The impression I’m getting is that, at most levels, the Federal government is ignoring Donald Trump and carrying on as if a normal, sane person were President.
To a right-wing paranoid, this might mean an evil “Deep State” is thwarting the will of the people. But to me it just means that regardless of who’s nominally President or Governor or Mayor, a semi-permanent bureaucracy tends to carry out the government’s core duties.
Today, from the Pentagon to the Post Office, it sure looks as if nearly everyone has decided, “Trump’s a jerk but he’s irrelevant. Ignore him and do what you were doing before- maybe a grown up will be President again soon.”
What would you expect people at the Post Office to being doing differently? You mentioned the Post Office, and maybe that was a joke, but must of “the government” is like the Post Office. One thing that is certainly being done differently is the issuing (or non-issuing) of visas from countries on the travel ban. Quite a few regulations have been rolled back, too.
But the fact that most of the government runs “on autopilot” has little, if anything to do with Trump. That’s called bureaucracy.
You can ask the same about any President: how much of what the government is doing at the end of his last term is different from what the government was doing the year before he became President? The answer is usually just a few percent.
The federal government is on “autopilot” because past administrations - for the most part - valued the federal bureaucracies as necessary institutions. Even for all of the talk among past Republican administrations about the evils of big government, most administrations right up to the end of GW Bush maintained the institutional strength of the federal government. This is the first administration and congress that has actively taken the view that the federal bureaucracy needs to be weakened considerably, and it will eventually have very serious consequences.
For now, yes, the government is running on autopilot but only because of the fact that it was relatively strong and stable to begin with, owing to the efforts of previous administrations going back probably 80 years. Why aren’t we seeing the effects of Trumpism? These things take time. We may not notice it right away, but perhaps in as little as a year or two, we will probably begin see how the loss of talent in the federal government will hurt us in the long run. If not within a year or two, then certainly within the next 5 years if things continue as they are now. State governments may be able to plug some of the gaps in certain areas, for example with environmental policy, food and water safety, and those sorts of things. But modern America exists in no small part because of a strong federal bureaucracy, and Trump is going to screw some of his most ardent supporters the most through his administration’s actions.
This past year has been a beautiful demonstration of my long-standing assertion that it really doesn’t matter who the President is. The fact is, it’s not the people at the top who make the government work, but rather it’s the people on the ground who actually do the work. Which should not be a surprise to anyone, but somehow it always is.
Except for some big things, like wars. It wasn’t the little people at the bottom who started the Iraq War. Which is why I generally vote for the person I think least likely to start wars. Presidents can’t do too much domestically w/o Congress, but they have almost free had internationally.
But what do we mean by “different”? There are certain things that should not be done differently. We don’t want criminal justice to be applied differently from one administration to the next, do we? We don’t want someone to completely reinvent disaster relief or the distribution of funds from Medicare, Medicaid, or Social Security.
And yet even without making the kinds of radical eye-popping changes that would catch the attention of the public (like, say, hypothetically just shuttering the entire EPA), the hiring of different people can have noticeably different outcomes in specific situations – like when a president hires an AG who refuses to prosecute a pharmaceutical company for its role in the largest drug addiction crisis in American history while simultaneously promising to violate the will of the people in various states with threats of prosecution over legal marijuana production and distribution. Or like when a previous president hired the former head of the International Arabian Horse Administration to run FEMA, operating on the assumption that it’s just some meaningless bureaucratic post and that all he has to do is just cut checks to a governor or mayor.
Not every American notices the differences from one administration to the next, probably because not every American is in a position to. But if we elect an administration and a congress that collectively believes that the federal government by itself is some sort of scourge that needs to be badly weakened and dismantled, then that is what those in power will commit themselves to. In the short run, not everyone notices - only those who find themselves in particular circumstances do. Over time, everyone begins to notice, because the effects become increasingly wide-spread.
This is why we have budget crises. Enacting a budget is one of the few functions of the government that doesn’t happen automatically. Every budget only lasts for a specific period of time and then a new budget bill has to be passed by the legislature.
Most of the government, however, functions on an ongoing basis. If Congress, for example, enacts a law designating a piece of land as a National Park that land continues to be a National Park forever unless Congress specifically changes its status. You don’t need a new law every two years saying it stays a National Park for two more years.
Meh. People have this bizarre delusion we’re peace-loving country, but the fact is the United States has been defined by warfare since its beginning. If you look at the history, note how few years this country has actually been fully at peace. In more than 90% of the years this country has existed we’ve been at war with somebody.
Many of us Californians are going to notice a big difference next year on Apr 15. After doing some more cacls, it’s not quite as bad as I thought, but still many more thousands of dollars going to DC from me than in 2017. Again, this is Congress more than Trump, but HRC would have vetoed the bill.
And except for things like the growth of private power. A strong federal bureaucracy that operates according to the rule of law and that responds to strong apparatuses of congressional (again, public) oversight serve the needs of all people. FEMA responds to a disaster regardless of whether people in the affected areas have a median income of $100,000 per year or just make half that amount. A strong federal bureaucracy can prevent abuses like what essentially amount to municipal debtors prisons and jailing individuals because they can’t afford to pay parking tickets and fines upon fines. Strong public institutions can subsidize medical care for seniors, taking away the burden that it would place on children. Weaker public institutions create a power vacuum that gets filled by private power - and private citizens have no obligation to treat the rest of us fairly or even ethically.
I think there’s a difference between “From what I can see, the work is continuing” and “This organization is really humming along!”
To use an analogy, let’s say your favorite store has its management simply missing. Employees may still be able to unlock the doors in the morning, sell stuff, and lock up at night. But if important things like making hiring decisions, paying bills, promoting people to take on responsibility, etc. are not being done, the customer will not notice that the management is absent until the business runs itself into the ground.
I think we are in the slow-motion version of the government running itself into the ground with greater and greater waste and inefficiency due to tremendous incompetence and chaos at the top. Will the customer notice this now? Probably only if they read the papers. But we are headed the direction of the fundamental management of the government breaking down, and that is not a good thing.
And if the store does get a new manager, that guy is going to have a huge backlog of work that really needs doing. And he’s going to look tired and haggard and grumpy, even though none of the customers have any indication of how hard he’s working.
At some point in the past 2 admins (sorry, I can’t recall exactly when or why) there was a lot of talk about the entrenched bureaucracy as a bad thing - too much policy being implemented by unelected folk. I’ve worked for a huge federal agency for the past 30+ years, and such criticisms always struck me as ignorant and naïve. The majority of how governments at all levels interact with citizens is largely independent of active input by elected or appointed personnel.
That is not to say that a president - or Congress - cannot effect significant change. But legislation, and notice and comment rulemaking, tends to be glacial.
I guarantee that there are plenty of folk at Justice, or EPA, who are less than thrilled by Trump’s actions. I can’t imagine how many folk at State are able to interact with foreign states.
But in our shop, things just keep stumbling along. Wouldn’t be any different if Hillary had been elected. For the most part, bureaucracy works best at processing a large number of similar matters. Drastic changes cause problems, as does an increase of duties - especially when paired with reduced staff/funding. But keep paying our checks and the power bills, and we’ll keep churning out the work.
But Trump does not do any of the stuff like hiring decision, paying bills, promoting people, etc. All that is done by the agencys’ secretaries. What presidents do is not to manage the bureaucracy but point it in a direction and give it priorities. If the president does not do that the bureaucracies keep going in the same direction as before and with the same priorities. A distracted and weak president gives more latitude to the cabinet in deciding policy. A weak cabinet member gives more latitude toward senior civil service.
A pilot isn’t authorized to change altitude and airway any time he wants to, he has to have ATC permission … The Donald can’t throw all the Muslims out of the country until he has Congressional permission … being we currently have an all but completely ineffectual Congress, no one’s getting permission to change anything … so, yeah, auto-pilot …
The bill would never have been written … everyone would have been busy investigating Hillary’s knickers to see if they came from ISIS factories … after they finished investigating her pimping whores out of a pizza joint in New Jersey …
I voted for Hillary in part because it would keep Congress busy so they don’t fuck up anything else …
