Will Trump really close the bureaucracies?

Peter Jacobsen

December 16, 2024 5 Reactions

To be fair, we can’t say Trump officially endorses the ideas of every nominee, but the point is Patel’s idea here fits the pattern of Trump’s philosophy toward cutting government: reshuffle and renew rather than remove.

So, if this is Trump’s plan, is it a good or bad thing for the goal of shrinking the size of government? It’s hard to tell from the outset. Let’s look at how such a policy would change political incentives.

From the perspective of shrinking government, moving agencies and departments out of DC and to the states has a few clear advantages.

First, physical networking seems to be a big advantage for special interest groups who try to lobby for government growth. DC is notoriously home to three major groups: politicians, bureaucrats, and various private lobbyists and think tanks.

For example, the headquarters of teachers’ unions such as the National Education Association (NEA) and the American Federation of Teachers (AFT) are both located in Washington, DC.

The physical proximity to Congress and bureaucrats obviously helps these interest groups accomplish goals; otherwise, they wouldn’t choose the expensive real estate market of DC to locate themselves.

So, if Trump scatters the department across the 50 states, it may be harder for lobbyists and politicians to make relationships with bureaucrats that facilitate their favour-seeking. Some things people say in person they will not say digitally.

Decentralisation, or breeding a hydra?

The second advantage is, regardless of the restructure Trump is imagining, it seems clear he’s arguing that the decisions should be more decentralised across the states. It’s hard to know how this would operate exactly, given that we don’t know the specifics of his plan, but insofar as Trump allows states to make their own decisions, it strikes me that this will give at least some states the option to take less heavy-handed and less centralised approaches to the use of taxpayer money.

However, if Trump is truly planning to relocate the ED and other agencies across the 50 states, there could be some forces which pull us to a situation where the government grows. I can think of three such issues.

First, consider the effect Washington, DC, has on Virginia. The bureaucrats who work in DC are going to have a natural incentive to support a larger government. It’s in their best interest to do so. However, DC is an expensive place to live, so many people who work in Washington, DC, live in Virginia.

Electorally, this has contributed to Virginia’s turn from a red state, to a purple state, and perhaps even a blue state. DC, for its part, votes overwhelmingly in favour of Democrats (92 percent voted for Kamala Harris). I suspect DC workers who live elsewhere vote similarly to those who live in DC.

If Trump puts a small version of DC in every state, will this incentivise support for large federal government in typically small-government-supporting states? It seems possible.

The second issue is best illustrated by Trump’s first experiment relocating the BLM. Remember, after Trump’s term ended, Joe Biden brought the BLM main headquarters back to Washington, DC. However, as Jory Heckman writing for the Federal News Network points out, Joe Biden retained the new Grand Junction building to be a “Western headquarters”.

Trump moved the BLM out of DC to fight the swamp, but in just a few years, the swamp reclaimed its space in DC and kept its new space in Grand Junction, Colorado.

Admittedly, you can’t make every political decision based on what the other side will do when they take power, but this seems like a relevant consideration.

Finally, Trump’s moves to downsize departments symbolically may diffuse the momentum and pressure from groups seeking a real change in DC.

If your ultimate goal is to end a department or to drain the Swamp, you can’t do this by simply shuffling things around. The inherent tendency of bureaucracies to seek growth takes advantage of people when they try to rearrange things. If Trump merely streamlines bureaucracies, he risks making bureaucrats more efficient at intervening in the lives of people.

Bureaucracy is a many-headed hydra. If you cut off one head, two grow in its place.

That’s why, if Trump is interested in ending the bureaucracies, he will actually need to end them rather than reshuffling them. If he doesn’t, we’ll likely end up with government agencies in both Washington, DC, and in all 50 states, and that hardly seems like a win for small-government proponents.

What is your take on Trump's plans? Leave a comment below.

This article was originally published on FEE.org. Read the original article. 

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