DOGE goes for the Death Star
— Peter St Onge, Ph.D. (@profstonge) November 26, 2024
Elon and Vivek just laid out their plan to effectively nullify the administrative state, its army of bureaucrats, and its trillions of waste. pic.twitter.com/8MntiNHJgy
The Department of Government Efficiency, DOGE, is going straight for the jugular for the exhaust ports on the Death Star. Last week, Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy co-wrote an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal laying out their strategy for radically shrinking the federal government, the unelected occupying Army that Lords over our Fair Republic. Beyond auditing the $500 billion in pure waste and fraud, there are two key parts. First is two recent Supreme Court decisions that invalidated nearly the entire administrative state because it was not, in fact, passed by Congress, who is supposed to write all the laws not just the fun ones. The second is the long-established precedent that the president can get rid of government workers who are not needed, a so-called "reduction in force." Put them together and you get a beautiful three-step process: first, get rid of the unconstitutional regulation that renders the bureaucrats redundant so assess minimum Staffing needs and force reduce away then the leftover money reverts to Treasury to cancel out the leftover deficit, or dare we dream pay down debt if greedy Congress things can keep their paws to themselves. I covered in a recent video how the Loper-Bright decision alone renders nearly every single Federal Regulation unconstitutional since just 50 of the tens of thousands of rules passed per year are actually authorized by Congress despite having the force of law. The other 99% are unconstitutional. That means DOGE and Trump are simply enacting the will of the Supreme Court, which the Rogue Biden Administration ignored. So concretely how will this play out? So DOGE will present Trump a list of regulations that overstep Congressional authority, meaning ones that involve major policy decisions without explicit Congressional authorization. Trump can then instantly pause enforcement effectively nullifying the rule and then do a full review for formal rescission, getting rid of the rule, at which point if Congress really wants the rules, they are free to pass them in a law which they will not do for the same reason they never passed [it] in the first place. So nullifying thousands of rules would Rocket Fuel the economy but it would also automatically render tens of thousands of bureaucrats redundant. Trump being a good steward of the Treasury can then fire them, and given the federal workers earn six figures with gold-plated benefits twice the tax-paying plebs, that alone returns billions to taxpayers. But that is just the beginning because the problem isn't the salaries; the problem is the regulations themselves and the control it gives.
So I've covered how regulations massively increase the cost of everything you buy. To illustrate, Biden was proposing rules that would increase the cost of a washing machine by $200, a furnace by $500, an air conditioner by $1,000. They've been piling this crap on for 40 years. One study estimated regulations add $10,000 to the price of a car. Gets worse. A study by the National Association of Manufacturers estimated regulations add $30,000 to the cost of hiring a manufacturing worker. They add $50,000 a year for small manufacturers. So not only does that mean little guys cannot compete, it drives all of them to China. All of that gone with the swipe of a pen.
Historically waste and fraud efforts get bogged down in the details and end up cutting a few embarrassing programs and then they peter out. This time looks very different. Elon and Vivek have correctly identified the thermal exhaust ports of the Death Star and they are going in.
