Smashing Big Government and the Deep State for Vengeance and Profit
First you tell a lie. Then you repeat it. Again. And Again. Then It Becomes Truth
One of the evergreen tall tales about government is the notion that bureaucrats as a class are a big part of what is wrong for the US of A. Based on a plethora of individual anecdotes of wrongdoing and unpalatable behavior, politicians and pundits have regularly picked this low hanging fruit as a basis for reform.
As is true with many generalizations involving human beings, the intent and substance of these accusations are hyperbolic and often disconnected from reality. None-the-less, the glue that binds the incoming Trump administration together is a devotion to dissembling the modern day federal government.
Pop quiz time: How many people are employed by the federal government? Most people guess somewhere in the 20-30 million people range. And they are wrong. They also incorrectly think that government employment is growing.
So let’s get some facts out of the way:
The federal government employs 2.87 million people.
600,000 of those people are postal workers.
Defense and security agencies make up 70.6% of the federal workforce. (Not including intelligence services)
The percentage number of Federal employees hasn’t changed substantially in over 70 years.
80% of the federal workforce is outside the DC/MD/VA region.
The federal government spends about $271 billion each year on personnel costs.
Contractors cost the government $750 billion annually
Much of the Social Safety net is delivered via the tax code, not bureaucrats
The highest Return On Investment in government is tax collection.
Social Security has administrative costs that are about 0.5% of expenditures.
19.58 million people are working for state and local governments in the United States.
On the state level, where educators have expanded the number of employees, that number compared to actual population has fallen over the past 20 years.
So we have the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), spearheaded by entrepreneurs Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy, promising to cut $500 million from the federal budget and 75% of its employees (a savings of 4% of total spending).
Dylan Matthews at Vox:
The notion that the federal government is hopelessly bloated due to waste that every reasonable person wants to eliminate is an appealing myth, but it’s a myth. Government spending overwhelmingly goes to wildly popular programs like Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, veterans’ benefits, and the defense budget. You can’t make much of a dent in it without touching those areas, and once you touch them, you’re going to get immense backlash.
There have been other attempts at making government more efficient over the years, most of which ended up doing little because Congress refused to make the changes asked for.
Richard M. Nixon had his Ash Commission. Ronald Reagan had the Grace Commission. Bill Clinton had his National Performance Review, known as “reinventing government.
President Herbert Hoover led two efforts to identify inefficiencies and reorganize federal agencies. Congress reportedly approved 70% of the first panel’s 273 recommendations.
Guess what happened next.
The international model Ramaswamy is enamored with is Argentina. He tweeted on November 18: “A reasonable formula to fix the U.S. government: Milei-style cuts, on steroids.”
Milei is Argentina’s take on Donald Trump, and he won the presidency by promising to “fix” the economy, wielding a chainsaw at public events. In a year, the national deficit, that righties like to use as a whipping boy, disappeared. The International Monetary Fund was thrilled; a libertarian publications catering to the very wealthy have all tried hard to twist economic data for a positive spin.
As for Argentina’s people, there’s not-so-much enthusiasm. Poverty has increased to over half the population. The inflation rate has surged from 140% annually to 230%, causing real economic pain to the pensioners whose checks are frozen.
When Milei assumed office last year, he declared that conditions would worsen before things would get better; Musk similarly warned that DOGE’s recommendations may cause “temporary hardship.” That’s because Milei targeted the social safety net for cuts in government, and when DOGE gets some hard numbers not pulled from a billionaire's ass, that’s the only path they’re gonna see.
Many of the incoming cabinet members have little to no experience managing a large workforce and an entity with historical momentum.
Here’s Sidney Blumenthal, writing at the Guardian:
Certain common characteristics run through his cabinet of curiosities and horrors to mark them collectively unique among any cabinet of any president – alleged sexual misconduct and abuse, drug addiction, megalomania, authoritarianism, cultism, paranoia, white supremacy, antisemitism and grifting. Some nominees meet all these qualifications, others only two, three or four. For a few, it’s just plain and simple self-aggrandizing corruption.
Each of Trump’s appointees is there to savage a target on Trump’s hitlist. When he came to Washington he was a relative blank slate, despite hauling a baggage train of scandal from New York. Back then, Trump blithely spoke of getting away with shooting someone on Fifth Avenue. Now, it’s Pennsylvania Avenue, where six people died as a result of January 6. Trump has been in the business of making enemies of anyone trying to enforce the law. The federal cases against him will be dropped to follow the ruling of the US supreme court that he has absolute immunity for “official actions”. Liberated from accountability, Trump is building his government on revenge.
Quite apart from his appointees’ dearth of managerial experience and competence, they represent the antithesis of the core mission of the departments and agencies they have been named to oversee. They are not being appointed to run them efficiently, but to rule and ruin.
While loyalty to Trump is the main qualification for getting nominated, getting along with others isn’t being considered. The blowout between Musk and Ramaswamy will be epic. RFKjr running Health and Human Services is doomed to disaster.
Still, at this point Trump’s transition plans are supported by the public, according to a CBS/YouGov poll.
Robert F. Kennedy Jr. received the most positive reception, as 47% of respondents said Kennedy—controversial due to his vaccine skepticism and support for fringe health theories—is a good choice for Health and Human Services secretary, 34% said he’s not good and 19% said they haven’t heard enough.
Former Fox News host Pete Hegseth, who was accused of sexually assaulting a woman in 2017, had a somewhat tougher reception: 33% of Americans said Hegseth is a good choice for Defense secretary, 28% said he’s not a good choice and 39% said they haven’t heard enough (Hegseth has denied the allegations against him).
The collateral damage caused by gross incompetence and random destruction will be inflicted in waves upon the American people unfortunate enough not to be wealthy.
And that’s okay with Donald Trump. He and his minions have declared war on the Constitution, the Bill of Rights, and the institutions of governance. They feel their class is entitled to rule, not the rubes of everyday America.
The character Craig Stephen Copland from the book "Sherlock Holmes Never Dies - Six New Adventures of the World's Greatest Detective," states "Every captain of industry knows that in chaos there is profit. And the greatest chaos of all is a good war.”
From Bitcoin to AI to banking, the potential profits are endless.