor James Q. Wilson, referred to the federal bureaucracy as the real government, in the sense that they were the ones that really do the work or the business of government. They don’t change every four years, though their guiding policies might, the way things get done and who does them pretty much stays the same. His overall point was to ask us the question, “How much does government really change?” The leaves on the trees might change from season to season, but the roots just keep getting deeper.

As the President has experienced during the Flynn affair, the deeply rooted bureaucracy has a life of its own. It can generate leaks, slow down applications, trample on civil rights, and investigate political opposition. It can even feed information to shadow governments in order to thwart the efforts and nascent momentum of the Trump administration during its critical first 100 days. I believe this is for two reasons, both of which are bad. Federal workers lean overwhelmingly left in their politics and are accordingly predisposed to favor such presidents, policies and practices, and disfavor others. Notwithstanding the professionalism of many civil servants, human nature is heavily influenced by personal allegiances. Second, overtime bureaucracies act to perpetuate their own existence. As Thomas Jefferson said, “The natural order of things is for government to increase and liberty to decrease.” Donald Trump is disruptive. He was elected to be so. He is already doing so. As such he is a threat to everything established and entrenched in including both political parties, suckling special interests, and the tenured federal workforce. It really seems like no one has an incentive to work with him, and, on the contrary, to do just the opposite.

Part one: So, with the deck stacked against him, I propose that Mr. Trump do what he does best in situations like this, go on the offensive. The President should take the bureaucracy head on by following Reagan’s example in dealing with PATCO. As the air traffic controllers who dared president Reagan to fire them as they walked off their jobs, so Mr. Trump can reduce a counterproductive and bloated bureaucracy by radically reducing their ranks. While the analogy is not perfect, in that federal workers are not overtly striking, all too many are covertly resisting, leaking, or feeding the opposition. The rules of engagement need to be redefined.

The President should fire, downsize, or non-renew a significant portion of the federal work force. How much should he cut? I’m willing to be generous but the word transformational keeps coming to mind. How about 50%, isn’t that really beginning to transform something profoundly. Perhaps then we’ll see whether Washington’s glass is half empty or half full. Some may think these measures draconian, but seriously, how much would anyone’s life in main street America really be changed for the worse, and probably for the better. Sure some government employees will suffer disruptions, but my guess is that their safety net is far more extensive than imagined. They may also come to appreciate what the rest of us deal with in the private sector as a fact of life: downsizing, reduction in force, and streamlining, call it what you will. In the PATCO saga, the aviation industry was in turmoil for a brief period of time and passengers faced flight cancelations and delays across the country. But the call for replacement employees went out across the country, from retired personnel to new recruits, my then college roommate among them, and seemingly within weeks things were functioning again. Within months the entire affair was practically a non-issue, except that is was a defining Reagan victory, early in his presidency, and that he showed the world what it really means to draw red lines in the sand. Was it just coincidence that the Berlin Wall and evil empires were crumbling in the years to follow?

So here too, there will be short term inconveniences. The bureaucrats might once again flex their muscle as in the last government shut down when they rushed to bar veterans from parks not even run by the federal government. perhaps immigration applications take a little longer to process, maybe an even longer wait time at some already useless IRS help desk, who knows, maybe even longer lines at the quasi-governmental post-office, and heaven forbid, perhaps a delayed transfer payment or two (but I doubt it). But for the average Trump voter, the people that make the country work day in and day out, those of us who aren’t beholden to, or dependent on, the GOVERNMENT, i.e. those of us in the middle, how much will our lives actually be affected if 50% of the federal work force were to take a hike in one of Obama’s newly created national parks? I think I can hear someone saying “Probably very little, believe me, very little.” I, for one, am I’m willing to roll the dice and find out. Just like the PATCO experience taught us, the inconvenience is temporary, but the benefits are lasting.

Part Two: In their place and only as necessary, the President should hire a cohort of people from outside of the beltway, preferably people who’ve never worked in government before and who have solid experience in the private sector, i.e., people who don’t really like government and who have a seasoned distrust of it. Some might say that these newbies would be ineffective because they don’t know the system and how things work. Precisely. The system is bloated, broken and does not work, except for the bureaucrats and elected officials who fill the chairs and sit behind the desks, counting their pensions, and exempting themselves from all of the laws and programs they force upon the rest of us, such as social security and Obamacare. And as for the knowledge of how things work, how difficult can it be? Former President Obama is proof positive that even the Presidency is an entry-level position, absolutely no prior experience in anything is necessary.

My faith in the American people’s ability to rise to any challenge is immeasurable. This time is no different. I believe there is an army of highly qualified people from all sorts of backgrounds who would answer the call to come to Washington in order to serve in such capacities, either for a few years or as a career if needed. Think of the talent that exists in America: business executives, middle managers, self-made entrepreneurs, small business owners, tradesman and even blue-collar workers, all of those wonderful, taxed individuals who make the country work despite leviathan’s relentless desire to devour the fruits of their labor. These people need not just be seasoned professionals but young and old and working class as well. The President has already identified one such talented individual in his son-in-law, Jarrod Kushner, whom he’s willing to charge with the formidable task of achieving Mideast peace. There are many others like him in the private sector. And why not, young blood and a fresh perspective. It worked for Jobs, Gates, and Zuckerberg and a slightly older Walton, who transformed entire industries by redefining how things should be done. There’s people like President Trumps newest friend in Florida, Gene Huber and old favorites perhaps like Joe the Plumber. Let’s return the wealth to the taxpayer, Joe.

I’m sure there are laws in place now that might prevent such radical overhauls of the federal bureaucracy. After all, having a federal civil service job is akin to having tenure for a modern university professor. My point exactly. Just how many of these professors vote Republican, less than 5%? How many more are radically left? How many of their acolytes are taught American Exceptionalism or the virtues of capitalism over all other forms of economic systems? The analogies run as deep with entrenched forces within labor unions as well. Each of these entrenched institutions is decidedly pro-bureaucracy, pro-status quo and pro-democrat party, hence, pro-big and bloated government.

So how do carry out the plan? First force government to justify itself at every turn. Executive orders can be issued like the hiring freeze already in place along with the requirement to repeal one or more existing regulations for every new regulation that is passed by any agency or Congress. As in the private sector, merit systems for federal employees can be implemented to weed out dead wood. Cost-benefit analyses can be mandated for all new regulations and laws. Our government is so large that there are often dozens of offices that do the same thing. These are just territorial fiefdoms within departments and agencies. Eliminate all but one….then link all of their websites to the one remaining agency.

Finally, and perhaps most importantly, laws can be changed. As we’ve heard before, elections have consequences. The nice thing about controlling all 3 branches of the government is that we are in a position to change any civil service hiring and firing criteria that we desire. We just nee the will do to so. However, should that prove too much for an establishment heavy Congress, the President can employ the practice of self-selection by performing what I will call a reverse-coup. A recent article in the Wall Street Journal advocated moving entire federal agencies to depressed areas deep within fly over country. How many federal employees would leave their jobs if the EPA were to be moved to Detroit or Cleveland? Move the DOE to North Dakota or Oklahoma. Not only would you winnow out the number of established bureaucrats who would be willing to make the transition, you’d have a vast pool of fresh blood in the local labor pool willing to take on these new responsibilities. Now that would put a new meaning the of the idea of urban renewal.

The swamp is not irredeemable. It can be re-invented. With a little creativity and a lot of resolve we can give new meaning to that basket of deplorables.