11-18-24 - 8am - Burrowing In

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Michael, Okay, you got about five breaks per hour, so
I got four more talk backs to give you to
avoid hearing Hillary.

Speaker 2 (00:10):
Yeah, that's just about right. All right, Well, get busy.
Let's talk about burrowing the specter of a political appointee transitioning.
I just wanted to pause.

Speaker 1 (00:27):
There, No, not transitioning that way. Isn't it amazing how
different words over the course of a lifetime suddenly have
different meanings. So the Trump transition, we got the Trump
transition going on. No, the specter I'm talking about is
of a political appointee transitioning from a political appointee into

(00:50):
a permanent civil service job. That's what's known as burrowing,
and it's once again raising its ugly face in Washington.

Speaker 2 (01:00):
In DC.

Speaker 1 (01:02):
There are reports out now suggesting that Biden has already
moved more than a thousand political appointees into civil service positions.
Some estimates indicate that he could move upwards of three
thousand by the end of his term on January twentieth. Now,

(01:22):
that would far surpass surpass Obama. Obama did about twenty
five hundred such transfers. Digging around trying to get some
more details about what's going on, one insider noted this
that quote. This is about cementing policy influence for decades

(01:43):
to come.

Speaker 2 (01:50):
There are a lot of tentacles to this story, so
bear with me. How can how.

Speaker 1 (01:56):
Can transferring let's just say, three thousand, three thousand political
appointees suddenly become civil servants? This goes, and how could
that possibly cement policy influence for decades? When when bureaucrats

(02:21):
and if you're a brute a bureaucrat and you're listening
to me, you know this is true. You may not
want to admit it, but you know that it's true
that you go to work every day and you do.
Now you may be different, but I'm talking in generalities here.

(02:48):
You do what you have to do to just not
draw the attention of your superior, of your supervisor. So
you do the minimally amount of work necessary in order
to just get the job done, but to make sure
that you bank enough work so that the next day

(03:11):
you still have some work to do, so that you
can continue that cycle for three hundred and sixty five
days a year, for two thousand and eighty hours a year.

Speaker 2 (03:21):
And you do that.

Speaker 1 (03:23):
Because that's how you preserve your job, and because there
are no real metrics inside the bureaucracy. Remind me to
tell you about something I tried to do about metrics,
because it's another example of how you know, I can
do something that I think is a wonderful way to

(03:45):
affect policy change, only to have a subsequent administration or
even somebody in the same administration that follows me just
completely get rid of it because it's work and it's
holding it's holding things accountable. So you do thenmum minimum

(04:06):
amount of work every day, and then you always look
for ways, particularly when you get close to the end
of the fiscal year, you know, start starting around August September,
when you're getting close to the end of the fiscal year,
you and there is a push for all of the
various offices within a cabinet, department or a regulatory agency

(04:28):
or an independent agency to push the money out the door,
because the more you push the money out the door,
the more you have the likelihood of, oh, look, we
spend all of this money Congress on doing these programs
you want, and if you want us to continue these programs,
we need.

Speaker 2 (04:44):
Not only that amount of money, but we need more money.

Speaker 1 (04:48):
And so that's why I described government programs as a
metastatic cancer, because the bureaucracy wants them to continue to grow,
because that's job security. But how these three thousand gophers
that burrow into the bureaucracy, how could they possibly affect

(05:10):
policy that goes back. And I don't want to go
in depth to this, but I've described to you in
the past how difficult it is to change a policy
because you're going up against a wall that a brick wall,

(05:33):
a cinder block wall that does not cinder block with
reebar and everything else in it, that does not want
to change. It just does not want to move. And
then not only is the wall itself immovable because Congress
has appropriated money for it, but then you have the employees,

(05:56):
the bureaucracy, the civil servants, that that's their job. They
want to keep that job. And and again, just in generalities,
I know people.

Speaker 2 (06:07):
That come to work.

Speaker 1 (06:08):
You know, in fact, Dragon, I see a couple of
people out here, a couple of account execs. They're probably
two of the hardest working account execs out there. They're
they're there every morning by seven am, sometimes before seven am.

Speaker 2 (06:22):
They're here hours before other people, hours before.

Speaker 1 (06:26):
Other people, and they're and they're already hunkered down. They've
got their computers open, they're working on stuff, they're putting
proposals together, they're sending email. I mean, these are hard
working individuals. Now imagine just the opposite of that. You know,
if you've got nobody I shouldn't say nobody, but most

(06:47):
people in the bureau, in the Federal Bureau racey don't
punch a time clock. So if your day starts at eight,
if you wanted to leave early, you show up early.
Or if you're just not in rush or traffic's truly bad,
you don't care what time you show up because no
one's gonna chew you out. The only reason you're gonna
worry about showing up at a particular time is because

(07:10):
you might have a meeting with me. Oh, the Undersecretary's
got a meeting at eight am or seven am. Damn it.
Now I got to get up really early and beat
the traffic, or I've gotta get on the metro and
get into the office in time. Because he's holding a
meeting at seven o'clock in the morning. What the hell
is he doing holding a meeting at seven o'clock. Well,
I'm holding a meeting at seven o'clock because at eight
o'clock I got to be over at the White House

(07:31):
for a meeting that boss wants to have at eight am.
And I've I've got to a lot enough time. I've
got to have a wham bam, thank you mam meeting
so that I can get over to the White House
in time to that at eight o'clock meeting. And sometimes
it's just reversed too, so the the bureaucracy just moves slowly. Now,

(07:53):
if I decide that I would eliminate a program, well,
I have Congress, I have the Executive branch itself. Just
because I want to eliminate a program doesn't mean that
I can just arbitrarily.

Speaker 2 (08:07):
On my own eliminate a program.

Speaker 1 (08:10):
I have to go to the Office of Management and
Budget and say to the Director of OMB, who controls
the money that Congress sends over to the Executive branch, Hey,
I want to eliminate this program. Why I've got to
justify eliminating the program. Now, when Mitch when Mitch Daniels,
former governor of Indiana, when he was his nickname that

(08:34):
Bush gave him was the Knife because he was more
than willing to cut budgets he was more than willing
to cut programs. So it's pretty easy for me to
go to Mitch Daniels and say, hey, Mitch, I'd like
to get rid of this program. Really, how much money
is it going to save us? Can you point to
anything that doesn't do any good? Is it a good program?
Why do you want to cut it? And if I

(08:55):
had a rational reason for cutting it and I could
show that it was going to save money and make
God approved, well that's just the first step. Now I've
got to get contracts terminated. Well, that takes time, and
just think about terminating a contract. Terminating a contract means

(09:16):
I got to go to the General Counsel's office, who
then has to go to that program office and say, hey,
the under Secretary wants to eliminate this program, so we
need to start unwinding these contracts. Well, that in and
of itself takes time, and even though the lawyers are involved,
the lawyers still have to work through the program office

(09:36):
employees to get those contracts terminated because they're the ones
that are direct, that have the direct relationship with that
subcontractor or that consulting firm, or that whatever group it
might be. An NGO for that matter. And if they
drag their feet, then the lawyers have to start pushing

(09:57):
and everything just takes time. It's awful, It's absolutely awful.
So now think about those three thousand that Biden's trying
to burrow in. Those are three thousand people that are
what they're probably they're probably opposed to every single thing
that Donald Trump wants to do. So they're going to

(10:17):
slow down every single thing that he wants to do.
And if he's trying to get as much done as
he can between now and twenty twenty six, when we
get to the midterm elections where he might lose control
of the Congress, way they're going to try to slow
everything down for at least two years. And if they're
successful in slowing it down for two years and then
Democrats get in control, then you start trying to resend

(10:39):
a program and Congress gets win of the fact that
you're trying to eliminate a program, then Congress is going
to haul You're asking for a hearing and you're going
to have to go testify about why you're trying to
eliminate a program. They and if you can't get a
majority of that committee to agree with you, Republicans and Democrats.
Then they're going to go back to and say, don't

(11:01):
you dare let the undersecretary eliminate that program, and now
we're back to square one.

Speaker 3 (11:07):
Is it?

Speaker 1 (11:09):
Have I painted a negative kind of frustrating, disheartening scenario
for you? Because if I have it, I failed. Because
I'm just trying to explain to you how difficult it
is going to be to slash the deep administrative state

(11:33):
and to slash programs because every program has a special
interest behind it, and that special interest lobbies and has
members of Congress in their pockets. Even if the president
wanted to rescind the spending, Let's take a Green New

(11:53):
Deal for example, he wants to Let's say that Trump
wants to not spend that money in the Green New Deals,
So he's going to respend. He's going to rescind what
spending's gone out the door that hasn't been yet spent,
or he's going to impound the funds. Well, that requires
congressional approval, and whether he can get that or not,

(12:14):
I would I would like to think that he can,
particularly for the Green New Deal, which will help bring
in a bunch of government spending and reduce the annual
government federal budget, which will help lower the deficit, which
will help the markets and help inflation. All of that's
good news. But it's a process, and it's a horrible process.

Speaker 2 (12:38):
It is a burrowing.

Speaker 1 (12:41):
Is is described by one person this way, a potent
political strategy designed to embed partisan loyalists deep within the
machinery of government, shielding them from the whims of future administrations.

Speaker 2 (12:58):
That's it.

Speaker 1 (13:00):
It's putting in a permanent bureaucracy that is loyal to
Joe Biden and the Democrats I should say Democrats in particular,
and that are opposed to Donald Trump. That's why I
think one of the first things that Congress ought to
consider is a complete reform of the civil service system.

(13:21):
Quite frankly, I understand why Theodore Roosevelt did what he
did back in nearly nineteen hundreds to reform civil service.
I get that because it was a corrupt system, and
what I'm advocating could eventually evolve back into a corrupt system.
But why should government civil servants have, in essence, the

(13:43):
equivalent of tenure. Why should it be so difficult to
fire somebody, Why should it be so difficult to do
a reduction in force. Why shouldn't they operate if everybody
claims that they want you know, oh.

Speaker 2 (13:57):
We want a businessman to be the president. One.

Speaker 1 (14:01):
What does Trump do if if he looks at a
project and realize that the project is going to come
in way over budget and way over schedule, what does
he do? Well, he snaps the whip. He figures out
how to speed things up, how to reduce his costs,
how to still get the project completed, and in such
a way that still meets all of the government regulations

(14:23):
and standards. You know, you don't want him to build
a building that's going to collapse within two years because
he cut corners well, and if he can do that
by doing a riff, by laying off people, then he
ought to be able to do that.

Speaker 2 (14:35):
Why can't we do that in the federal government.

Speaker 1 (14:39):
So as Republicans prepare for twenty twenty five, the lessons
all the way back to twenty sixteen really loom large
because burrowing, once seen as this kind of innocuous administrative maneuver,
is actually wielded by Democrats as a weapon to undermine
conservative agendas, and they're poised to use it again.

Speaker 2 (14:59):
In the waiting.

Speaker 1 (15:00):
Days let's go back to twenty sixteen, because this is
a great example of how burrowing sabotage Trump in his
first term in the last let's say thirty days, probably
more than that, but let's just say thirty days of
the Obama administry, there was a there was a specific
effort to entrench those his political appointees in civil service roles.

Speaker 2 (15:25):
Across major government agencies.

Speaker 1 (15:27):
They were carefully selected operatives, and they were embedded within
departments like the Department of State, Department of Justice, and
Homeland Security. They were more than just bureaucratic placeholders. They
were soldiers. They were soldiers in an ideological fight to
resist the incoming Trump administration. Give you an example, officials

(15:48):
within the EPA notoriously slow rolled efforts to revise climate policies.
They deliberately delayed meetings, They buried buried. Now that may
seem like how do you bury a report? I can
remember going to different program offices. And remember when I

(16:09):
say a program office, there might be a particular part
of Homeland Security that does a particular function. Well, that
function may have and I've been using the around number
of one hundred. It might have one hundred people in
that air quote office, that doesn't mean one single office.
It means there's a bunch of cubicles. There's a bunch
of offices, but they all of those comprise what's called

(16:31):
an office within the government. And I would be looking
for a report. It might take me weeks to get
the report, or they might say, we can't find the report. Really, well,
let's go, let's find the contractor. Because generally a report
is done in conjunction with a contractor because there's not
enough people within the federal government to do it themselves.

(16:53):
But they don't have the expertise, so they hire subject
matter experts to do the report. Oh, I got to go.
I've got to go to some consulting firm and have
them dig it out of their bureaucracy somewhere.

Speaker 2 (17:06):
When Trump assumed office in twenty seventeen, guess.

Speaker 3 (17:09):
What, Michael, Why is there no mechanism to remove these
people out of Congress? Mitch McConnell, who is clearly compromised
not only in mind, but I firmly believe is a
China asset, as is his wife. Why isn't there a

(17:31):
constitutional mechanism to remove them from office?

Speaker 2 (17:35):
There's your top back.

Speaker 1 (17:38):
There is a mechanism. It's called an election, and senators
get elected every six years. Now, if you think that
they have violated the law, then.

Speaker 2 (17:55):
I don't know what. I don't know what I'm talking
about here, how about that?

Speaker 1 (18:02):
But if they've violated the law and you have evidence
of that, then you have an obligation. I think you
have a moral, moral obligation to bring that to the
attention of a US attorney. You have a bring you have,
you have an obligation to bring it to the attention
of the Senate Ethics Committee. Senators are the judge of

(18:24):
who's qualified to sit in their chambers, and if they
have reason to believe that Mitch McConnell is is a
China asset, then they can do something about it. But
I'm always amazed by the fact that there's a there's
a mechanism every six years to get rid of Mitch

(18:44):
McConnell is. Only there because people in Kentucky just re
elected him here, I mean every six years, they just
kept re electing him. And then people come to me
and say, but that's what we need term limits? Why
because the people won't do their job. Because everybody just
listens to the stupid lying commercials on TV, and so

(19:08):
they you know, Mitch McConnell talks about how great he
is and say, oh, he's a great guy, and they
go reelecting, we have the ultimate power. We just don't
exercise it because we're too effing lazy, because we succumb
to the lies on TV, because because we're too busy.

(19:29):
And I don't think this is an excuse anymore, but
we're too busy. Well, everybody has time to go do something.
Maybe we ought to make civic involvement one of those
things that's a priority.

Speaker 2 (19:43):
How about that?

Speaker 1 (19:45):
Back to my point, So let's go back to when
Trump took office in January of twenty seventeen. All of
those entrenched officials that Obama converted from political appointees to
civil servants, they used every available tactic to obstruct, delay,

(20:07):
and to sabotage Trump's agenda by.

Speaker 2 (20:11):
Burrowing in.

Speaker 1 (20:14):
That allowed the Obama appointees to outlast Obama's last term.
They stayed in place Obama left. He didn't actually leave town,
but Obama left the Oval office, but all of his
menions stayed out there in the bureaucracy, transforming policy disagreements

(20:36):
into bureaucratic trench warfare. Bureaucratic trench warfare.

Speaker 2 (20:45):
I know this to the.

Speaker 1 (20:49):
To someone who's never experienced it, it just seems like
it's surreal. Or Michael, it can't be that bad.

Speaker 2 (20:59):
You're talking.

Speaker 1 (21:00):
You're listening to a guy right now who probably spent
a third of my time fighting the bureaucracy.

Speaker 2 (21:12):
The other third of the.

Speaker 1 (21:13):
Time was, you know, unfortunately, being tasked with part of
creating another bureaucracy, the Homeland Security, and a third of
my time was actually fulfilling the mission of FEMA. One
guy trying to do all of those things. I'm not bragging.
I'm just saying, that's just the reality of my life.
That's why for you know, political appointees. You know, every

(21:36):
one of these people that I see getting nominated by
Donald Trump, now, they've been there before. I think to myself,
you know exactly what you're getting into, and congratulations for
willing to go do it again. For those who have
never been there, I think you have no clue what

(21:58):
you're about to walk into because I know all of them.
I don't even even Matt Gates, who is a congressman,
he knows the bureaucracy. He knows based on his dealing
with witnesses in front of a House Judiciary committee. He
knows what it's like trying to get the truth out
of these people. For Pete Haggs's who as death Seck Will,

(22:25):
we'll look at his bureaucracy, his dealing with the bureaucracy
as a combat veteran, and they deal with bureaucracy too,
But he has no idea. He has virtually no idea
the bureaucracy he's going to face inside the Pentagon a behemoth,

(22:46):
a blob, just this blundering blob of slime that just
you know, you poke it here and it pokes out
somewhere else, and would no matter what he does, it's
just gonna he's going to figure out ways. He's gonna
have to get his own people in and he's gonna
have to take drastic measures. And that's what the American
people are expecting. So how do these people operate? Well,

(23:10):
they become sources of endless leaks to the media, So
they recruit their marketing arm, the dominant media, that part
of the cabal, to go out and push their message.
They adminis administratively slow roll. Either the elimination of regulations

(23:32):
or the adoption of regulations that it might actually be
a good regulation. They slow roll everything. They become regulatory bottlenecks,
and all of that hampers. Remember the president sits by
himself in the oval office. Now he's got staff all
around him, but he relies on just guys like me,

(23:56):
under secretaries, the sub cabinet to go out and implement
his agenda. And this is what they're going to face.
Every major moved from immigration reform to deregulation, faces an
overt political battle at a covert bureaucratic battle. The democratic

(24:18):
establishment understands that while political pointees can be replaced at will,
career civil servants are shielded by a labyrinth of federal protections,
effectively making them almost irremovable. So they have weaponized the
machinery of government to function as a shadow opposition. And
that's why I say that it's time, and I know

(24:39):
there will be unintended consequences. It's time to completely revamp
the federal civil service system. And I know that if
you're a bureaucrat that listens to this program, that send
shivers down your spine because you might actually have to
work in a situation like dragon and work in that

(25:02):
even though I sit here with a contract that gives
me some modicum of protection, they can still terminate that contract.
Or the people that I talk about out there working
their asses off, that show up, you know, way before
anybody else does. They don't work with contracts. Those are salespeople.

(25:23):
Somebody just walk over to their desk right now and
just say pack your things up, you're gone, and boom,
they're gone. No recourse whatsoever. Now, unless, of course, there's
some you know, sexual discrimination, or there's some sort of
you know, age discrimination, or there's something illegal something the
fary is going on, they're just gone. That's how most

(25:45):
of the world works, except the bureaucracy.

Speaker 2 (25:51):
So can Trump Can Trump reverse this now?

Speaker 1 (25:58):
I think during his first term, I think you recognized
the threat that those that burled in presented to him.
So that's why he signed Executive Order thirteen ninety five
seven that created a new category of Federal employee Schedule F.

(26:20):
Just doing that faced immediate and intense resistance from both
the agencies themselves and from the unions like the American
Federation of Government Employees the AFGE, which argue that that
one executive order threatened the non partisan nature of the
civil service, and when they did that, I just I

(26:42):
remember laughing out loud the non partisan nature the civil service.

Speaker 2 (26:46):
Bull crap.

Speaker 1 (26:49):
Now there are trying to be objective here, which is
kind of difficult to do on this subject. There are
some civil servants who truly are just trying to do
what their mission is, and they are more than willing
if their mission is changed by a political appointee who
has the authority to change the mission. They're more than

(27:10):
willing to follow the new orders because they love their jobs,
they love what they do, and if the mission is
altered or changed, they're more than happy to go along
with them. But they're the minority. HHS DOJ. They all
came out and the civil servants actually publicly criticized the move,

(27:32):
and some officials absolutely publicly refuse to cooperate in its implementation.
Can you imagine if if iHeart came in here and said, hey,
we have a new way of doing business and we
expect you to do X y Z, and I publicly
came out and said that what iHeart is doing is

(27:52):
absolutely stupid. Now, I have said that some things iHeart
does been stupid, But if I'm told I have to
do something this way opposed to that way. My contract
says that I will do that, and if I refuse
to do that, then iHeart has a cause to terminate
my contract. That's how the real world works. That's not

(28:13):
how the government world works. The failure of that executive
Vorter thirteen ninety five seven to ever get traction that
alone should help explain the complexities of reigning in the
entrenched federal workforce. In practice, the sweeping nature of Schedule

(28:36):
F threaten not just partisan actors but potentially nonpartisan experts,
and so that's why they got such huge pushback.

Speaker 2 (28:44):
The courts were.

Speaker 1 (28:45):
Skeptical, and then all and in the actual implementation of
that executive order stalled amid all the procedural challenges, all
the political blowback, and all the legal challenges, which leads
to this questiones what kind of different approach should there

(29:05):
be for twenty twenty five Michael.

Speaker 2 (29:08):
Term limits are to protect me from other voters' bad choices.
That is the sole reason for supporting them, period.

Speaker 1 (29:20):
And you're going to have to get the constitutional amendment,
in my opinion, to get term limits. The Constitution sets
the terms and the qualifications from members of Congress. So
once again, and I think, you know, I think, first

(29:40):
of all, they're not protecting you. Term limits don't protect
you from bad voters. They protect you from people that
don't vote, they don't participate, they don't care, that are
ill informed. Never forget that what we're going through right
now is kind of the penultimate result of all of
the progressivism and Marxism that has been worming its way

(30:04):
through our system since the nineteen hundreds. So again, while
I expect great things to occur over the next two
to four years, I don't think everything's going to change
over the next two to four years. For example, as
I said at the end of the last segment, so
what can Trump do starting now, Well, first and foremost

(30:26):
when it comes to how you get these civil service
changes started that you can do within the existing framework
is you have to appoint aggressive and I do mean
aggressive reformers to lead two offices, the Office of Personnel Management,
which oversees all of the bureaucracy all the civil service,

(30:50):
and the Office of Management and Budget that oversees all
of the policies, procedures, the financial aspect of every department
and agency in the Executive branch. So if he had
really aggressive reformers leading those two organizations, he could more

(31:12):
effectively scrutinize burrowing cases and then leverage existing performance review
mechanisms to root out any obstructive officials. That takes time, energy,
and effort. That takes a lot of work. You got
to start. I mean, this is you're building a case,
and so you've got to build a case against these

(31:32):
people that burrowed in, and you start with by having
people at OPM and oemb that are willing to do that.
But let's not forget this with respect to your idea
about term limits. There's a Republican controlled Congress. We need
to hold their feet to the fire. They need to
push for reforms that tighten the rules around converting political

(31:55):
appointees into career civil servants. They need to add layers
of oversight that would make burrowing more difficult. They need
to focus on transparency. They need to require public disclosure
of all conversions from political to civil service roles.

Speaker 2 (32:11):
Put it out in the light.

Speaker 1 (32:12):
Oh that guy that woman used to work directly for
Joe Biden in the Oval office, and now he's got
a career civil service job over here in EPA, make
that known, put the pressure on them, and OPM ought
to require that any such move be reported to Congress,

(32:38):
because then Congress can effectively exercise oversight. You know the
other thing I would do, I would enhance whistleblower protections
from those within the bureaucracy who are willing to expose
any partisan activity.

Speaker 2 (32:53):
So if you created an.

Speaker 1 (32:54):
Environment that actually encourages internal accountability, then that gives Trump
a mechanism by which to counterbalance the influence the boroughed
officials without solely relying on the Schedule F type mass reclassifications,
which is still going to be a problem for him.

(33:15):
This is this is a time for the President to
be even more radical when it comes to OPM and
omb real reformers, tough cookies, tough sobs that are really
willing to go to the mat to change the civil

(33:36):
service system. And then that ought to be a Congressional priority.
To now Congress sets its own rules for its own staff.
I don't I don't care about that right now, Cary.
I care about the branch of government that is supposed
to execute the laws passed by Congress. So it's time

(34:01):
for Congress to stand up and reform civil service, and
they ought to do it in the next two years
because there's no guarantee after twenty twenty six.