re: WSJ article from Musk/Ramaswamy on DOGE plan to reform government

quote:

---

When the president nullifies thousands of such regulations, critics will allege executive overreach. In fact, it will be correcting the executive overreach of thousands of regulations promulgated by administrative fiat that were never authorized by Congress. The president owes lawmaking deference to Congress, not to bureaucrats deep within federal agencies. The use of executive orders to substitute for lawmaking by adding burdensome new rules is a constitutional affront, but the use of executive orders to roll back regulations that wrongly bypassed Congress is legitimate and necessary to comply with the Supreme Court’s recent mandates. And after those regulations are fully rescinded, a future president couldn’t simply flip the switch and revive them but would instead have to ask Congress to do so.

---

Well put

quote:

---

When the president nullifies thousands of such regulations, critics will allege executive overreach. In fact, it will be correcting the executive overreach of thousands of regulations promulgated by administrative fiat that were never authorized by Congress. The president owes lawmaking deference to Congress, not to bureaucrats deep within federal agencies. The use of executive orders to substitute for lawmaking by adding burdensome new rules is a constitutional affront, but the use of executive orders to roll back regulations that wrongly bypassed Congress is legitimate and necessary to comply with the Supreme Court’s recent mandates. And after those regulations are fully rescinded, a future president couldn’t simply flip the switch and revive them but would instead have to ask Congress to do so.

---

quote:

---

Well put

---

Unless the Supreme Court completely reverses course, and I mean from recent precedent from 2020 confirming prior precedent on the issue, it's simply not correct.

Supreme Court reverses Trump admin's dismantling of DACA

quote:

---

In a major rebuke to President Trump, the U.S. Supreme Court has blocked the administration's plan to dismantle an Obama-era program that has protected 700,000 so-called DREAMers from deportation. The vote was 5-4, with Chief Justice John Roberts writing the opinion.

---

quote:

---

Roberts' opinion for the court was a narrow but powerful rejection of the way the Trump administration went about trying to abolish the program known as Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, or DACA.

"We do not decide whether DACA or its rescission are sound policies," Roberts wrote. "The wisdom of those decisions is none of our concern. Here we address only whether the Administration complied with the procedural requirements in the law that insist on 'a reasoned explanation for its action.' "

In 2017, then-Attorney General Jeff Sessions simply declared DACA illegal and unconstitutional. "Such an open-ended circumvention of immigration laws was an unconstitutional exercise of authority by the executive branch," he said at the time. Sessions argued that the program should be rescinded because he said it was unlawful from the start.

But, as Roberts observed, the attorney general offered no detailed justifications for canceling DACA. Nor did the acting secretary of homeland security at the time, Elaine Duke, who put out a memo announcing the rescission of DACA that relied entirely on Sessions' opinion that the program was unlawful.

---

The Trump admin now is going to have to follow the same rules they didn't follow previously, and DOGE seems to be following the prior path that was not successful.

quote:

---

Roberts made clear that an administration can rescind a program like DACA, and indeed immigration experts don't disagree with that bottom line. The problem for the administration was that it never wanted to take responsibility for abolishing DACA and instead sought to blame the Obama administration for what it called an "illegal and unconstitutional" program.

---

Even the "claiming the reg is unconstitutional" angle was covered by the ruling.

Loading Twitter/X Embed...
If tweet fails to load, click here.

Cornyn must be on a list to be sounding this based.

Probably the sex assault fund list.

This part is important, though I think the way Vivek has framed it in the past (flip a coin, heads you're fired) will get halted by the courts. Courts will demand some sort of logic behind the decisions, regardless of the APA's role in the cases they mention.
But the statute allows for “reductions in force” that don’t target specific employees. The statute further empowers the president to “prescribe rules governing the competitive service.” That power is broad. Previous presidents have used it to amend the civil service rules by executive order, and the Supreme Court has held—in Franklin v. Massachusetts (1992) and Collins v. Yellen (2021) that they weren’t constrained by the Administrative Procedures Act when they did so. With this authority, Mr. Trump can implement any number of “rules governing the competitive service” that would curtail administrative overgrowth, from large-scale firings to relocation of federal agencies out of the Washington area.

I don't think Elon and Vivek understand that there is an enormous number of positions that were never in-office positions. They were always designed as WFH. So, this part may not be as productive as they think:
Requiring federal employees to come to the office five days a week would result in a wave of voluntary terminations that we welcome: If federal employees don’t want to show up, American taxpayers shouldn’t pay them for the Covid-era privilege of staying home.

This here is a landmine for this administration:
Employees whose positions are eliminated deserve to be treated with respect, and DOGE’s goal is to help support their transition into the private sector. The president can use existing laws to give them incentives for early retirement and to make voluntary severance payments to facilitate a graceful exit.
The first thing that has to happen is Elon, Vivek, Trump, and others must pull the brakes off our economy so there is growth in the private sector, otherwise there will be nowhere for these people to go - and the last thing they should do is put a Wall Street lackey at Treasury to port money to Big Money, thinking that will grow things. The only thing that will do is increase wealth inequality and the cost of living. This ramping up of the economy and job market takes time. Taking an axe to the federal workforce can happen much faster. You flood the private sector with millions of new faces, before the economy ramps up, and you get a disaster. They say there should be a proportionate reduction in personnel for the reduction in regulations. Sounds good, but those reductions in regulations take time to manifest growth in the economy, but they produce immediate terminations of employees. This timeline is going to be consequential.

As I've said multiple times, the key is to retire, not fire. The expenditures you make on someone that is retired will be well north of a 50% reduction from existing costs. That will save a lot of money. That costs more than elimination with severance, but that is acceptable given the shock that these changes will send through the system. If these reductions come off looking cruel, and we have a financial crisis and a bunch of hardship stories in the media, you will see Democrats sweep the midterms and 2028. My gut tells me that Vivek and Elon are not tracking this properly at all. Their lives are nothing like some GS-6 out there with a couple kids that's been working at Dept of Ed processing student loan apps. That environment doesn't crossover to the civilian world in a seamless fashion. One of the things with govt employment is that it has always been somewhat lower salaries, better benefits, and better job security, working in a relatively specialized environment. If you disturb that and send people to the private workforce, there's going to be some issues. But if you retire people and give them a big severance, all they need is part - time work in order to have a full time income, and they depart with benefits/pension intact. And it doesn't matter if that GS-6 has only been there for 5 years. If she's not needed, retire her as if she's been there for 20 years. The cost savings over the long term are immense and we still get to where we need to be. The trajectory of savings and long term outlook is very important here. We are at the tip of a crisis because things are out of control with no stopping point on the horizon. Bring that under control and a longer timeline is acceptable to those looking at the stability of the US economy, the dollar, and so forth.

If Elon and Vivek are serious about cutting costs, they'll look at my healthcare plan. It trims $1T from the CMS budget. My plan generates insane levels of profit over the long term. They'll also call me about the money that's out there and why/how Trump can claim it and use it to eliminate our debt, end school loan debt, and pay Social Security forward for at least a decade while we figure out how we want to continue that program. That saves $1.5T per year. Combine that with early retirements and logical reform in procurement programs and you can easily reduce the budget by $3T/yr and within a year reduce the federal workforce by 25% and not hurt anyone in the process. Most of the reduction would be people that are already past 20yrs and eligible for retirement. Take on further review after that, and within another few years you can get to a 50% reduction in the workforce, we'll be out of debt, running a surplus, and attain win-win solutions for everyone but the biggest douchebags in DC. They will all be losers, and that's good for the country.

If anyone is curious what the difference is between competitive service, excepted service, and senior executive service, go here to this fedsmith piece.

quote:

---

Even the "claiming the reg is unconstitutional" angle was covered by the ruling.

---

DACA was not a "reg" put in place by a dept it was an executive order by obama after the bill failed to pass. That was a bullshite emotional response by the court. Still it was an executive order.

Chevron is a ruling of overreach of the function of an agency or dept, very clear cut they have overstepped their bounds by miles. This is the second similar ruling, the court is sick and tired of bureaucrats setting policies that become the equivalent of laws with no Congress approval.

quote:

---

Confirms my suspicions that this won’t be an actual government agency.

---

why would they start yet another government agency when the goal is to shrink and streamline. It's going to be an advisory panel studying government waste and making impactful recommendations than can be enacted via executive order

If they are made redundant from a job that should not have existed in the first place, and they havent bothered to come in to work.

Well Im thinking the average person out there is gonna have a hard time feeling sorry for them.

And yes there are park service rangers who dont have a desk job but THE VAST majority are office jobs. Not only are they not doing it, but the govt is hiring consultants to do the job they were getting paid for.

And if you are telling me a person working for the govt for decades doesnt have the skill to do another job.......what the heck were they doing in the first place?????

quote:

---

public sector positions with similar duties as private are making 25% less.

---

The average federal employee makes over 100k a year. Most of those are administrative jobs which can be slashed.

They are using EOs to get rid of unlawful policies. The next administration is going to be hard pressed to reinstate illegal policies......................

quote:

---

They are using EOs to get rid of unlawful policies. The next administration is going to be hard pressed to reinstate illegal policies

---

Unlawful...how? I don't think either of the cases they cite involve retroactivity of the decisions.

Also, without Chevron, the executive's interpretation that these regs are unlawful loses a great deal of its weight. That creates an uphill battle.