Anyone familiar with my work knows that I am not a big fan of bipartisanship between the Republicans and the Democrats in Congress. In the modern era, it just means the Republicans have caved and signed onto some odious legislation that saw them yielding a lot during “negotiations” and the Democrats not giving an inch.
A sincere quest for bipartisanship presupposes that there is some common ground to be found, which just isn’t reality in modern American politics. The Democrats have gone so far to the left that their “center” is somewhere that would make Karl Marx say, “Whoa.” Congressional Dems who make attempts to go to the actual center and work with Republicans eventually find themselves out of a job. True bipartisanship is a pipe dream because the worldviews of the Republicans and Democrats are light years apart.
Nowhere are the differences more evident than in the Democrats’ response to what President Trump and Elon Musk are doing with the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE). While fiscal conservatives shout “Finally!” and “Hallelujah!” the Democrats are donning funeral garb and acting as if Trump and Musk are out there running over puppies.
A recent article in The Washington Post takes an almost balanced look at DOGE’s goal of introducing efficiency by privatizing many government services — a longtime dream of those of us on the right side of the aisle. While the article surprisingly avoids too much editorializing, the authors did seek out some staunch defenders of the Bloated Secular Church of the Federal Bureaucracy:
Not all of the projects under consideration will be realized. But together, these efforts show that a new way of doing things is well underway, said Bob Hockett, a Cornell University law professor and senior counsel at investment firm Westwood Capital.
“They are rapidly turning the government into something more like a shareholder-controlled corporation,” he said.
He added: “What people like Elon Musk and Donald Trump don’t seem to realize is that the whole point of the public sector is to provide essential human goods without being constrained by shareholder profit demand.”
The implication there is that the public sector/bureaucracy is not beholden to — or constrained by — external forces. It would appear that Professor Hockett is unfamiliar with K Street lobbyists. In fact, what the federal bureaucracy behemoth needs more than anything is constraint, especially the fiscal kind. When the Democrats are in power, they have no qualms about printing Monopoly money to grow the government and handing a variety of bills to American taxpayers. Then, when any kind of restraint is even hinted at, they scream injustice.
DOGE has to do what it’s doing right now because the Democrats treat funding their pet parts of the bureaucracy like it’s a fiscal bacchanalia that glories in excess. The gluttonous federal bureaucracy has grown to such financially precarious proportions since the Obama years that the only remedy is a drastic course correction. Rather than counter with proposals of their own, Beltway Dems are doing the only thing they know how to do anymore, which is demonize any Republican who is trying to pull the country back from the brink of the abyss that the Biden years brought it to. There will be no rational, bipartisan discussion about the federal government because it’s sacred to the Democrats.
I wish it weren’t this way; I’m no more a fan of one-party rule than I am of the 21st century sham bipartisanship. Another common theme in my body of work is my often uncomfortable relationship with the Republican Party. The GOP is not without blame in this financial and bureaucratic mess, to be sure. Republicans don’t fetishize and worship the federal government like the Democrats do, however.
Related: Fingers Crossed That the Trump Effect on the GOP Lasts Far Beyond His Presidency
It would have been nice if there wasn’t so much federal bloat for DOGE to go after. The Democrats don’t play nice, however, and that’s how they got themselves into this mess.
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