An Open Letter to President-Elect Trump
Now is the moment to revive the motto of the old Gadsden flag: Don’t Tread on Me! It is time to direct that feisty spiritedness against the bureaucratic class who rule without our consent.
Dear President-Elect Trump,
I write to urge you to utilize the unparalleled platform of the Presidency and shape public opinion by exposing the administrative state for what it is: a profound threat to constitutional self-government in America.
For those who prefer listening over reading, here is an audio version of my open letter.
The single greatest obstacle to individual liberty in the United States today is our vast, sprawling administrative state. For the sake of clarity, let me define what I mean by this term.
Defining the Administrative State
The administrative state consists of the 15 executive branch departments—Agriculture, Commerce, Defense, Education, Energy, Health & Human Services, Homeland Security, Housing & Urban Development, Interior, Justice, Labor, State, Transportation, Treasury, and Veterans Affairs—that comprise more than 2,100 federal offices, agencies, bureaus, commissions, and other government entities, and employ nearly 3,000,000 unelected, unionized federal bureaucrats, many of whom issue and enforce regulations that are legally binding on citizens as if they were laws, even though regulations emphatically are not laws.
The administrative state also includes independent agencies within the executive branch, such as the Environmental Protection Agency, which operate outside the authority of the 15 main departments. As if all that is not enough, the reach of the administrative state extends to millions of charities and businesses that receive federal grants, contracts, transfer payments, and other forms of government subsidies. For these organizations, compliance means federal $.
Some parts of the administrative state—like the Department of Defense—can be constitutionally justified. After all, We the People, through our Constitution, delegated to Congress the powers “to declare war,” “grant letters of marque and reprisal”, “make rules concerning captures on land and water,” “raise and support armies,” “provide and maintain a navy,” and “to make all laws which shall be necessary and proper for carrying into execution the foregoing powers.”
If the Department of Defense is “necessary and proper” for carrying into execution those foregoing national defense powers, then, arguably, the Department of Defense is constitutional.
Many—such as the Department of Education, Department of Health and Human Services, Department of Housing and Urban Development—cannot be constitutionally justified. They are constitutionally illegitimate.
Waste
Both the constitutionally legitimate and illegitimate parts of the federal government are riddled with waste, all funded by other people’s money, including a national debt that places a crushing burden on our children and grandchildren. No generation of Americans has been as recklessly selfish as ours, spending far beyond our means and leaving our posterity a debt they can never repay.
These thousands of federal agencies and the millions of bureaucrats who staff them incentivize corruption and favoritism while accelerating the degradation of our culture. Federal bureaucracies have become indoctrination camps in which the nihilism, perversity, and purposelessness infecting our postmodern society are actively promoted, often under the guise of “diversity,” “equity,” and “inclusiveness” seminars.
The administrative state is now old and entrenched. Progressives have been building and expanding it since 1933. The interests vested in this bureaucratic behemoth are deep and widespread. Those who have grown wealthy from its cronyism, along with those whose careers are sustained by it, will fight with cunning and ferocity to protect their bureaucratic power.
You know this, Mr. Trump. Others reading this open letter may not.
Already, as President-elect, you are making bold decisions to shake up the bureaucratic blob in Washington, D.C. I support your efforts and I am prepared to assist any way I can. Having written extensively on the problems intrinsic to the administrative state—or what some refer to as “the swamp” or the “deep state”—I might offer valuable insight for this endeavor.
After you take the oath of office in January, it is vitally important to remember that anything you accomplish using your Article II powers as President can be undone by a future President.
Congress Matters
If we are to transform the progressive administrative state into something resembling a self-governing constitutional republic of liberty, we will need the cooperation of Congress.
Every executive branch agency was created by Congressional legislation and is funded through Congressional appropriations. Reducing a bureaucracy’s budget requires a spending act of Congress. Abolishing an agency requires a repealing act of Congress (or a Supreme Court ruling, which is unlikely).
With Congressional cooperation, we could strip agencies of their regulatory powers, transforming them into advisory bodies with no binding power—merely think tanks offering research to Congress.
Beyond statutory reforms, a Constitutional amendment might be necessary to ensure that such bureaucratic leviathans can never arise again. Both means—Congressional acts and Constitutional amendments—require broad and deep support from the American people.
Your Presidency, limited by the Constitution to a term of four years, will pass quickly. There are concrete actions you can take to expand individual liberty by reducing the burdens of the administrative state, and I am confident you will take them.
However, of equal—if not greater—importance is the need to expose the administrative state’s waste, lack of innovation, corruption, cronyism, power-mongering, and abuses of ordinary citizens.
Please, Mr. President, do not conceal these problems behind closed doors. Do not keep them hidden from public view. Instead, shine a bright light on the bureaucratic dysfunction, counter-productivity, and injustices taxpayers are forced to fund.
Spotlight
Imagine turning your efforts to drain the swamp into a reality show of sorts. Picture a series of televised or podcast interviews with the heads of various federal regulatory agencies. In front of millions of viewers, pose direct, pointed questions:
How many businesses did your agency harass or force to close last year?
How much do your regulations increase the cost of goods and services, and how do those higher prices impact the poorest Americans?
How many Americans suffer because a product, service, medicine, or technology that your agency prevents from reaching the market?
How many businesses go overseas for manufacturing because the costs of compliance in the U.S. are prohibitively high?
How many underperforming and outright bad employees are you unable to dismiss because of civil service protections?
As President, challenge senior bureaucrats, in front of a live national audience, to define “regulatory capture” and provide real-world examples. Watch as they squirm with discomfort.
You can render no greater service to the cause of freedom than by undermining the credibility of the progressive administrative state and reshaping public opinion so that Americans will no longer tolerate being ruled by unelected bureaucrats.
If you can ignite a movement that expands individual liberty by “unburdening” citizens from the power and reach of the administrative state, it will endure long after your time in office concludes.
Now is the time to revive the motto of the old Gadsden flag: Don’t Tread on Me! Now is the time to direct that feisty spiritedness against the bureaucratic class who rule without our consent. And there is no one better positioned to lead this charge than you, Mr. Trump, as the next President of the United States.
Respectfully,
Thomas L. Krannawitter, Ph.D.
Denver, Colorado
United States Citizen