Jumping right in at Project 2025, page 43: The Executive Office. “The President must set and enforce a plan for the executive branch. Sadly, however, a President today assumes office to find a sprawling federal bureaucracy that all too often is carrying out its own policy plans and preferences – or, worse yet, the policy plans and preferences of a radical, supposedly “woke” faction of the country.”
That’s in the first paragraph of the discussion. It’s important to bear in mind that the majority of functions of the Federal government have been assumed and managed in response to Congressional action, in response to voter demands. So when P25 goes on to complain that various agencies have too much power, simultaneously demanding that power be returned to “the American people” (p 44), it is setting up an existential conflict acknowledged thus: “Success in meeting that challenge will require a rare combination of boldness and self-denial: boldness to bend or break the bureaucracy to the presidential will and self-denial to use the bureaucratic machine to send power away from Washington and back to America’s families, faith communities, local governments, and states.”
Whoa.
First, the notion of handing complete decision-making power to the presidential will is in flagrant disregard of the governmental structure set out in our Constitution and contradicts previous statements in P25 itself. Second, it’s a fist-pump for dictatorship. Remember how DJT stated on the campaign trail that he intended to be a dictator from day one?
When a candidate says shit like that, you should believe him.
Before I leave that paragraph, let me add: America’s families, generally speaking, do not want the individual responsibility of making and carrying out governmental policy, organizing and managing public services, or otherwise governing themselves. That’s why this is a democratic republic in which we vote for representatives to do that work for us. Anarchy (what you get when individuals govern themselves) has never been a popular option.
Let me further add, faith communities have absolutely no business taking any active role in government, because: our First Amendment forbids it. They can advise, they can argue, they can offer services the government does not; they may not act in a governmental role or be the providers of services the government owes to its taxpayers.
When faith communities have the power to govern, you get the Salem witch trials and today’s Afghanistan.
The discussion continues (pp 44-67, including notes), starting with the Office of Management and Budget, suggesting ways to game the apportionment system (i.e. distribution of funds) so that only those agencies and initiatives that the President likes will get any money, with the direct collusion of the Office of General Counsel (that’s the office that will be busy spending tax dollars to impeach past administration staff and file lawsuits against progressive interests outside Washington). On page 46, fleeting reference is made to the $31 trillion dollar national debt and the President’s budget.
On page 47, we get a list of the six functional units let by Resource Management Offices: National Security; Natural Resources, Energy, and Science; Health; Education, Income Maintenance, and Labor; Transportation, Justice, and Homeland Security; and finally Treasury, Commerce, and Housing. “…because each RMO is responsible for formulating and supervising such a wide range of policy details, many granular but critical policy decisions are effectively left to the career professionals who serve across Administrations.”
P25’s solution to this (to the problem, that is, of having career professionals in charge, i.e. people who know what they are doing) is to … appoint more people! Extra deputies, who would be in charge of direction and oversight, meaning making sure the various units are acting only as the President wants.
How is this reducing the size of government? I guaranteed you each of those new deputies would be paid at least $100K, plus a fat Federal benefits packages, plus whatever other incentives DJT might offer to their home cities and states, not to mention their personal businesses. The section on the Executive Office contains many suggestions for adding new personnel answerable directly to the President.
Moving on. Page 48 lists the management offices, another layer of bureaucracy, which P25 wants to fill with personal (not party) loyalists for the purpose of steering apportionments and stripping regulations.
Page 50: “The next President should work with Congress to pass significant regulatory policy and process reforms, which could go a long way toward reining in the administrative state.”
Taken at face value, this is both true and possible. The problem remains that most functions of the Federal government are functions that citizens have demanded. Congresspersons, who in general can look forward to a much longer political career than can a second-term president, even those Congresspersons who are true believers, are going to think hard about cutting government functions that their constituents value.
The discussion continues with wonky details about which executive offices and councils work with which others for which purpose, up to and including the office of the Vice President. All this bureaucratic structure is useful information for progressives who want to make their own detailed recommendations. And we should.