Expect the D.C. Administrative State to Defend Itself by Any Means Necessary

American Thinker ^ | 24 Nov, 2024 | William Sullivan

[MtnClimber]

We do not live in anything resembling the nation that was envisioned by our Founders, and for the first time in modern American history, we seem to have reached a consensus in recognizing that fact.

This was just dramatically evidenced in a presidential election, in which a broad coalition of voters from the political left and right voted overwhelmingly for a Donald Trump, who promised to create a “government efficiency commission” to be headed by Elon Musk.

SNIP

Lowi observed, writes Mark Steyn in After America: Get Ready for Armageddon, that the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) and the Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) were “set up by a Congress that didn’t identify a single policy goal for these agencies and ‘provided no standards whatsoever’ for their conduct.”

“Where do you go to vote out the CPSC or OSHA?” Steyn asks. You can’t, of course, and while that’s obviously the point today, it was apparently less obvious back then. Unelected, unaccountable, faceless bureaucrats have been given multi-billion-dollar budgets by Congress to craft policies that infringe upon even the most mundane aspects of American life.

Steyn recalls that the “end-of-life counseling” language (i.e., death panels, or that maybe you’d be better off “taking a painkiller,” according to Barack Obama) was eventually stripped from 2010’s wildly unpopular Obamacare legislation after it became public knowledge. But that doesn’t really matter, Steyn says, because there are over 1,000 references within the bill to all the things that the Secretary of Health and Human Services “shall” or “may” determine.

[AndyJackson]

There is a key point here that folks utterly fail to understand. Federal employees are certainly a problem and there are too many of them. But as a fraction of federal spending they are but a small part. The huge problem and what makes the deepstate a leviathan is the use of support contractors as not just an augmentation of the federal bureaucracy, but as a force multiplier. While there is a lot of inefficiency in defense contracting, the manufacturers of advanced weapons systems are actually providing stuff we need, if badly. The real waste are all the millions of people who provide inside the beltway consulting on how to do stuff without actually doing anything. There are towering buldings around the DC beltway filled with these people, but no one actually builds anything within 100 miles of DC.

Oh and then there is the Pentagon procurement which is part and parcel of this bigger problem.

But stop paying inside the beltway folks huge sums on contract to do what feds are not allowed to do and you will get rid of a lot of the problem.

Sure feds are a problem. But fed salaries don't pay for $10M homes in McClean VA and Potomac Md.

[Gay State Conservative]

DC Administrative State? That’s a pretty highbrow way of saying “Swamp”!

[mikey_hates_everything]

I know of contractor program managers working for GDIT making north of $400k. Too many of their bosses are retired Generals and SIS/SESs making even more. Fed salaries are capped at $191k.

[Carl Vehse]

"Expect the D.C. Administrative State to Defend Itself Commit Treason by Any Means Necessary"

There. Fixed it.

[UnwashedPeasant]

We are overdue for another 9/11, with national security agencies having been focused on political enemies.

[damper99]

None will comply willingly or allow workers to be fired from the fed payroll. There are not enough courts or time to prosecute those that refuse. Even if there were, DC juries won’t convict anyone resisting. They’ll play the long game to run out the clock.