The End Of Government As We Know It - From Shutdown To Reduction To Closure - Originalism And Welcome Laissez-Faire

Ronald Reagan famously said, 'Government is not the solution, it's the problem', and in one short, pithy sentence began the reversal of the FDR-era monolith.  It was FDR who open the sluice gates of the treasury to fund massive infrastructure and public works programs and to put people displaced by the Depression back to work.  Regardless of the outcome - economists are divided on the need and utility of such significant public spending - FDR created the bureaucracy, initiated the legislation, and set in motion the new American dynamic - aggressive progressivism. 

 

In the past progressivism was limited to specific causes.  Reformers like Debs, Lafollette, Gompers, and Brandeis focused on industrial inequalities and the need to right the balance between capital and labor.  The working man was front and center of the new collectivism - unions, collective bargaining, and the innate value of work was the triumvirate or the new generation.  

The right to work under favorable if not congenial conditions, and the equal right to air grievances without retribution were based on the idea of the dignity of labor.  There was something noble about the working man and something ignoble about the stock broker, the investment banker, and the real estate mogul. 

Since government was seen as the arbiter of that new value, the enforcer of new rules and regulations to assure a fair shake for the working man, and the stalwart defender of a communal, harmonious society in which no capitalist would absolutely rule, it is not a surprise that it grew apace.  If government could have a say in labor relations, then why not in every other aspect of American life.  Just as the worker needed protection from predatory, exploitive capitalism, so did American's wellbeing.  Health, welfare, education, and social services came quickly under government authority. 

LBJ accelerated the course of aggressive progressivism when he inaugurated his Great Society, a grandiose government program to end poverty.  Under his watch the poor, the marginalized, and the forgotten would be cared for, helped, and brought under the big tent of prosperity.  Billions of dollars poured out of the treasury to fund every social program imaginable.  It was a heady time, and few questioned the nature or efficacy of the spending.  Helping the poor, especially the black man, was an undeniable, absolute good, so any investment was a good investment. 

Of course this was just whistlin' Dixie, the first of the pie-in-the-sky idealistic assumptions about the role of government in assuring a just and equitable society.  The private sector was derogated by liberals.  Its profit motive was antithetical to commiseration and compassion, they said, and it must never stand in the way of the higher authority of the people, embodied in the state.  Yes, government would take private taxpayer monies to fund the generous programs for the poor, but this was part of the contract, each according his need and each according to his ability to meet it. 

The public sector grew and grew despite the warnings of conservatives who did their best to limit the growth of government and return as much power as possible to the private sector; but the great bureaucratic monolith had reached such as size that it was virtually impossible to trim, reduce, or eliminate.  It had a life of its own.  

Not only was big government the Controller of the Dole - responsible for implementing the huge programs of social welfare and infrastructure - it became the arbiter of the public interest, and slews of restrictive regulations were set in place to assure that the received wisdom on health, education, welfare, and public safety was applied universally and without question, 

Now the bureaucracy was truly a frightening thing, a monstrous organism with limitless power and authority.  True, programs were initiated by the President and the Congress, but it was the responsibility of the bureaucracy to implement them; and they did so at will and subject to their own initiative and political disposition. 

Government - the Congress and its handmaiden, the vast Washington bureaucracy - had become a great, ugly bolus of presumption and arrogant righteousness. 

Enter Donald Trump who understood this better than any president before him.  He saw that not only had government in all its forms become an oppressive, invasive monster; but that it threatened the very ethos of America - individualism, private enterprise, and personal responsibility.  Reducing the size, scope, and importance of government would not only be a money-saver, returning billions of dollars of taxpayer monies to their rightful owners, but would reset the moral compass of the nation. 

The man was serious, and within a few months of taking office he and his associate, the billionaire Elon Musk began to bulldoze the bureaucracy, cleanse the Augean stables of Washington, close the doors of the most inefficient, irresponsible, and unnecessary agencies. Even DOGE (Department of Government Efficiency) was surprised at what they found.  Program after program had been devised and implemented under the flimsiest of Congressional authority and never evaluated.  Millions of dollars wasted on schemes based on nothing more than political philosophy and idealism.

One after another hallowed government departments standing since the days of FDR, came under scrutiny.  The simple question, 'What are you doing, why, with what expected result and what observable outcome?' was asked for the first time; and there were few acceptable answers. 

Is a Department of Education really needed in one of the world's most decentralized educational systems?  Was a Department of Energy required in one of the world's most competitive markets?  Why was there a Department of Health when American health care is the most privatized in the world?

The Administration has taken a Libertarian approach.  'We are not against government per se.  You need to simply demonstrate objectively that it can perform stated tasks better and more efficiently than the private sector'; but of course Trump and Musk knew that the vast, tangled, ingrown, venal, and self-interested bureaucracies could never demonstrate that, and so they were scheduled for demolition. 

Now comes government shutdown - the periodic result of Republicans and Democrats unable to agree on key budget-related legislation.  In this case the Democrats have insisted that illegal aliens be afforded government health care, Medicaid, when Republicans have said that this goes counter to its core principles of restricting any and all public benefits to American citizens. 

Trump, true to form and as eager to reduce the size and influence of government by any means, has said that a government shutdown is a good thing, for it will enable him to get rid of thousands of needless and unnecessary jobs.  The Democrats are doing his job for him, and so be it. 

The Constitution prescribes only the military defense of the nation as a government responsibility; and only through political assumption and arrogation of authority has the ambit expanded to include the range of interventions up till now taken for granted.  Donald Trump, in keeping with his originalist political philosophy intends to return the country to the vision of the Founding Fathers.  The howls and cries from the Left are no more than that of children whose toys have taken away.  Their demand for a universal, pervasive, ineradicable public sector presence is folly. 

The Left is a disassembled, fractured, desperate lot.  Badly defeated by a foe they have labeled as Satanic, sent scurrying as the new President has made good on each and every one of his promises, and befuddled with his determination to destroy their arrogated center of power - the federal government - they can only turn to hysterical, predictable rants of 'tyranny...insurrection...autocracy'.  Their day and the day of big government are over. 

So, yes, there will be confusion at the airport as TSA officials have been kept home, leaf-peeping in the national parks and forests put on hold, and junk mail kept in post offices for a while; but all necessary to confirm the administration's absolute commitment to a reversal of policy, programs, and political ethos.