The Department of Defense

I continue to read through and blog through the Heritage Foundation’s “Project 2025.” You can find it here. Section Two of P2025 is entitled, “The Common Defense” and it begins with an introduction (by someone) that notes that neither of the long-time honored parts of the executive branch – the Department of Defense (formerly “War Department”) and State Department – are living up to their standards and need to be put aright by the next president. I don’t want to jump the gun (so to speak), but as it turns out, it’s the Democrats’ fault. 

The first part of this section, “The Department of Defense (DOD),” is written by Christopher Miller, who held several posts within the Trump administration and formerly an army Green Beret and Colonel. He begins by citing a litany of problems that are taking a serious toll on the DOD, among which are “a two-tiered culture of accountability that shields senior officers and officials while exposing junior officers and soldiers in the field, wasteful spending, wildly shifting security policies, exceedingly poor discipline in program execution, and (most recently) the Biden Administration’s profoundly unserious equity agenda and vaccine mandates …”

Just a quick note: The DOD is huge and, therefore, probably does have a boatload of issues to address, constantly and across many changes of leadership. The DOD consistently is called to areas that are dangerous and life-threatening, so those issue are genuinely matters of life and death, whether for US troops, enemy combatants, or civilians caught in the crossfire. Miller’s choice to name the Biden Administration is not surprising given the manifest intent of this whole document, but it is disheartening. If he really were as interested in de-politicizing military decisions (p.92), this chapter could have gone a long way of demonstrating how. For example, if “wildly shifting security policies” contribute to the current problems for the DOD, why not name the Trump Administration’s complete 180 on NATO and his accommodating stance toward Kim Jung Un and Vladamir Putin as stunning examples? Miller does mention later, “The United States and its allies also face real threats from Russia, as evidenced by Vladimir Putin’s brutal war in Ukraine …” but does not cop up to how the administration of which he was a part dissed US allies and encouraged Russia. And “vaccine mandates”? That’s only a “problem” if people stubbornly refuse to do what their commanders deem are best for their safety based on the best available science. 

Miller also argues that the DOD should make providing support to the Department of Homeland Security its 3rd overriding priority. The DOD’s 3rd overriding priority! 

There seem to be two issues at play here. First, the militarization of the border reflects a tendency to suspect all immigrants as dangerous. Because it is illegal to enter the US by any means other than ports of entry (air, sea, or land), any immigrant crossing the border outside of those ports are breaking US laws the moment they cross. So, it is easy to call them “criminals” and justify it on those grounds. The problem is when the “criminality” of crossing over the border is equated with being “criminals that rape, kill, import drugs, and eat pets.” That kind of rhetoric manifestly irresponsible. But so is describing border security as the 3rd highest priority of the Department of Defense. 

Second, one can certainly see some border crossings as threats to national security – especially if they bring narcotics and cartel-backed gang violence with them. If we note that danger, we also have to admit that the number one reason there is so much money in the drug trade is because there is so much demand for illegal drugs in the US. The millions of dollars that we see drug lords spending started out in diversified US citizens’ pockets before they bought drugs. 

I’ve only touched the beginnings of Miller’s essay. It has a lot of information and much of it sounds important to hear. So, stay tuned. 

When You Hear "Bureaucracy ..."

I continue to read through the massive Project 2025, which has been criticized both seriously and comically, and which has become something of a stain from which the Trump Campaign has tried to distance itself, although it has been written by many former Trump appointees and with a future Trump (or Trump-like) administration in mind. The next major section of P2025 is a chapter entitled “Central Personnel Agencies: Managing the Bureaucracy” (p. 69 of the document; p.101 of the online version,) By Donald Devine, Dennis Dean Kirk, and Paul Dans. I begin with two notes.

First, a few words about one of the principal authors, Paul Dans. Dans was the Director of the P2025 initiative but left the project in August and is now working on a number of issues to which he refers as “election integrity” issues. According to this article by Ken Bensinger, one of those issues is a restoration of “Schedule F” classifications for many federal jobs. Schedule F, passed during the Trump administration but rescinded by President Biden, makes it easier to fire civil servants and replace them with party loyalists. And there’s this quote from Bensinger’s article: “The heart of the Heritage Foundation-funded project, Mr. Dans said, was a database of roughly 20,000 party loyalists who were vetted and ready to fill positions in a Republican administration.” In other words, Mr. Dans' essay is part of a larger planned effort to rid the government’s bureaucracy of civil servants, not necessarily based on their job performance or integrity, but on whether they are deemed “faithful” enough to serve the President’s agenda. Again, one must ask, “What if a President’s agenda conflicts with legal, ethical, or constitutional integrity?” I wish that were a ridiculous question, since presidents take oaths swearing fidelity to the constitution. After January 6, 2021, it no longer seems like a ridiculous question to me.  

Second, I read this section as a person whose father was a civil servant, working for NASA throughout my childhood. I remember well how often my parents would try to make plans for the forthcoming year, deciding whether they could afford a home improvement project or a family vacation to a state park, but could only be tentative about it, because Dad did not know whether he would get a COLA or not. His job – and our family’s livelihood as a result – was always something of a political football. He was a model-maker, making wings or aeronautical models to test in the wind tunnels, hence one of many civil servants who were subject annually to political whims or an ambitious politician’s plans to curry popularity by cutting costs. Those conversations are important, no doubt, but the politicization of those conversations have always struck me as the primary reason why bureaucracy has a bad name. A government serving a country of over 330 million people is a tall task, easy to criticize and difficult to manage well. Therefore, there will always be a reason for people to address “managing the bureaucracy” as this chapter does. 

Dans et al give an overview of numerous attempts to manage the civil service, going back to the Carter administration. No doubt it is a daunting task. One issue he finds important is his argument that the unionization of government workers is incompatible with government management, invoking none other than President Franklin Roosevelt for his case. He lauds three executive orders that the Trump administration issued, each of which tries to empower management over unions. Note the phrase “management rights.”

Executive Order 13836, encouraging agencies to renegotiate all union collective bargaining agreements to ensure consistency with the law and respect for management rights; Executive Order 13837, encouraging agencies to prevent union representatives from using official time preparing or pursuing grievances or from engaging in other union activity on government time; Executive Order 13839, encouraging agencies both to limit labor grievances on removals from service or on challenging performance appraisals and to prioritize performance over seniority when deciding who should be retained following reductions-in-force.

It’s the next section where it feels that the issue comes to a head: “Fully Staffing the Ranks of Political Appointees.” The writers say that a President is constitutionally required to fill top political positions in the executive branch and admit that most Presidents have struggled to do so because of the requirement for congressional approval. Let me interject that the requirement for congressional approval is as much a part of the government’s process of checks and balances as anything else, but this essay seems to see that part of the process as a problem. They argue that President Trump faced special hostility from democrats and the media in getting his appointees considered and approved. There are clearly two sides to this argument and numerous other administrations that might feel the same. 

In the end, this chapter is another argument in a long history of two familiar tendencies – to prefer managerial rights over employee rights, and to de-centralizing much of civil service from Federal to State responsibilities – the point of which seems to ensure a structure that is not accountable to checks and balances but compliant to a president’s will, even if it is harmful to the common good. 

P2025 the OMB and other Executive Offices

I continue to work through “Project 2025.” This week a good friend sent me this link, which argues that “The details of Project 2025 are buried in a dense 900+ page PDF document, yet they have the potential to impact every American. This site was created to help you quickly understand how Project 2025 could affect the things you care about.” It has tools by which you can explore specific areas of concern that you may have. Thanks, Mary!  

The next section of P2025 (pp. 75-100) is an essay entitled “Executive Office of the President of the United States,” by Russ Vought. Vought is another former Trump cabinet member (Director of the Office of Management and Budget or OMB) and the founder and president of the Center for Renewing America. From the get-go, Vought seems determined to carry both the confusion and the vitriol of P2025 forward. He begins by noting that Article II of the U.S. Constitution invests executive power in the President, but quickly says that a modern President inherits a “sprawling federal bureaucracy that all too often is carrying out its own policy and preferences – or, worse yet, the policy plans and preferences of a radical, supposedly ‘woke’ faction of the country.” The “confusion” to which I refer comes from this: Vought himself was once a part of that “sprawling bureaucracy.” The OMB, while sometimes referred to as one of the smaller offices, employs about 450 persons. The “vitriol” to which I refer is Vought’s early onset of us/them language, because the problem of a sprawling bureaucracy is not when does a conservative president’s bidding, but when it has a different vision that can be named by the shorthand term “woke.” And with that, we move beyond the first paragraph. 

Vought’s essay is about the work of the OMB and what he sees as necessary changes in order for the next conservative presidency to be able to implement its will both with regard to budgeting and management. Likening the OMB to the control tower of an airport, Vought argues strongly that the OMB should be privy to all areas of governmental actions, in order to hold other agencies to the president’s vision. Here, Vought shows a difference between the role of the OMB when Trump was in office and the role under the Biden Administration. On pp. 45-46 of the online version, he argues for giving Program Associate Directors (PADs) control over apportionments, rather than Deputy Associate Directors (DADs). The Trump administration gave the oversight to PADs, while the Biden administration reverted back to the DADs. The point – it seems, to someone like me who is not terribly invested in learning the finer points of the bureaucracy – is to streamline the bureaucracy in order to ensure control and fiscal prudence. The issues behind PADs and DADs is one of many structural arguments that Vought offers in pp. 45ff. 

On p.49 one can see one of the effects of Vought’s streamlining. Regarding the OMB’s Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA), Vought argues that the point is “reining in the regulatory state and ensuring that regulations achieve important benefits while imposing minimal burdens on Americans.” He further argues for reinstating many of the executive orders that President Trump signed to make the regulatory system “more just, efficient, and transparent.” I am not one who is qualified to address the maze of offices and acronyms that Vought presents. I am aware, however, that many regulations over health hazards, pollutants, and safety have often been resisted as burdensome to “Americans,” as if those whose life and livelihood are being protected do not belong to that category as much as those whose profit is being protected. So, I admit my own bias and suspicions that part of the effect of streamlining the process to fit the next conservative president’s agenda is to make health and safety regulations harder to pass and enforce. 

It seems ironic that, like Dearborn before him, Vought seems to recognize the need for multiple offices and layers of bureaucracy needed to coordinate them. He goes on to talk about the National Security Council, National Economic Council, Office of the US Trade Representative, Council of Economic Advisors, National Space Council, Office of Science and Technology Policy, Council of Environmental Quality, Office of National Drug Control Policy, Gender Policy Council, and the Office of the Vice President. As one might imagine, within his streamlining of the Council of Environmental Quality, Vought encourages the next president to instruct this council to rewrite its regulations along the lines of the efforts of the Trump administration, including, “restoring its key provisions such as banning the use of cumulative impact analysis” as well as abolishing the working group on the Social Costs of Carbon (SCC), and end using SCC analyses. This seems like a move to stop environmentally sensitive regulations in favor of business-friendly regulations. Likewise, one will not be surprised to learn that Vought simply wants to eliminate the Gender Policy Council because it is simply a tool of “woke” ideology. 

Sigh.