New Trump Era Brings Virtue and Greatness
cut Medicare, Social Security, or defense spending. So, with the total sum of discretionary fed- eral spending now at $1.7 trillion, Musk’s stated goal of reducing federal spending by $2 trillion an- nually would appear far-fetched. Musk and Ramaswamy un-
derstand the dilemma, and they have a plan to attack it. Writing in a November Wall Street Jour- nal opinion piece, they clarified they’re doing much more than de- termining which heads will roll. Instead, their efficiency pan-
el is identifying “thousands” of senseless federal regulations that will soon be declared null and void. Once that happens, the depart-
ments that implement those regu- lations would also be exposed. They plan to focus “particu-
larly on driving change through executive action based on exist- ing legislation rather than by passing new laws.” Musk and Ramaswamy want
all federal employees to return to working at their office instead of remotely. Since the lockdowns were lifted, studies show many nonmilitary employees only fight the beltway rush hour and report to the office two or three days per week. Trump’s “ham- mer team” said it’s high time for that to end. Another proposal is to relo-
cate some federal operations to “flyover country” outside the Ace- la corridor bubble — the area of the Northeast that stretches from Washington, D.C. to Boston. “There might be survivors of the administrative state,” former Ohio state Secretary Ken Black- well quipped, “who find that in- stead of working in McLean, Vir- ginia, they’re working in a small city somewhere in Alaska.” Blackwell said it’s time for
the federal government to return to its roots as a meritocracy. “If
someone’s just shuffling papers and sitting at a desk exploring the internet at their work station — adios!” he said. “And emo- tionally and intellectually, hard- working Americans get that.” One tool Trump plans to use
to nudge federal spending safely out of orbit and back down to earth: impoundment. His Agen- da 47 maintains that for 200 years, the U.S. president had the power under the Constitution to simply halt unnecessary spend- ing by impounding those funds. “Very simply,” Trump de-
clared, “this meant that if Con- gress provided more funding than was needed to run the gov- ernment, the president could refuse to waste the extra funds, and instead return the money to the general treasury, and maybe even lower your taxes.” Trump said he’ll use im-
poundment “to squeeze the bloated federal bureaucracy for massive savings. This will be in the form of tax reductions for you. This will help quickly to stop inflation and slash the deficit.” Of course, unilaterally with-
holding funding that’s already been authorized is sure to trigger howls of outrage from Congress, and not just on the Democrat side of the aisle, either. For Trump’s belt-tightening to
hold up in court, he might have to persuade congressional allies to repeal the Impoundment Con- trol Act of 1974, a post-Nixon-era bill that curtailed the practice of presidential impoundment. But as the digits continue
to merrily spin on America’s National Debt Clock like the frames of a slot machine, one fact is increasingly clear: Just kicking the federal deficit fur- ther down the road is becom- ing too risky — especially for a president seeking to launch a prolonged era of U.S. prosperity.
MUSK/BRANDON BELL/GETTY IMAGES / RAMASWAMY/ANNA MONEYMAKER/GETTY IMAGES / FRACKING/©STUDIO ONE-ONE/GETTY IMAGES / MIGRANTS/JOHN MOORE/GETTY IMAGES CAPITOL/TIM GRAHAM/GETTY IMAGES / MAGA HAT/BRANDON BELL/GETTY IMAGES
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