Reining in the Administrative State

Change is stressful – and it’s especially stressful these days for democrat politicians and their bureaucratic appointees, dare I say toadies, because they’re terrified of losing power come January 20^th .  Which is what Project 2025 is all about.  There is no question that some of the solutions offered in Project 2025 aren’t everyone’s cup of tea, but it is an honest attempt to address the border crisis, inflation, a stagnant economy, and rampant crime.  There are sections about taking on China, fixing our schools and reducing inflation, but mostly it’s about dismantling the Deep State and taking power from the elites and giving it back to the American people.

And key amongst the many aspects of Project 2025 is the not well understood Office of Management and Budget, an office that is absolutely essential to ensuring the implementation of the President Elect’s agenda.  The OMB’s primary responsibility is to assist the President in in overseeing the preparation of the Federal budget and evaluating the effectiveness of agency programs, policies, and procedures; it also works to ensure that agency reports, rules, testimony, and proposed legislation are consistent with the President’s Budget and with Administration policies.

In addition, OMB oversees and coordinates the administration’s regulatory, procurement, financial management, information technology, and information management policies.  In other words, OMB essentially acts as the central management hub for the Executive Branch, coordinating the administration’s policies across various departments and agencies to ensure they align with the President’s vision and priorities.

Its key functions include

• Budget development: Creating the President’s annual budget proposal by reviewing agency requests, setting funding priorities, and ensuring consistency with the President’s agenda.
• Policy evaluation: Assessing the effectiveness and efficiency of programs across different federal agencies.
• Regulatory oversight: Reviewing and coordinating proposed regulations from agencies to ensure they align with the President’s goals and are not overly burdensome.
• Performance management: Setting performance metrics for federal agencies and monitoring their progress.
• Procurement management: Overseeing government contracting and procurement practices.
• Information management: Coordinating the government’s use of technology and data

To say that OMB is critical to the effective functioning of government is an understatement because it’s not just about the budget.  While OMB oversees the structure and execution of the budget, it also has oversight powers over federal agencies and federal regulations to ensure the president’s orders are being followed.

~ Fact or Fiction? ~

Among the many falsehood promulgated by the left is that Project 2025 is Donald Trump’s plan for America, which is patently false, as is the notion that its authors want to terminate the Constitution, extend the government’s power over our daily lives, gut the democratic checks and balances on presidential power, ban books & curriculum about slavery, pack the Supreme Court (actually that’s a Biden/Schumer/Pelosi idea), and eliminate civil rights.  However, what it does want to do is remove DEI protections in government.

And the OMB can accomplish that by reining in the deep state and turning off the spigot on much of the spending that most Americans are unaware of.  It’s the job of the OMB to assess whether the various agency regulations are good, bad, too expensive, or if they could be done a better way.  As Trump’s former and now newly nominated head of the OMB, Russell Thurlow Vought,  recently said, “Presidents use the OMB to tame the bureaucracy, it’s the President’s most important tool for dealing with the bureaucracy of the administrative state, and Trump knows how to use it effectively.”  And an outstanding example of that, is what Vought wrote in the Project 2025’s Section I, Sub-Section II, (The Executive Office of the President of the United States), i.e., “the President should immediately revoke Executive Order 1402041 and every policy, including sub-regulatory guidance documents, produced on behalf of or related to the establishment and promotion of Biden’s Gender Policy Council.”  DEI policies are a colossal waste of resources that I’m certain have also been on the radar of Messrs. Ramaswamy and Musk.

The American president is tasked with limiting, controlling and directing the executive branch on behalf of the American people. However, this challenge is exacerbated by factors such as Congress’s decades-long tendency to delegate its lawmaking power to agency bureaucrats with the pervasive notion known as “expert independence” that protects so-called expert authorities from scrutiny.  So, it comes down to the Office of Management and Budget that allows the president to constitutionally check the power of the administrative state; and this is one check on the Washington bureaucracy that I fully expect to be in force come January 20^th .

Quote of the Day: “And when it rains on your parade, look up rather than down. Without the rain, there would be no rainbow. – G.K. Chesterton