The court cases are coming fast and furious to attempt to stop President Trump’s efforts to streamline the federal government.
On Friday a federal judge in San Francisco put a halt on the administration’s plans to fire even probationary employees was unlawful. The Supreme Court upheld Trump’s ability to freeze foreign aid. In another ruling last week, a federal court lifted a restraining order therefore allowing the president’s changes to structure and staffing of the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID).
Then there are the 14 Attorneys General who lost in court to prevent President Donald Trump’s evaluation of agencies for reorganization, downsizing, and the elimination of waste, fraud and abuse. They were all Democrats who argued, as Judge Tanya Chutkin noted, without evidence of harm that the president couldn’t even make the reforms that don’t require Congressional authorization.
Why all these hysterics from State officials when there is bi-partisan agreement that there is waste in the federal government? Well, for one — Democrats’ last remaining, reliable constituency, are the public employee who fill their campaign coffers, attend their rallies, canvas neighborhoods and wear their t-shirts.
These public employees, make more than private sector workers, have greater employment protections, are practically immune from accountability and have Cadillac benefits for life.
The protests, the threats of violence in the streets, being subjected to Chuck Schumer’s chants and Elizabeth Warren’s shrill rants have everything to do with protecting their most favored constituency. It’s like some kind of perverted collective defense agreement. Reforms that impact any public union could lead to weakening the power of others, like the teachers’ unions.
That would spell disaster for central planners and the far-left.
Democrats at the state level are hyperventilating because they’re afraid the gravy train back to their jurisdictions is going to stop. Many of the top complainers about Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) are states with the worst economies, the most public debt, and the most bloated budgets with the most generous welfare programs.
More likely than not, they are or contain sanctuary jurisdictions for illegals.
Here’s the reality. There’s no evidence that their funding will get drastically cut or money won’t be repatriated to their states. In fact, much of it should. They’ve just been baptized into the corrosive statist culture that wants top-down government and the easiest flow of money to pay for costs that their state legislatures are unprepared to handle.
Cutting the size of the federal government, however, is a state’s rights issue. What Trump is attempting to do is restore federalism.
The federal government and, therefore, the federal taxpayer was never meant to be a crutch for states who didn’t adequately prepare for expenditures.
Remember, we didn’t have a formal, national income tax until the ratification of the sixteenth amendment in 1913. It’s time we got back to a strict constitutional approach to spending and taxation. That means a strict interpretation of the “Necessary and Proper Clause” of the constitution as Alexander Hamilton argued.
These reforms should be framed as a state’s right play by Republicans. If they care about the Constitution, governors and state legislators should be thrilled that Trump is trying to stop that giant sucking sound that is Washington from hitting them where it hurts.
The federal government should be diminished, and states shouldn’t be forced to participate in some kind of Hunger Games for money tied to Washington’s regulatory strings. It gives the federal government far too much power.
Our founders explicitly cautioned against a despotic central government, but we have simply acquiesced to living with this Constitutional crisis for far too long. The growth of federal power has sapped state resources and the public’s pockets for more than a century now. The expansion of federal spending in the last 50 years since the failed Great Society programs has brought the nation to the brink of insolvency.
More money means more programs. More programs mean more people to administer them. It’s a vicious cycle that comes with the byproduct of less transparency and accountability. The federal government has become a jobs program administered by union bosses who protect their workers at all costs to the American people.
No one is entitled to a government job. There is no right to employment generally, let alone taxpayer-funded government employment. If you’re that competent, you’ll find alternative work.
The hysterical reaction by Democrats and the press is our entitlement society on full display. It is that entitlement that has made the nation weaker and allowed it to creep toward both socialism and Gomorrah. It is also weakening our Constitution and the concept of federalism.
Every budget, every agency and every program needs to be scrutinized for effectiveness and waste. Those who oppose that, are furthering a constitutional crisis that already exists — where Washington’s unelected class of bureaucracy runs the country from the top down.
Elon Musk is right: If we can’t get control of the administrative state, its costs and it’s overreach there is no sense having elections. The Republic cannot be sustained. Perhaps that’s what today’s Democrats want anyway.
Tom Basile is the Host of ‘America Right Now’ on Newsmax, conservative columnist, speaker, author of Tough Sell: Fighting the Media War in Iraq and a former Bush Administration official. Follow him on X @Tom_Basile. Learn more at www.TomBasile.com
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