Some Modest Proposals for President Trump

President-elect Trump hit the ground running following his election a month ago. He has already nominated his cabinet and several ambassadors, selected members of his White House staff, and heads of various agencies well in advance of Inauguration Day. In addition, he has fired off warnings to Canada and Mexico and to terrorists in the Middle East. He has appointed Vivek Ramaswamy and Elon Musk to ferret out waste and abuse in the federal budget. He has a list of executive orders he will issue directly after taking office on January 20. He has ambitious plans. He also has inherited a mess to clean up.

Many powerful figures, some of them former foes, are lining up to visit the president-elect to get on his good side or suggest ideas for him to pursue. The window for getting things done appears to be open, at least for a time. It won’t last long; he has a year, maybe a year and a half, to strike before opposing forces gather to oppose him. He knows he must strike fast and hard while the opportunities are in front of him.

Bearing all of this in mind, below are a few unsolicited suggestions that friends and colleagues, all sympathetic to the new administration, have bandied about in recent weeks in hopes that some of them might be adopted.

To wit:

1. Fire, remove, or ask for the resignations of all Biden political appointees on day 1 of your administration—all of them, without exception. Any holdovers will block or frustrate your initiatives. That happened last time around. Biden’s people are not your friends.

2. Have a plan to take over all of the main departments on day 1, even if some of your cabinet secretaries have not been confirmed by the Senate. That may involve temporary appointments or deputies acting in your name. Your lawyers will know how to accomplish that. Time will run out soon enough.

3. It is not a good idea to communicate with your cabinet secretaries via the press or social media. That makes their jobs more difficult, as it gives opponents in government and in the press time and opportunity to mobilize in opposition. Instead, invite your attorney general to the White House once a week, or every other week, to discuss privately what you would like to see and what she can get done. That might work with other key secretaries at the State, Treasury, and Defense departments.

4. Freeze all federal contracts and grants for 90 days pending review and approval by cabinet secretaries and heads of agencies. Many of these grants and contracts go out to left-wing groups that either waste the money, use it to lobby for more federal spending—or both. Many of these grants and contracts go to “DEI” groups to sow mischief around the country. They can be stopped.

5. It would be wise to begin by killing off a few smallish federal programs, per recommendations from Musk and Ramaswamy. This will save some money for taxpayers. But more important is to show that it can be done. Many people have never seen a federal program or agency zeroed out and do not believe it can be done. Advocates in Washington say that there is no point in killing a small program because it does not save much money. They also say that it is impossible to cut large programs because they affect so many people. Therefore, they conclude, it is impossible to get rid of anything in Washington. They should be proven wrong. You might start by eliminating spending for the National Endowment for the Arts, the National Endowment for the Humanities, and the National Endowment for Democracy. In truth, these agencies have little to do with the arts, humanities, or democracy. They are mostly playpens for left-wingers and anti-Trumpers. This might save $1 billion, not a lot by government standards, but it would prove an important point. Some cuts are possible. Besides, it will be necessary to cut the smaller programs before addressing the larger ones.

6. It would be a mistake to talk about cutting Social Security, Medicare, or Veterans’ benefits. These programs help the people who voted for you; they will peel off if they think benefits will be cut (the press will be more than happy to tell them). There are ways to reform these programs without cutting benefits and services, but it will take some time to get there. Hit the “low-hanging fruit” (as above) before thinking about addressing the big programs.

7. There are many opportunities to pare back spending on agencies by cutting employees who are redundant and unnecessary. There are nearly three million federal employees, with as many as 90 percent of them still working from home three years after the pandemic ended, a sign that they are not really doing important work. Consider these few examples:

• The Environmental Protection Agency has 19,000 employees. The agency could do the job mandated by Congress with half that number.
• The Federal Reserve has 24,000 employees, nearly all Democrats, according to a recent report. Chairman Powell and his colleagues do not require a staff anywhere near that size.
• The Department of Energy has 14,000 employees, many of them devoted to blocking the development of U.S. energy supplies.

The list could go on: federal employment is a badly bloated operation, heavily staffed by partisans and advocates opposed to what a Trump administration plans to do.

8. Continue, as planned, to farm out as many departments and agencies as possible to locations around the country where they can operate in closer proximity to the people they are supposed to serve. There is no reason that the Department of the Interior should be based in Washington, rather than in (say) Boise, Laramie, or Salt Lake City. The Commerce Department could operate more effectively from Dallas or Denver than Washington. It would also be a good idea to relocate the FBI’s headquarters to Kansas City; we see what happened as a result of the Bureau’s immersion into the culture in Washington. Why is the Energy Department based in Washington rather than in Louisiana, Texas, or Montana?

9. The new president should look for ways to undermine the political influence of public employee unions across the country. Most of these unions operate in close association with the Democratic Party. As a result, the unions have politicized the schools through the teacher unions and the civil service through the influence of other unions (the Service Employees International Union, for example). It is one thing to form unions for the purposes of bargaining over wages, salaries, and working conditions. It is quite another thing to allow them to influence elections through which they politicize public service and elect the officials who will bargain with them. Phillip Howard has written an excellent book arguing that public employee unions violate the constitution and should be ruled illegal by the federal courts. That will not happen anytime soon. In the meantime, the new administration could use the federal grants system to disallow grants to state and local systems that allow public employee unions to influence elections. State and local governments should be encouraged to follow the federal model in regard to public employees and unions—to wit, they can bargain over salaries and wages but are prohibited from engaging in electoral politics.

10. Yes, by all means, purge the federal government of all “DEI” and related programs, cut off all contracts with operations that sponsor such programs, and forbid all contracts with or grants to such organizations. The Department of Education sends out federal funds to school districts across the country; those grants should be cut off for districts that operate DEI, race, and gender-based programs.

11. Send an order to the CIA directing the agency to put up a plaque in a conspicuous place in its headquarters, perhaps with a black border, listing the 51 former intelligence agents who lied to the public in 2020 about Hunter Biden’s laptop, with an inscription declaring that these agents disgraced their profession by a dishonest intervention into a national election. Also sign an order removing their security clearances, if they still have them. Finally, forbid any of them to receive employment, grants, or contracts during your tenure as president.

12. In regard to retribution: many say that any steps along these lines are “beneath the president” and that there are more important problems to address. Perhaps that is true. But note that the Justice Department did send Steve Bannon and Peter Navarro to jail for failing to respond to a congressional subpoena, something many Democrats have often done without consequence. They also tried hard to put you in jail. For these reasons, some degree of retribution is in order. Perhaps you should start by cleaning out the Justice Department of the partisan Democrats who are employed there. That is probably best done via private conversations with the new attorney general and by assigning a trusted lawyer on the White House staff to work with appointees in the Justice Department to figure out how that can be done. Much of this work may have to be done via public exposure, rather than through prosecutions. Did Jack Smith, Merrick Garland, Fani Willis, Alvin Bragg, Letitia James, and others conspire to bring prosecutions for the purpose of keeping you from campaigning for the presidency? Possibly—and, if so, it might constitute a criminal conspiracy. The House of Representatives has looked into this, and the Attorney General might do so as well.

13. Appoint a new “1776 Commission” chaired by Larry Arnn, President of Hillsdale College, to prepare a report on civics education across the nation with recommendations for improving it.

14. Please hold an inaugural ball in Butler, Pa., as a show of respect and support for the voters who put you in office and who stood by you while “the establishment” sought to take you out by legal and other means. You received nearly 70 percent of the vote in Butler County and just 6 percent in Washington, D.C.

15. Finally (for now), ignore the legacy propaganda press. They hate you and the entire MAGA agenda. You handled Kristen Welker on “Meet the Press” brilliantly, but there is no reason that the American people need to be exposed to CNN, MSNBC, The New York Times, and kindred anti-Trump organs. They are fake news. Fewer and fewer people pay any attention to them. Do not give them the respect they deny you.  Favor real news outlets and alternative media. Pull the broadcast license from CBS, which attempted to influence an election by fraudulently editing its interview with Kamala Harris. The media industrial complex believes it controls the flow of information.  Correct that misapprehension by favoring outlets sympathetic to you and what you are trying to accomplish for the American people.

These are just a few suggestions from friends who support the MAGA agenda.