June 11, 2024 • 34 mins
Welcome to day two of our in-depth review of Project 2025. In today's episode, we delve into the second promise of the conservatives' presidential transition plan, focusing on dismantling the administrative state and returning self-governance to the American people.
If you missed the first episode, we covered the initial promise, which centers on making families the core of American life and protecting children. We highly recommend catching up on that to get a comprehensive understanding of Project 2025.
In this episode, we explain what the administrative state is, discuss the five pillars of debate surrounding it, and explore the arguments for and against its existence. We also take a closer look at the potential impacts of restructuring government agencies, and the controversial Schedule F executive order from the Trump administration.
Tune in as we break down the conservative vision for a smaller government and the implications of their proposed changes. Don't miss out on this critical analysis of what could shape the future of American governance.
Stay informed, and make sure to vote wisely. Catch us next time for the continuation of our Project 2025 series. Till then, tater tots!
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
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(00:00):
Music.
(00:23):
We are here for day two on our review of Project 2025.
If you haven't listened to the first one, we covered the first pillar within,
well, it's the fourth pillar, but the first kind of promise within Project 2025,
which is the conservatives presidential transition plan for the next potential
(00:47):
conservative president.
Which that one was dealing with families being the center of American life and
protecting our children, the famous phrase from conservatives.
And that one dealt with a whole host of things as we talked about what family
meant to conservatives or the language that they want to get rid of and the
(01:10):
way that they want to reshape.
Just really stuff surrounded around gender and race were the main cruts within
that and in regards to family.
So definitely go back and listen to the first episode for the Project 2025 series
released yesterday if you want to get some more information on that.
(01:32):
We're going to pick it up with promise number two in the presidential transition plan of Project 2025.
And I just want to remind people that it is super important to understand what is in this plan,
because I just hear people complaining so much about the Democratic Party and
(01:52):
thinking the Republican Party is an alternative, but you need to understand
what they are trying to put into place.
If you think your life is bad now, you.
Just wait. When they say, if you think you're lonely now, wait until tonight, girl.
(02:14):
Yes. This time you're going to have to wait until 2025 and you don't want to see what's coming.
I mean, you want to see. That's why we're going through it.
So you know what not to do. I'm telling you, y'all better be voting blue coming around.
But let's pick it back up. Promise number two is to dismantle the administrative
(02:39):
state and return self-governance to the American people.
Now, this one is super, super important.
Basically, Republicans are looking to restructure the way that government is run.
And before I jump into this one,
(03:00):
I kind of want people to understand, if you don't know what the administrative state is,
is the administrative state is a term used to describe the phenomenon of executive
branch administrative agencies exercising the power to create,
adjudicate, and enforce their own rules.
(03:21):
Five pillars are key to understanding the main areas of debate about the nature
and scope of administrative agency action.
There's the non-delegation, and the non-delegation is It's simply lawmakers
delegate rulemaking authority to administrative agencies,
allowing agencies to promulgate rules with the force and effect of law.
(03:45):
So we have dedicated government workers who, you know, there's another buffer
there and they have the ability to.
Roommate. The other is judicial deference. And this is a court accepts an agency's
interpretation of a statute of regulation, even if the court would have arrived
at a different interpretation.
(04:07):
So the administrative state can get one thing, you know, they can correct certain
things there for the courts. Executive control of agencies.
The executive has certain authority over the appointment and removal of agency
heads, reorganization of the executive branch, and regulatory review activities.
(04:29):
Then we also have the pillar of procedural rights. And with procedural rights,
the agency rulemaking and enforcement proceedings have implications for individual
procedural rights, such as due process and standing.
And the last pillar is known as agency dynamics, and agencies exercise authority
(04:50):
to promulgate rules, enforce regulatory compliance, and adjudicate disputes.
Now, arguments for the administrative state,
supporters of the administrative state generally argue that federal agencies
perform valuable government functions, such as administering federal social
service programs, programs and that in health and safety regulations,
(05:15):
things of that nature.
And proponents of this, they claim that the agency staff acquires subject matter
expertise that enables them to develop, implement and special in specialized
regulations beyond the broad directives of legislators.
Because if you think in Congress, not everyone is an expert in everything they
(05:36):
are talking about in the Senate and the House.
Like those people are not necessarily the experts.
A lot of them are not experts in a lot of the subject matters.
So there are other government workers, dedicated people who are experts in areas
that can help really cultivate a solid plan for things, say,
like for the environment, for education,
(05:59):
for all these things right here that are hot button issues.
And Republicans like to refer to this group often as the deep state.
And opposing arguments against the administrative state are generally centered
around what they consider to be constitutional violations.
So in many ways, you're going to hear this argued within the Project 2025 plan
(06:22):
of how they are violating the Constitution by having this administration state
and not upholding or adhering to the separation of powers within our government.
This has been a big movement. It was actually very interesting because a party
I was at recently and I was talking with someone within Homeland Security and
(06:47):
he was telling me because we were having a conversation,
which is just confusing to me because I was telling him how I don't understand
when changing parties and stuff with presidents, how now is this view of like,
let's wipe everything out.
Out and start anew. I'm like, how can we really...
(07:11):
Survive? Well, I don't want to survive, but how can we be consistent as a society
and put ourselves in the best possible way of going forward?
If we're constantly just moving people in and out and things of these nature
and trying to replace people with who we want in there, whenever we have dedicated long-time workers,
(07:35):
some, you know, it may be difference of opinions opinions about,
you know, people who work in government, but there are experts within a government.
And sometimes it's good to keep certain people within roles that can work with
multiple parties and are not going to be biased and are going to help,
you know, execute visions that are out there in the best possible way.
(07:57):
Well, he was, we were talking about this and he was like,
you know, it's funny that you, you bring this
up because it was actually a big concern whenever ever Trump was last in office
because part of Trump's new agenda on day one was to throw a total wrecking
(08:19):
ball to the administrative state.
And the effort was an agenda if what he calls schedule F.
And it was a Trump era executive order that would reclassify tens of thousands
of the 2 million federal employees as essential at-will workers who could more easily be fired.
(08:44):
And Biden ended up rescinding this executive order whenever he took office in 2021.
And now they're hoping that Trump will win again and can reinstate this order.
And it's very frightening because this would give them having this a Schedule
F order will give them the carte blanche to just go in and fire whoever they
(09:09):
want within the government and replace them with who they want in there.
And that's just a scary thought to think about, about what what can potentially be shaped through this.
So it's very interesting. And as of now, it stands about 4,000 members of the
(09:32):
federal workforce are considered political appointees who typically change with the administration.
But Schedule F could put tens of thousands of career professionals at risk.
And it puts our democracy at risk here, because who are you overhauling and
putting in, or you just putting in cronies who are just going to do your will or whatever you say,
(09:57):
who are not going to provide their own individual thought and expertise for
the benefit of the American people, but are going to be out there to execute
one man's vision for the whole country? I like that's not democracy.
That's not how our democracy works. But that is what the conservatives want.
(10:18):
And they've been railing against this administrative state for quite a while.
So we're going to read through what the plan actually is within Project 2025
to dismantle the administrative state and return self-governance to the American people.
That's how they frame it. Okay.
(10:40):
Yeah. Okay. So here we go. Let's get into it.
So of course, the surest way to put the federal government back to work for
the American people is to reduce its size and scope back to something resembling
the original constitutional intent.
Conservatives desire a smaller government, not for its own sake,
(11:03):
but for the sake of human and flourishing.
But the Washington establishment doesn't want a constitutionally limited government
because it means they lose power and are held more accountable by the people who put them in power.
Like restoring popular sovereignty, the task of reattaching the federal government's
(11:23):
constitutional and democratic tethers calls to mind Ronald Reagan's observation
that there are no easy answers,
but there are simple answers.
In the case of making the federal government smaller, more effective,
and accountable, the simple answer is the Constitution itself.
(11:45):
The surest proof of this is how strenuously and creatively generations of progressives
and many Republican insiders have worked to cut themselves free from the strictures
of the 1789 Constitution and subsequent amendments.
Consider the federal budget. Under current law, Congress is required to pass
(12:06):
a budget and issue specific spending bills comporting with it every single year.
The last time Congress did so was in 1996.
Congress no longer meaningfully budgets or authorizes or categorizes spending.
Instead, party leaders negotiate one multi-trillion dollar spending bill,
(12:29):
several thousand pages long, and then vote on it before anyone literally has a chance to read it.
Debate time is restricted, amendments are prohibited,
and all of this is backed up against a midnight deadline when the previous omnibus
spending bill will run out and the federal government shuts down.
(12:52):
Now, I will say I do think it's crazy how we have gotten to this place in our system.
And maybe it's happened often, but I tell you, I didn't follow politics closely
my entire life to know how other administrations and things work.
I've been following more closely ever since the Obama years, to be honest.
(13:14):
I was in college during the Bush years and transitioning into work.
Of course, when we got going into our recession there in 2008,
I started paying attention a little bit more towards the end there,
Bush, and all the things with Iraq and all that stuff.
But I do think it is...
(13:34):
Unfortunate how we handle government shutdowns, potential shutdowns and bills.
And then we get all these loaded pages of things that in the last minute,
the last hours, and I think both parties are guilty of this,
of doing this and rushing things in and not giving people a chance to read and
really see what's in there within these things getting passed.
(13:56):
That is an issue, I would say, in my humble opinion, as far as our government
in a way that that whole process is done.
I don't like it. I don't like that process.
All right, let's continue. It says, this process is not designed to empower
330 million American citizens and their elected representatives,
(14:20):
but rather to empower the party
elites secretly negotiating without any public scrutiny or oversight.
In the end, congressional leaders' behavior and incentives here are no different
from those of global elites insulating policy decisions over the climate, trade,
(14:40):
public health, you name it, from the sovereignty of national electorates.
Public scrutiny and democratic accountability made life harder for policymakers, so they skirted.
It's not dysfunction, it's corruption.
And despite its gaudy price tag, the federal budget is not even close to the
worst example of this corruption.
(15:02):
That distinction belongs to the administrative state. Here we go.
The dismantling of which must be a top priority for the next conservative president.
The term administrative state refers to the policymaking work done by the bureaucracies
of the federal government, departments, agencies, and millions of employees.
(15:26):
Under Article I of the Constitution, all legislative powers herein,
granted, shall be vested in a Congress of the United States,
which shall consist of a Senate and a House of Representatives.
That is federal law and is enacted only by elected legislators in both houses of Congress.",
(15:48):
This exclusive authority was part of the framers doctrine of separated powers.
They not only split the federal government, legislative, executive and judicial
powers into different branches.
They also gave each branch checks over the others.
Under our Constitution, the legislative branch, Congress is far and away the
(16:09):
most powerful and correspondingly the most accountable to the people. All right.
And they're kind of giving a little history and things here like this big picture
warming, warming and buttering you up to make it make you really love this idea
they're about to present. All right.
(16:31):
So in recent decades, members of the House and Senate discovered that if they
give away that power to the Article 2 branch of government, they can also deny
responsibility for its actions.
So today in Washington, most policy is no longer set by Congress at all,
but by the administrative state.
(16:53):
Given the choice between being powerful, but vulnerable, or irrelevant,
but famous, most members of Congress have chosen the latter.
Yeah, many are on your side of the aisle, okay, that is just out there not doing
any work, but just being Instagram famous and living on soundbites.
(17:20):
It's very clear if you're following things that happen within the houses,
it's clear one party is trying their hardest to govern, while the other is not.
I mean, it's just simply, that's just simply facts.
All right, so let's pick it back up.
(17:43):
Congress passes intentionally vague laws that delegate decision making over
a given issue to a federal agency.
That agency's bureaucrats, not just unelected, but seemingly unfireable,
then leap at the chance to fill the vacuum created by Congress's preening cowardice.
(18:07):
The federal government is growing larger and less constitutionally accountable,
even to the president every year.
All right. Now we're about to get into the agencies where they want to.
You remember that Schedule F I talked about?
(18:27):
We're about to get into the agencies that they want to get rid of a lot of workers
within these. A little swig of water. There we go. Here we go.
A combination of elected and unelected bureaucrats at the Environmental Protection
Agency, quietly strangles domestic
energy production through difficult-to-understand rulemaking processes.
(18:52):
Bureaucrats at the Department of Homeland Security, following the lead of a
feckless administration,
order border and immigration enforcement agencies to help migrants criminally
enter our country with impunity. Okay.
Bureaucrats at the Department of Education,
(19:14):
Inject racist, anti-American, ahistorical propaganda into America's classrooms.
Bureaucrats at the Department of Justice force school districts to undermine
girls, girls sports and parents rights to satisfy transgender extremists.
(19:35):
Can't get trans out of our minds, I swear. where woke bureaucrats at the Pentagon
forced troops to attend training seminars about white privilege.
Empiricrats at the State Department infused U.S.
Foreign aid programs with woke extremism and intersectionality and abortion.
(19:58):
So y'all see what they're doing here. They're using all of these government
agencies and pretty much saying that these agencies are doing the work of the left.
And they're saying that all these agencies are filled with nothing but woke people.
So everybody within these agencies are, you know, are Democrats or liberals,
(20:23):
apparently, and liberals are running the country.
You know, we got our favorite topic, topic transgender. And that's why so big.
And you see how all this works together because the biggest mouthpieces on the
conservative side focuses on all these topics they're talking about.
So we got the trans sports.
(20:45):
As if girls in sports, okay, it's a conversation that can be had.
And it's a conversation you can have, but it is nowhere near the number one
concern for women in in this country.
Sports is not the number one issue, but we keep making this issue number one
and so big as if it's everything and it's infringing upon women and all these,
(21:11):
it's so ridiculous whenever reproductive health and rights are being stripped
and taken away from women.
We're equal pay to fight for that
is still a fight. There's so many things before sports. I love sports.
I love sports to death. You know, we cover sports here on the couch quite often.
(21:32):
But most of the world does not play sports. efforts to break into people.
And most of the world that does, whatever your kids, most of the people are
not doing it to have a career in it later in life. And it's just a fun thing to do.
So I just feel like this issue is so overblown, like so overblown,
(21:57):
where it's just not even that relevant or important in my opinion.
And we need to get into that deeper on the couch one day.
But definitely you see the things of white privilege thrown in here.
There's that white guilt that keeps getting thrown around.
They cannot stand any of these trainings. You see they already went at the DEI so hard.
(22:19):
They're so tired of these kind of trainings and stuff going on in the workplace
or anything that's making white people feel uncomfortable in any anyway,
or feel like they are being attacked.
Talking about race, racist, anti-American propaganda in our school system. Hello? What?
What are we doing here? What are we talking about?
(22:41):
So this is all crazy talk. And this is the crazy talk that is going on and that
they're using as an excuse for why we need to go in and reshape this whole thing
and clean house in all these
areas and fire all these government workers and replace them with people who
(23:02):
are going to return things back to the American people,
which means replace them with people who agree with our philosophy in all these
areas. It's unacceptable.
Unacceptable. All right, let's continue. It says, unaccountable federal spending
is the secret lifeblood of the great awakening.
(23:24):
Nearly every power center held by the left is funded or supported one way or
another through the bureaucracy by Congress.
Colleges and school districts are funded by tax dollars.
The administrative state holds 100 percent of its power at the sufferance of
Congress and its insulation from presidential discipline is an unconstitutional
(23:47):
fairy tale spun by the Washington establishment to protect its turf.
Members of Congress shield themselves from the constitutional accountability
often when the White House allows them to get away with it.
Cultural institutions like public libraries.
And public health agencies are only as independent from public accountability
(24:12):
as elected officials and voters permit?
Let's be clear. The most egregious regulations promulgated by the current administration
come from one place, the Oval Office.
The president cannot hide behind the agencies, as his many executive orders make clear.
(24:33):
His is the responsibility for
the regulations that threaten American communities, schools and families.
Least, a conservative president must move swiftly to do away with these vast
abuses of presidential power and remove the career and political bureaucrats who fuel it.
(24:53):
So yeah, they want to come in. And this part is typical of any administration
to come in and start undoing executive orders done by the predecessor there
whenever opposite party is in power,
but they They are strongly hammering that,
yeah, get rid of these executive orders,
(25:13):
these things that, you know, these woke little orders that are out here right now.
We need to strip all of them, move swiftly and then begin to remove career and political orders.
Bureaucrats. I wonder how this would even be identified.
(25:34):
Because there's so many people who have worked under so many different administrations,
and it has been their career.
How would they handpick and choose who deserves to be let go and who doesn't?
It's very interesting to me
how that process looks to a conservative and how they view this process.
(25:55):
And also who who they plan to replace people with.
The government has to run and function. You can't just fire a bunch of people
in Homeland Security and expect the nation to be safe.
None of this makes sense to me.
So I just want to know what this big picture is of how they want to get rid
(26:20):
of people and then usher new people in.
Properly considered restoring physical limits and and constitutional accountability
to the federal government is
a continuation of restoring national sovereignty to the American people.
In foreign affairs, global strategy, federal budgeting, and policymaking,
the same pattern emerges again and again.
(26:42):
Ruling elites lash and tear at restrictions and accountability placed on them.
They centralize power up and away from Decentralize,
power up and away from the American people to supranational treaties and organizations
to left wing experts to cite unseen all or nothing legislating to the unselected
(27:07):
career bureaucrats of the administrative state.
This whole unselected. So they want to be able to select everyone that's within government is.
I mean, with these threats of authoritarianism, you know, we're looking at it.
(27:28):
As monolithic as the left's institutional power appears to be,
it originates with appropriations from Congress and is made complete by a feckless president.
I love that word, feckless. A conservative president must look to the legislative
branch for decisive action. The administrative state is not going anywhere until
(27:49):
Congress asks to retrieve its own power from bureaucrats at the White House.
I just, yo, what has Congress passed?
We want to leave, if we leave everything up to Congress, and with that show
we got in there, that buffoonery, that clown show, no thank you.
(28:12):
But in the meantime, there are many executive twos a courageous conservative
president can use to handcuff the bureaucracy, push Congress to return to its
constitutional responsibility,
restore power over Washington to the American people, bring the administrative
state to heel, and in a process defang and defund the woke cultural warriors
(28:36):
who have infiltrated every last institution in America.
I swear, y'all in this word woke.
The conservative promise lays out how to use many of these tools,
including how to fire supposedly unfireable federal bureaucrats,
(28:56):
how to shutter wasteful and corrupt bureaus and offices,
how to muzzle woke propaganda at every level of government, how to restore the
American people's constitutional authority over the administrative state,
and how to save untold taxpayer dollars in the process.
Finally, the president can restore public confidence and accountability to our
(29:22):
most important government function of all, national defense.
The American people desire a military full of highly skilled servicemen and
women who can protect the homeland and our interests overseas.
The next conservative president must end the left's social experimentation with
(29:43):
the military, restore warfighting as its sole mission,
and set defeating the threat of the Chinese Communist Party as its highest priority.
All right, this just got a little bit scary.
So. Right now, this and we don't have highly skilled people in the military,
(30:08):
so we need to return to that to a military full of that right now,
apparently the military is just an experiment going on by the left.
I'm sure they're saying that because trans people in the military, like, really? Come on.
It just makes me sit to my stomach the way that these people think.
(30:32):
But this restore war fighting as the sole mission.
I'm just thinking in my head how many ways that that goes.
I know they're talking about the Chinese and communist parties and stuff right
here, but I'm thinking about even within our homeland in like a military state and the idea of that.
(30:54):
And don't be fool. Don't be fool to think that that can't happen because,
you know, a dictator who comes in and power needs the military.
You need that support of the military. You need that military to control the
people. So that's what I'm kind of getting the vibe of.
I don't know what y'all are picking up, but the way this language is working
(31:17):
to me, that's what I'm sensing.
All right. The last paragraph. The next conservative president must possess
the courage to relentlessly put the interests of the everyday people over the
desires of the ruling elite.
Their outrage cannot be prevented.
It must simply be ignored.
(31:39):
And it can be. The left derives its power from the institutions they control.
But those institutions are only powerful to the extent that the constitutional
officers surrender their own legitimate authority to them.
A president who refuses to do so and
uses his or her office to reimpose constitutional authority over federal policymaking
(32:04):
can begin to correct decades of corruption and remove thousands of bureaucrats
from positions of public trust they have so long abused.
Well, this idea that the left is what's controlling everything is so wild to
(32:24):
me that the left are the only elites in this world, like conservatives.
There are no elites on the conservative side. There's no conservative that's
controlling anything in the country, apparently.
Like these are the most victimized people that I know in my life.
But I guess you got to kind of preach that narrative to get people to feel like,
(32:47):
yeah, we're being wronged or something.
Or they're throwing stuff at the air that they can't prove that doesn't make any sense.
But it's scary to think about. So if you want a dismantling of our systems of government,
a dismantling of who is working within the government right now,
(33:11):
and have those people replaced by the person in charge,
and this would be a conservative president.
So if that's your view of America, then go ahead and vote for this party.
Party, but that I bet I just got to believe that's not the, the prevalent thought
(33:35):
for the majority of us out here.
And we can see through this BS.
All right. That is promise number two.
So we will cover the nets to over the next few days here this week.
Definitely go to project at 2025.org and read up on this stuff yourself.
(33:57):
Do your research. Vote, vote, vote wisely and having the information out there.
With that said, till next time tater tots.
This has been a Rosie B. Production. Catch us next time tater tots for a new episode.
(34:20):
Music.
Music.
(00:23):
We are here for day two on our review of Project 2025.
If you haven't listened to the first one, we covered the first pillar within,
well, it's the fourth pillar, but the first kind of promise within Project 2025,
which is the conservatives presidential transition plan for the next potential
(00:47):
conservative president.
Which that one was dealing with families being the center of American life and
protecting our children, the famous phrase from conservatives.
And that one dealt with a whole host of things as we talked about what family
meant to conservatives or the language that they want to get rid of and the
(01:10):
way that they want to reshape.
Just really stuff surrounded around gender and race were the main cruts within
that and in regards to family.
So definitely go back and listen to the first episode for the Project 2025 series
released yesterday if you want to get some more information on that.
(01:32):
We're going to pick it up with promise number two in the presidential transition plan of Project 2025.
And I just want to remind people that it is super important to understand what is in this plan,
because I just hear people complaining so much about the Democratic Party and
(01:52):
thinking the Republican Party is an alternative, but you need to understand
what they are trying to put into place.
If you think your life is bad now, you.
Just wait. When they say, if you think you're lonely now, wait until tonight, girl.
(02:14):
Yes. This time you're going to have to wait until 2025 and you don't want to see what's coming.
I mean, you want to see. That's why we're going through it.
So you know what not to do. I'm telling you, y'all better be voting blue coming around.
But let's pick it back up. Promise number two is to dismantle the administrative
(02:39):
state and return self-governance to the American people.
Now, this one is super, super important.
Basically, Republicans are looking to restructure the way that government is run.
And before I jump into this one,
(03:00):
I kind of want people to understand, if you don't know what the administrative state is,
is the administrative state is a term used to describe the phenomenon of executive
branch administrative agencies exercising the power to create,
adjudicate, and enforce their own rules.
(03:21):
Five pillars are key to understanding the main areas of debate about the nature
and scope of administrative agency action.
There's the non-delegation, and the non-delegation is It's simply lawmakers
delegate rulemaking authority to administrative agencies,
allowing agencies to promulgate rules with the force and effect of law.
(03:45):
So we have dedicated government workers who, you know, there's another buffer
there and they have the ability to.
Roommate. The other is judicial deference. And this is a court accepts an agency's
interpretation of a statute of regulation, even if the court would have arrived
at a different interpretation.
(04:07):
So the administrative state can get one thing, you know, they can correct certain
things there for the courts. Executive control of agencies.
The executive has certain authority over the appointment and removal of agency
heads, reorganization of the executive branch, and regulatory review activities.
(04:29):
Then we also have the pillar of procedural rights. And with procedural rights,
the agency rulemaking and enforcement proceedings have implications for individual
procedural rights, such as due process and standing.
And the last pillar is known as agency dynamics, and agencies exercise authority
(04:50):
to promulgate rules, enforce regulatory compliance, and adjudicate disputes.
Now, arguments for the administrative state,
supporters of the administrative state generally argue that federal agencies
perform valuable government functions, such as administering federal social
service programs, programs and that in health and safety regulations,
(05:15):
things of that nature.
And proponents of this, they claim that the agency staff acquires subject matter
expertise that enables them to develop, implement and special in specialized
regulations beyond the broad directives of legislators.
Because if you think in Congress, not everyone is an expert in everything they
(05:36):
are talking about in the Senate and the House.
Like those people are not necessarily the experts.
A lot of them are not experts in a lot of the subject matters.
So there are other government workers, dedicated people who are experts in areas
that can help really cultivate a solid plan for things, say,
like for the environment, for education,
(05:59):
for all these things right here that are hot button issues.
And Republicans like to refer to this group often as the deep state.
And opposing arguments against the administrative state are generally centered
around what they consider to be constitutional violations.
So in many ways, you're going to hear this argued within the Project 2025 plan
(06:22):
of how they are violating the Constitution by having this administration state
and not upholding or adhering to the separation of powers within our government.
This has been a big movement. It was actually very interesting because a party
I was at recently and I was talking with someone within Homeland Security and
(06:47):
he was telling me because we were having a conversation,
which is just confusing to me because I was telling him how I don't understand
when changing parties and stuff with presidents, how now is this view of like,
let's wipe everything out.
Out and start anew. I'm like, how can we really...
(07:11):
Survive? Well, I don't want to survive, but how can we be consistent as a society
and put ourselves in the best possible way of going forward?
If we're constantly just moving people in and out and things of these nature
and trying to replace people with who we want in there, whenever we have dedicated long-time workers,
(07:35):
some, you know, it may be difference of opinions opinions about,
you know, people who work in government, but there are experts within a government.
And sometimes it's good to keep certain people within roles that can work with
multiple parties and are not going to be biased and are going to help,
you know, execute visions that are out there in the best possible way.
(07:57):
Well, he was, we were talking about this and he was like,
you know, it's funny that you, you bring this
up because it was actually a big concern whenever ever Trump was last in office
because part of Trump's new agenda on day one was to throw a total wrecking
(08:19):
ball to the administrative state.
And the effort was an agenda if what he calls schedule F.
And it was a Trump era executive order that would reclassify tens of thousands
of the 2 million federal employees as essential at-will workers who could more easily be fired.
(08:44):
And Biden ended up rescinding this executive order whenever he took office in 2021.
And now they're hoping that Trump will win again and can reinstate this order.
And it's very frightening because this would give them having this a Schedule
F order will give them the carte blanche to just go in and fire whoever they
(09:09):
want within the government and replace them with who they want in there.
And that's just a scary thought to think about, about what what can potentially be shaped through this.
So it's very interesting. And as of now, it stands about 4,000 members of the
(09:32):
federal workforce are considered political appointees who typically change with the administration.
But Schedule F could put tens of thousands of career professionals at risk.
And it puts our democracy at risk here, because who are you overhauling and
putting in, or you just putting in cronies who are just going to do your will or whatever you say,
(09:57):
who are not going to provide their own individual thought and expertise for
the benefit of the American people, but are going to be out there to execute
one man's vision for the whole country? I like that's not democracy.
That's not how our democracy works. But that is what the conservatives want.
(10:18):
And they've been railing against this administrative state for quite a while.
So we're going to read through what the plan actually is within Project 2025
to dismantle the administrative state and return self-governance to the American people.
That's how they frame it. Okay.
(10:40):
Yeah. Okay. So here we go. Let's get into it.
So of course, the surest way to put the federal government back to work for
the American people is to reduce its size and scope back to something resembling
the original constitutional intent.
Conservatives desire a smaller government, not for its own sake,
(11:03):
but for the sake of human and flourishing.
But the Washington establishment doesn't want a constitutionally limited government
because it means they lose power and are held more accountable by the people who put them in power.
Like restoring popular sovereignty, the task of reattaching the federal government's
(11:23):
constitutional and democratic tethers calls to mind Ronald Reagan's observation
that there are no easy answers,
but there are simple answers.
In the case of making the federal government smaller, more effective,
and accountable, the simple answer is the Constitution itself.
(11:45):
The surest proof of this is how strenuously and creatively generations of progressives
and many Republican insiders have worked to cut themselves free from the strictures
of the 1789 Constitution and subsequent amendments.
Consider the federal budget. Under current law, Congress is required to pass
(12:06):
a budget and issue specific spending bills comporting with it every single year.
The last time Congress did so was in 1996.
Congress no longer meaningfully budgets or authorizes or categorizes spending.
Instead, party leaders negotiate one multi-trillion dollar spending bill,
(12:29):
several thousand pages long, and then vote on it before anyone literally has a chance to read it.
Debate time is restricted, amendments are prohibited,
and all of this is backed up against a midnight deadline when the previous omnibus
spending bill will run out and the federal government shuts down.
(12:52):
Now, I will say I do think it's crazy how we have gotten to this place in our system.
And maybe it's happened often, but I tell you, I didn't follow politics closely
my entire life to know how other administrations and things work.
I've been following more closely ever since the Obama years, to be honest.
(13:14):
I was in college during the Bush years and transitioning into work.
Of course, when we got going into our recession there in 2008,
I started paying attention a little bit more towards the end there,
Bush, and all the things with Iraq and all that stuff.
But I do think it is...
(13:34):
Unfortunate how we handle government shutdowns, potential shutdowns and bills.
And then we get all these loaded pages of things that in the last minute,
the last hours, and I think both parties are guilty of this,
of doing this and rushing things in and not giving people a chance to read and
really see what's in there within these things getting passed.
(13:56):
That is an issue, I would say, in my humble opinion, as far as our government
in a way that that whole process is done.
I don't like it. I don't like that process.
All right, let's continue. It says, this process is not designed to empower
330 million American citizens and their elected representatives,
(14:20):
but rather to empower the party
elites secretly negotiating without any public scrutiny or oversight.
In the end, congressional leaders' behavior and incentives here are no different
from those of global elites insulating policy decisions over the climate, trade,
(14:40):
public health, you name it, from the sovereignty of national electorates.
Public scrutiny and democratic accountability made life harder for policymakers, so they skirted.
It's not dysfunction, it's corruption.
And despite its gaudy price tag, the federal budget is not even close to the
worst example of this corruption.
(15:02):
That distinction belongs to the administrative state. Here we go.
The dismantling of which must be a top priority for the next conservative president.
The term administrative state refers to the policymaking work done by the bureaucracies
of the federal government, departments, agencies, and millions of employees.
(15:26):
Under Article I of the Constitution, all legislative powers herein,
granted, shall be vested in a Congress of the United States,
which shall consist of a Senate and a House of Representatives.
That is federal law and is enacted only by elected legislators in both houses of Congress.",
(15:48):
This exclusive authority was part of the framers doctrine of separated powers.
They not only split the federal government, legislative, executive and judicial
powers into different branches.
They also gave each branch checks over the others.
Under our Constitution, the legislative branch, Congress is far and away the
(16:09):
most powerful and correspondingly the most accountable to the people. All right.
And they're kind of giving a little history and things here like this big picture
warming, warming and buttering you up to make it make you really love this idea
they're about to present. All right.
(16:31):
So in recent decades, members of the House and Senate discovered that if they
give away that power to the Article 2 branch of government, they can also deny
responsibility for its actions.
So today in Washington, most policy is no longer set by Congress at all,
but by the administrative state.
(16:53):
Given the choice between being powerful, but vulnerable, or irrelevant,
but famous, most members of Congress have chosen the latter.
Yeah, many are on your side of the aisle, okay, that is just out there not doing
any work, but just being Instagram famous and living on soundbites.
(17:20):
It's very clear if you're following things that happen within the houses,
it's clear one party is trying their hardest to govern, while the other is not.
I mean, it's just simply, that's just simply facts.
All right, so let's pick it back up.
(17:43):
Congress passes intentionally vague laws that delegate decision making over
a given issue to a federal agency.
That agency's bureaucrats, not just unelected, but seemingly unfireable,
then leap at the chance to fill the vacuum created by Congress's preening cowardice.
(18:07):
The federal government is growing larger and less constitutionally accountable,
even to the president every year.
All right. Now we're about to get into the agencies where they want to.
You remember that Schedule F I talked about?
(18:27):
We're about to get into the agencies that they want to get rid of a lot of workers
within these. A little swig of water. There we go. Here we go.
A combination of elected and unelected bureaucrats at the Environmental Protection
Agency, quietly strangles domestic
energy production through difficult-to-understand rulemaking processes.
(18:52):
Bureaucrats at the Department of Homeland Security, following the lead of a
feckless administration,
order border and immigration enforcement agencies to help migrants criminally
enter our country with impunity. Okay.
Bureaucrats at the Department of Education,
(19:14):
Inject racist, anti-American, ahistorical propaganda into America's classrooms.
Bureaucrats at the Department of Justice force school districts to undermine
girls, girls sports and parents rights to satisfy transgender extremists.
(19:35):
Can't get trans out of our minds, I swear. where woke bureaucrats at the Pentagon
forced troops to attend training seminars about white privilege.
Empiricrats at the State Department infused U.S.
Foreign aid programs with woke extremism and intersectionality and abortion.
(19:58):
So y'all see what they're doing here. They're using all of these government
agencies and pretty much saying that these agencies are doing the work of the left.
And they're saying that all these agencies are filled with nothing but woke people.
So everybody within these agencies are, you know, are Democrats or liberals,
(20:23):
apparently, and liberals are running the country.
You know, we got our favorite topic, topic transgender. And that's why so big.
And you see how all this works together because the biggest mouthpieces on the
conservative side focuses on all these topics they're talking about.
So we got the trans sports.
(20:45):
As if girls in sports, okay, it's a conversation that can be had.
And it's a conversation you can have, but it is nowhere near the number one
concern for women in in this country.
Sports is not the number one issue, but we keep making this issue number one
and so big as if it's everything and it's infringing upon women and all these,
(21:11):
it's so ridiculous whenever reproductive health and rights are being stripped
and taken away from women.
We're equal pay to fight for that
is still a fight. There's so many things before sports. I love sports.
I love sports to death. You know, we cover sports here on the couch quite often.
(21:32):
But most of the world does not play sports. efforts to break into people.
And most of the world that does, whatever your kids, most of the people are
not doing it to have a career in it later in life. And it's just a fun thing to do.
So I just feel like this issue is so overblown, like so overblown,
(21:57):
where it's just not even that relevant or important in my opinion.
And we need to get into that deeper on the couch one day.
But definitely you see the things of white privilege thrown in here.
There's that white guilt that keeps getting thrown around.
They cannot stand any of these trainings. You see they already went at the DEI so hard.
(22:19):
They're so tired of these kind of trainings and stuff going on in the workplace
or anything that's making white people feel uncomfortable in any anyway,
or feel like they are being attacked.
Talking about race, racist, anti-American propaganda in our school system. Hello? What?
What are we doing here? What are we talking about?
(22:41):
So this is all crazy talk. And this is the crazy talk that is going on and that
they're using as an excuse for why we need to go in and reshape this whole thing
and clean house in all these
areas and fire all these government workers and replace them with people who
(23:02):
are going to return things back to the American people,
which means replace them with people who agree with our philosophy in all these
areas. It's unacceptable.
Unacceptable. All right, let's continue. It says, unaccountable federal spending
is the secret lifeblood of the great awakening.
(23:24):
Nearly every power center held by the left is funded or supported one way or
another through the bureaucracy by Congress.
Colleges and school districts are funded by tax dollars.
The administrative state holds 100 percent of its power at the sufferance of
Congress and its insulation from presidential discipline is an unconstitutional
(23:47):
fairy tale spun by the Washington establishment to protect its turf.
Members of Congress shield themselves from the constitutional accountability
often when the White House allows them to get away with it.
Cultural institutions like public libraries.
And public health agencies are only as independent from public accountability
(24:12):
as elected officials and voters permit?
Let's be clear. The most egregious regulations promulgated by the current administration
come from one place, the Oval Office.
The president cannot hide behind the agencies, as his many executive orders make clear.
(24:33):
His is the responsibility for
the regulations that threaten American communities, schools and families.
Least, a conservative president must move swiftly to do away with these vast
abuses of presidential power and remove the career and political bureaucrats who fuel it.
(24:53):
So yeah, they want to come in. And this part is typical of any administration
to come in and start undoing executive orders done by the predecessor there
whenever opposite party is in power,
but they They are strongly hammering that,
yeah, get rid of these executive orders,
(25:13):
these things that, you know, these woke little orders that are out here right now.
We need to strip all of them, move swiftly and then begin to remove career and political orders.
Bureaucrats. I wonder how this would even be identified.
(25:34):
Because there's so many people who have worked under so many different administrations,
and it has been their career.
How would they handpick and choose who deserves to be let go and who doesn't?
It's very interesting to me
how that process looks to a conservative and how they view this process.
(25:55):
And also who who they plan to replace people with.
The government has to run and function. You can't just fire a bunch of people
in Homeland Security and expect the nation to be safe.
None of this makes sense to me.
So I just want to know what this big picture is of how they want to get rid
(26:20):
of people and then usher new people in.
Properly considered restoring physical limits and and constitutional accountability
to the federal government is
a continuation of restoring national sovereignty to the American people.
In foreign affairs, global strategy, federal budgeting, and policymaking,
the same pattern emerges again and again.
(26:42):
Ruling elites lash and tear at restrictions and accountability placed on them.
They centralize power up and away from Decentralize,
power up and away from the American people to supranational treaties and organizations
to left wing experts to cite unseen all or nothing legislating to the unselected
(27:07):
career bureaucrats of the administrative state.
This whole unselected. So they want to be able to select everyone that's within government is.
I mean, with these threats of authoritarianism, you know, we're looking at it.
(27:28):
As monolithic as the left's institutional power appears to be,
it originates with appropriations from Congress and is made complete by a feckless president.
I love that word, feckless. A conservative president must look to the legislative
branch for decisive action. The administrative state is not going anywhere until
(27:49):
Congress asks to retrieve its own power from bureaucrats at the White House.
I just, yo, what has Congress passed?
We want to leave, if we leave everything up to Congress, and with that show
we got in there, that buffoonery, that clown show, no thank you.
(28:12):
But in the meantime, there are many executive twos a courageous conservative
president can use to handcuff the bureaucracy, push Congress to return to its
constitutional responsibility,
restore power over Washington to the American people, bring the administrative
state to heel, and in a process defang and defund the woke cultural warriors
(28:36):
who have infiltrated every last institution in America.
I swear, y'all in this word woke.
The conservative promise lays out how to use many of these tools,
including how to fire supposedly unfireable federal bureaucrats,
(28:56):
how to shutter wasteful and corrupt bureaus and offices,
how to muzzle woke propaganda at every level of government, how to restore the
American people's constitutional authority over the administrative state,
and how to save untold taxpayer dollars in the process.
Finally, the president can restore public confidence and accountability to our
(29:22):
most important government function of all, national defense.
The American people desire a military full of highly skilled servicemen and
women who can protect the homeland and our interests overseas.
The next conservative president must end the left's social experimentation with
(29:43):
the military, restore warfighting as its sole mission,
and set defeating the threat of the Chinese Communist Party as its highest priority.
All right, this just got a little bit scary.
So. Right now, this and we don't have highly skilled people in the military,
(30:08):
so we need to return to that to a military full of that right now,
apparently the military is just an experiment going on by the left.
I'm sure they're saying that because trans people in the military, like, really? Come on.
It just makes me sit to my stomach the way that these people think.
(30:32):
But this restore war fighting as the sole mission.
I'm just thinking in my head how many ways that that goes.
I know they're talking about the Chinese and communist parties and stuff right
here, but I'm thinking about even within our homeland in like a military state and the idea of that.
(30:54):
And don't be fool. Don't be fool to think that that can't happen because,
you know, a dictator who comes in and power needs the military.
You need that support of the military. You need that military to control the
people. So that's what I'm kind of getting the vibe of.
I don't know what y'all are picking up, but the way this language is working
(31:17):
to me, that's what I'm sensing.
All right. The last paragraph. The next conservative president must possess
the courage to relentlessly put the interests of the everyday people over the
desires of the ruling elite.
Their outrage cannot be prevented.
It must simply be ignored.
(31:39):
And it can be. The left derives its power from the institutions they control.
But those institutions are only powerful to the extent that the constitutional
officers surrender their own legitimate authority to them.
A president who refuses to do so and
uses his or her office to reimpose constitutional authority over federal policymaking
(32:04):
can begin to correct decades of corruption and remove thousands of bureaucrats
from positions of public trust they have so long abused.
Well, this idea that the left is what's controlling everything is so wild to
(32:24):
me that the left are the only elites in this world, like conservatives.
There are no elites on the conservative side. There's no conservative that's
controlling anything in the country, apparently.
Like these are the most victimized people that I know in my life.
But I guess you got to kind of preach that narrative to get people to feel like,
(32:47):
yeah, we're being wronged or something.
Or they're throwing stuff at the air that they can't prove that doesn't make any sense.
But it's scary to think about. So if you want a dismantling of our systems of government,
a dismantling of who is working within the government right now,
(33:11):
and have those people replaced by the person in charge,
and this would be a conservative president.
So if that's your view of America, then go ahead and vote for this party.
Party, but that I bet I just got to believe that's not the, the prevalent thought
(33:35):
for the majority of us out here.
And we can see through this BS.
All right. That is promise number two.
So we will cover the nets to over the next few days here this week.
Definitely go to project at 2025.org and read up on this stuff yourself.
(33:57):
Do your research. Vote, vote, vote wisely and having the information out there.
With that said, till next time tater tots.
This has been a Rosie B. Production. Catch us next time tater tots for a new episode.
(34:20):
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