There are only a few days left until the start of what we anticipate will be a new era of smarter and more efficient governing. President Trump is poised to make truly transformative changes to the way our government operates.
But we’ve heard all this before from incoming Administrations. It has rarely been the case that all the grandiose plans of the new leadership have fully come to fruition. Roadblocks are legion, and the situation right now is no different in that regard than it was in the past.
Beyond the normal speedbumps1 facing any new President, Trump must contend with three other significant obstacles in the present context:
Biden’s Last-Minute Firebombs:
Almost immediately after the November election, President Biden very publicly touted that he was committed to a peaceful transfer of power and a “smooth” transition. With uncharacteristic speed and graciousness, he cast himself as a mature, patriotic steward of democracy, behaving in a vastly superior fashion to the way outgoing President Trump behaved in 2020. Nothing could possibly have been more dishonest and further from the truth.
Almost daily since the election, Biden (or more likely Biden’s “handlers”) has been doing everything possible to impede a peaceful transfer of power. Some examples include banning offshore drilling on 625 million acres of federal waters, releasing 11 terrorists from Guantanamo Bay to Oman, defying the Supreme Court by again attempting to forgive more student loans, and commuting the death row sentences of 37 murders – including one who shot a 12-year-old girl multiple times and then sliced her throat.
These unnecessary and antagonistic actions are being done purely out of spite and contempt for the incoming Administration. With these deeds, Biden is confirming for all of us in real time his deep-seated dismissiveness of the will of the voters. His singular goal right now is to thwart the incoming Administration’s ability, by any means possible, to fulfill campaign promises. Whether Biden is even aware of these actions is a fair question given his debilitating, exponentially advancing cognitive decline. However, regardless of whether he himself or his staff are calling the shots, it is he who comes off as a despicable and profoundly dishonest human being.
Trump can undo some of these actions on his first day by way of executive orders. Reversing others will need legislative action in Congress. On that front, Trump will need to swallow hard and take some losses in order to keep Congress focused on his main policy goals. Lastly, and unfortunately, some of these parting shots from Biden cannot be reversed (e.g. commuting the sentences for an unprecedented 1,500 criminals).
The Deep State Monster:
Biden has ensured that every federal government department has been seeded with operatives standing ready to undermine the policy objectives of the new Trump administration. Thousands of deeply embedded traitors are poised right now to sabotage everything Trump does. We should also assume that numerous “landmines”, mostly in the form of last-minute rules and regulations, are ready to trigger at just the right moment to halt or at least delay implementation of Trump’s plans. This Deep State will by far be the most difficult obstacle for the new administration to overcome. Its members are well hidden, number in the many thousands, and are generally shrewd enough to avoid detection.
There is an immediate way to blunt some of the Deep State agenda. A large purge of personnel from the upper levels of management in every cabinet department must be the first order of business. Some clever tricks will need to be brought to bear since it is historically difficult to simply fire civilian government employees. Early retirement packages, buyouts, removal of security clearances, and reassignments to less influential positions are all part of the toolkit. Some organizations will require a more comprehensive purge than others – the Justice Department, FBI, and CDC immediately come to mind. Ideally, you would like to retain the genuinely good employees in those departments who are focused on the true mission and will work for, not against, their leadership. However, seasoned Deep State actors are skilled at posing as “friends” of Trump, and a keen eye will be necessary to spot them. This purge needs to be done quickly and ruthlessly.
The Deficit Catastrophe:
Our budget deficit has become a death spiral that can no longer be ignored. Here is where we are – in FY2024, all the tax revenue collected by the federal government was needed for the “must-pay” entitlement programs3 (e.g. Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security) and the interest payment on the national debt. After that, there was no money left over. All other government operations, including the military (which, amazingly, is not a “must-pay” program2) and every single Cabinet department, had to be funded with borrowed money. That borrowed money further increases the national debt, and as a result will further increase the interest payment on the debt for next year. For four years, Biden simply ignored this problem, instead claiming that all we needed was a gigantic tax increase.
Trump’s main weapon to attack this problem is the new Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE). While DOGE has already laid out some excellent cost cutting measures as well as plans to greatly reduce the size of government, they have not yet trained their sights on the only budgetary target that matters – entitlements. By far the largest expenditure of the federal government, entitlement spending is now three times greater than National Defense.
The DOGE team is smart enough to know that it is not mathematically possible to balance the federal budget without drastically reducing the cost of the entitlement programs. The dollar amount of the deficit and the amount spent on entitlements are both simply too large. If DOGE is serious about solving our fiscal nightmare, most of their effort must be centered on entitlements. Ignoring these programs because they have always been political hot potatoes would delegitimize much of the reason for the existence of DOGE.
The fix for the entitlement programs does NOT have to mean cutting benefits. The answer lies in eliminating all the waste, fraud, and abuse in these programs as well as privatizing some, or all, of their operations. This is where DOGE’s research and cost-cutting efforts should be focused.
We wish President Trump, his Cabinet nominees, and the DOGE team the best of luck, they will need it. We anticipate that the fight for Trump’s Make America Great Again agenda with be a battle royal: heads will roll (figuratively), blood will be spilled (administratively), and there will be media-generated drama galore. We look forward to parsing real progress towards a more perfect union from the distracting melodrama that will surely accompany this combat.
1 Getting grand, transformative legislation through a contentious, divided Congress is the most common obstacle facing new Administrations.
2 For the first 120 years of our nation’s existence, the federal budget was generally “balanced”, gravitating between years of small surpluses and small deficits. During that same time period, nearly the entire budget was spent on National Defense (which includes the military), a priority stated in the very first sentence of the Constitution. Today, Defense spending ranks 4th behind Social Security, Medicare, and the interest payment on the national debt.
3 “Entitlements” are not only Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid but also include – Food Stamps, Housing Assistance, Pell Grants, Child Nutrition, Head Start, Child Care, Energy Assistance, Child Tax Credit, Earned Income Tax Credit, Temporary Assistance for Needy Families, Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP), and Obamacare.