Speaker 1: Because four hours.
Speaker 2: Simply enough, this is armstrong and getty extra large, cut.
Speaker 3: Jobs, save the government money, signed Americans a check for
Speaker 3: the difference. That's the Trump plan being floated at least,
Speaker 3: But is it realistic? Is it feasible? And might it
Speaker 3: hurt your wallet more than it would help?
Speaker 1: Where he's gone too far? A slim majority using presidential power,
Speaker 1: fifty two percent say he's gone too far there cutting
Speaker 1: federal programs.
Speaker 2: Fifty one percent of Americans say gone too far.
Speaker 3: This is the chainsaw for bureaucracy, turns off chainsaw.
Speaker 2: A variety of opinions and thoughts there having to do
Speaker 2: with domestic policy, budget cutting, bureaucracy, taming, et cetera, which
Speaker 2: is one of the major initiatives going on in the
Speaker 2: Trump administration right now. Who better to discuss this with
Speaker 2: than Lanhi, Chen David and Diane Steffy, fellow in American
Speaker 2: Public Policy studies at the Hoover Institution and the Director
Speaker 2: of Domestic Policy he studies at Stanford University.
Speaker 1: Lanhi, how are you great to be with you? How
Speaker 1: are you just terrific?
Speaker 2: Thank you. Earlier in the show, we were comparing and
Speaker 2: contrasting the democratic reaction to a lot of the cutting
Speaker 2: and restructuring and examining the giant bureaucracy which has been
Speaker 2: essentially any cuts are a horror in a constitutional crisis.
Speaker 2: With Lincoln's statement that we absolutely have the right to
Speaker 2: amend to reconstruct, and you know he didn't say this exposedly,
Speaker 2: but cut or grow government in the way we the
Speaker 2: people see fit.
Speaker 1: It's quite a contrast, it is, And I would just
Speaker 1: say this, I mean, I think there is a fair
Speaker 1: amount of hysteria over some of the activity that we're seeing,
Speaker 1: and the effort I think that's underway by some of
Speaker 1: the media is to try and define some of these
Speaker 1: cuts as existential. We're deeply problematic. So let's just step
Speaker 1: back and take a look at one of them that
Speaker 1: they talk about for now, the IRS. This is one
Speaker 1: of my favorite ones. The IRS has reached record levels
Speaker 1: of staffing in the last couple of years, and they
Speaker 1: have significantly expanded their workforce, so they went from about
Speaker 1: seventy thousand employees to one hundred thousand employees over the
Speaker 1: course of a couple of years. Now, the cuts that
Speaker 1: Doze is talking about sixty eight hundred employees, we're talking
Speaker 1: about sixty eight hundred probationary recent hires that they're looking
Speaker 1: to essentially trim from the IRS bureaucracy. We're talking about
Speaker 1: between six to seven percent of the workforce, and it
Speaker 1: doesn't even account for this significant, as I said, increase
Speaker 1: in the workforce we've seen recently. So people just need
Speaker 1: to look at the facts and try to figure out
Speaker 1: execuly what's going on here, because fundamentally, there is this
Speaker 1: notion that, well, no, we can't cut anything, this is
Speaker 1: going to cause a degradation of service. Look, the service
Speaker 1: the IRS wasn't all that great before. So the notion
Speaker 1: that we have this challenge that's being created because of
Speaker 1: the things that government is doing and things that DOGE
Speaker 1: is doing in particular, it's just not true.
Speaker 2: Well, and the idea that to even aughtit something is
Speaker 2: improper or threatening is just it's it's obscenely backward. One
Speaker 2: of the things Kim Strassel's writing about is how the
Speaker 2: Trump administration is taking a serious look at the agencies
Speaker 2: that Congress created to perform executive functions, Like, well, they
Speaker 2: administer laws, but they're free from the executive branches control.
Speaker 2: It's like Congress created its own executive branch and any
Speaker 2: thoughts on where we are as a country with that,
Speaker 2: and what are the chances of doing something about it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's another great question, because you've got a whole
Speaker 1: host of agencies that are they're called independent agencies right there.
Speaker 1: They're created usually they end in a B or a
Speaker 1: C so commissioner board, and these are the organizations that
Speaker 1: essentially are part of the executive branch, but they have
Speaker 1: some independent authority. So they've got, for example, board members
Speaker 1: or commission members who are appointed by a president for
Speaker 1: a set amount of time, confirmed by the Senate, and
Speaker 1: they're supposed to sit for that set amount of time.
Speaker 1: And the idea was, well, you've got some of these
Speaker 1: institutions that are supposed to create some separation from the
Speaker 1: rest of the executive branch. And this doesn't make a
Speaker 1: whole lot of sense though at some level. And so
Speaker 1: what this administration, with the Trump administration, is now trying
Speaker 1: to do is to say, for example, hey, if you,
Speaker 1: as a commission, a supposedly independent commission, issue a new
Speaker 1: regulation something that you're saying people can or cannot do,
Speaker 1: you need to take that regulation and you've got to
Speaker 1: run it through the White House. We've got to know
Speaker 1: what it is that you're doing, even as a quote
Speaker 1: independent agency. I don't think that's unreasonable, right, because the
Speaker 1: independent agency has elements of independence. We understand that because
Speaker 1: they're regulating, let's say, for example, whether a merger can
Speaker 1: go through or not. But a core what the White
Speaker 1: House is saying is if you're going to regulate, we
Speaker 1: have to know about it. And again, this is one
Speaker 1: of those things where there's been a lot of writing
Speaker 1: in the media, a lot of misunderstanding, this notion of
Speaker 1: Trump's trying to take over the entire bureaucracy, when the
Speaker 1: reality is there's certain things here that independent agencies, for example,
Speaker 1: have been doing for a long time where we probably
Speaker 1: do need a little more political oversight. And so, you know,
Speaker 1: people again just got to understand what the real story
Speaker 1: is versus what the media is reporting.
Speaker 2: Sure, and we've been plenty harsh about the unchecked growth
Speaker 2: of executive power and how the gigantic executive branches come
Speaker 2: to be. In many ways, it mimics all three branches.
Speaker 2: It writes rules and laws like Congress, then it enforces
Speaker 2: them like the executive branch, I guess, and then decides
Speaker 2: on your fines. And here's the appeals and everything like
Speaker 2: the judicial branch, and so obviously it needs to be
Speaker 2: looked at. And the other aspect of this that has
Speaker 2: never talked about in the media is that the president
Speaker 2: as for instance, there howling that Elon Musk is unelected.
Speaker 1: You know, like.
Speaker 2: President's virtually the only person in the executive branch who
Speaker 2: is elected. But the idea that a huge trunk of
Speaker 2: the executive branch wouldn't be answerable to the voters at all,
Speaker 2: except like you know, three steps down the line. While
Speaker 2: I fear unchecked executive power. If the executive is in charge,
Speaker 2: they can do good things and be rewarded with reelection
Speaker 2: or their party a reelection. But if they do bad things,
Speaker 2: they can be voted out. Right now, if the giant,
Speaker 2: sprawling executive branch does bad things, what the hell do
Speaker 2: I do about it?
Speaker 1: Well, this is the most important thing that people don't realize,
Speaker 1: which is that there is actually a check on what
Speaker 1: the executive branch can do. And that's Congress. Right, If
Speaker 1: Congress actually did its job and was functional as opposed
Speaker 1: to just being a bunch of people running around yelling
Speaker 1: all the time. If Congress actually yeah, if Congress actually
Speaker 1: function the way Congress is supposed to function. That's your
Speaker 1: check on the executive branch, right, that's your check on
Speaker 1: what the executive is doing. They have the oversight power.
Speaker 1: They can have hearings, they can run legislation, they can
Speaker 1: do all sorts of stuff to constrain if they're really
Speaker 1: worried about if Chuck Schumer and Democrats and Hakeem Jeffries
Speaker 1: and all the rest, if they're really worried about what
Speaker 1: the executive branch is doing, If they're worried about what
Speaker 1: those is doing, they have the ability in Congress to
Speaker 1: try and work together with Republicans there to figure out
Speaker 1: a way to conduct oversight. They can conduct oversite on
Speaker 1: their own, by the way, they don't need Republicans to
Speaker 1: do it necessarily. So the idea that there's no check
Speaker 1: on the executive. First of all, you're right, the voters
Speaker 1: can send a check. But more importantly, Congress needs to
Speaker 1: do its job, and Congress has completely seated the playing
Speaker 1: field in a lot of ways to the executive. This
Speaker 1: is not a Trump problem. That's happened during the Biden administration.
Speaker 1: Has happened during Obama. That the Congress has just gotten
Speaker 1: less and less willing to do its job, and that's.
Speaker 2: Probably is it just that if they're not on the
Speaker 2: record having done anything, they can't be blamed for anything
Speaker 2: going wrong. Where does this cowardice, laziness, whatever it is
Speaker 2: come from.
Speaker 1: Well, part of it's that the incentives for members of
Speaker 1: Congress are really different now than they were before. You know.
Speaker 1: Now it's all about how many likes can I get
Speaker 1: on social media, how can I generate a following on
Speaker 1: social media? How can I do all of that, as
Speaker 1: opposed to you know, where I think there were members
Speaker 1: of Congress that did the hard work of actually trying
Speaker 1: to get things done. You know, I think it's been
Speaker 1: a few decades since we've really seen a lot of
Speaker 1: that activity. But I think part of it is the
Speaker 1: incentive structure has changed, and then part of it is,
Speaker 1: you know, unfortunately, I do think we're electing in a
Speaker 1: lot of places, more extreme members of Congress who are
Speaker 1: really more interested in advancing ideology than actually passing legislation
Speaker 1: and getting things done. Now, some of that's reflection of
Speaker 1: us as the American people, becoming more more polarized and
Speaker 1: more ideological in some ways, But overall, I do think
Speaker 1: that the composition of gods, the nature of Congress who
Speaker 1: were sending to Congress. All of these things have impacted,
Speaker 1: quite frankly, Congress's ability to do its job and congress
Speaker 1: members of Congress's willingness to do their job.
Speaker 2: Wow, that's a big and that's a big and we
Speaker 2: don't really have time to talk about how to reform
Speaker 2: our entire primary processing and the rest of it. And
Speaker 2: so for folks just tuning in especially, we've been talking
Speaker 2: about and a lot of this has gone on unnoticed
Speaker 2: or untalked about by many people in the media in
Speaker 2: the midst of Trump cutting you know, transgender polo matches
Speaker 2: for Dubai or whatever the heck, a lot of the
Speaker 2: serious looking at and rejiggering the administrative state, all these
Speaker 2: commissions and boards and making everybody go through all the
Speaker 2: rules and see if any of the rules violate the Constitution,
Speaker 2: exceed legislative power, go beyond the clear words of the
Speaker 2: Congressional Statute, harm the national interest, a stripping down of
Speaker 2: the gigantic administrative state, and those of us who've been
Speaker 2: praying for that sort of thing are super excited. But
Speaker 2: as I said before the break lawn, he can we
Speaker 2: help understand, help people understand rather how that helps their lives,
Speaker 2: you know, in the everywhere America.
Speaker 1: Well, look, we want an effective and efficient government, right
Speaker 1: and obviously everyone wants government to do the things that's
Speaker 1: supposed to do. But when you have I think there's
Speaker 1: a couple of issues. One is when you have government
Speaker 1: that's grown so big and particularly has so many people
Speaker 1: that it becomes kind of a constituency in and of itself, right,
Speaker 1: that it becomes about defending the institution, which really means
Speaker 1: making sure that nothing ever changes. What you end up with, unfortunately,
Speaker 1: is the situation where government doesn't have to improve. I mean,
Speaker 1: let's just compare that to a minute to let's just
Speaker 1: think about a business. Right. If you think about a business,
Speaker 1: the reason why businesses improved, really, the only reason why
Speaker 1: they improve is because of competition. And you've got a
Speaker 1: marketplace where we've got different businesses competing for people's support
Speaker 1: and for people's business, and that ends up forcing them
Speaker 1: to improve and to change and to evolve. Think about
Speaker 1: government for a minute. What forces government to change and
Speaker 1: evolve and get better. The answer is nothing on a
Speaker 1: regular basis unless you apply some sort of pressure, There
Speaker 1: is no competition. There's no other government out there that's
Speaker 1: going to do national security, that's going to do processing
Speaker 1: to make sure that we have clean air and clean water.
Speaker 1: That you don't have that unless you apply some political
Speaker 1: pressure on government to do better. And that is fundamentally
Speaker 1: why we need to think about some of these changes
Speaker 1: that are going on. You are some of them unorthodox,
Speaker 1: are some of them going to raise eyebrows, Sure, but fundamentally,
Speaker 1: the only way government gets better is if you apply
Speaker 1: some pressure on it to be more efficient and more effective.
Speaker 1: And by the way, here's another thing, Joe, that really
Speaker 1: drives me nuts is transparency. If you look at, for example,
Speaker 1: in California where I'm sitting, the lack of transparency we
Speaker 1: have into what government is doing and spending money on
Speaker 1: is remarkable. And at the federal level we've got some
Speaker 1: similar issues. It's not as bad as it is in California,
Speaker 1: but why can't we, as the people who fund government,
Speaker 1: have a better idea of what government's spending our money on.
Speaker 1: This is something that's always drove me. That's is why
Speaker 1: I ran for Controller several years ago. It's why I
Speaker 1: continue to believe we've got to push this transparency message
Speaker 1: because if we don't know what government is doing, it
Speaker 1: can ever get better. We can't ever make it do
Speaker 1: the things that's supposed to do, and instead it ends
Speaker 1: up doing things that after the fact we read about it,
Speaker 1: we're like, what our money's been going to? What? Because
Speaker 1: no one was able to see along the way where
Speaker 1: all that money was going. So anyway, I'll get off
Speaker 1: my soapbox now, but I really think transparency is hugely important.
Speaker 2: Well so, and how that lands on main Street though
Speaker 2: is number one. We're not being stolen from and our
Speaker 2: tax money merely distributed to cronies. That is what I
Speaker 2: would like very much. But secondly, wouldn't we see less
Speaker 2: regulation therefore more efficient economic growth and change and that
Speaker 2: sort of thing and rising wages? I just think I
Speaker 2: think scaling back the administrative state would have a specific
Speaker 2: material benefit to average Americans wherever they are.
Speaker 1: Well, yeah, I mean, look aside from people getting better
Speaker 1: service and having a government that's more responsive. You're right,
Speaker 1: I mean not to get too wonky about this, but
Speaker 1: there is always this worry about government crowding out the
Speaker 1: private sector, and what that means is that the government
Speaker 1: becomes so big that it starts to make it difficult
Speaker 1: for you know, private entrepreneurs and small business owners to
Speaker 1: do what they're doing. And the more debt we take on,
Speaker 1: the more people are going to have to pay in
Speaker 1: taxes to pay off that debt. And why we why
Speaker 1: do we carry debt? We carry debt to have a
Speaker 1: bigger government. And so yeah, there is a real impact
Speaker 1: for people on main street, and that is that if
Speaker 1: government gets bigger, taxes go up and people pay more
Speaker 1: because we have to, We have to pay more to
Speaker 1: support the mechanism of government that's been created. So there
Speaker 1: is a direct effect on our pocketbooks and something that
Speaker 1: the people need to be aware of.
Speaker 2: And just you know, a personal example. I've been very fortunate,
Speaker 2: Jack and I have done well in this business. I'm
Speaker 2: reasonably financially comfortable. But my taxes are breathtaking. And if
Speaker 2: I were not paying those taxes like that, It's not
Speaker 2: like I would go out and buy a yacht. I
Speaker 2: would love to invest in smart people with great ideas.
Speaker 2: That's what I would do if I was not spending
Speaker 2: X amount of money on taxes and help them grow
Speaker 2: their businesses and hire a bunch of people and to
Speaker 2: get start an insurance plan and the rest of it.
Speaker 2: So yeah, the idea that government crowds out free enterprise
Speaker 2: and private enterprises is absolutely true. So Alanihi, we appreciate
Speaker 2: the time and thoughts anything else on what the Trump
Speaker 2: administration is doing domestically that's got you excited or you're
Speaker 2: feeling really good about Joe.
Speaker 1: I mean, look, I think the some of the stuff
Speaker 1: that the doge is doing in terms of right sizing government,
Speaker 1: I think that's long overdue, quite frankly. But what I
Speaker 1: would also say is we've got a president. I mean,
Speaker 1: whether you like what he's doing or not, he's doing
Speaker 1: something okay, and I think that that is fundamentally what
Speaker 1: in many ways in our country, we feel like we've
Speaker 1: been lacking this. We've been lacking this kind of leadership
Speaker 1: and direction. And we can have a real debate about
Speaker 1: whether all of these things are right or wrong, whether
Speaker 1: we like everything that's happening, whether we think the direction
Speaker 1: that's that the US is taking around the world is
Speaker 1: the right one. But fundamentally, we have an action oriented
Speaker 1: executive branch and an action oriented government, and maybe we
Speaker 1: can kind of wake everyone up and sort of say, listen,
Speaker 1: there's some things that have to get done here, and
Speaker 1: there's some ways in which we need to push forward
Speaker 1: to improve our country. And I just think that we
Speaker 1: can have a real debate over these things and this
Speaker 1: level of activity and action that is truly exciting to me.
Speaker 1: And you know, let's see where it goes.
Speaker 2: Lonhe Chen of the Hoover and Institution, Stanford University, Lone,
Speaker 2: He's always a pleasure. Thanks so much for the time.
Speaker 1: Yep, great to be with you. Thank you.
Speaker 2: Likewise, thanks and to Chuck Schumer and those who have
Speaker 2: been denigrating the Supreme Court and talking about how it's
Speaker 2: illegitimate and the rest of it. The plan is all
Speaker 2: the stuff we've been talking about to really look at
Speaker 2: the foundations of the giant, obese Washington Colossus and dragged
Speaker 2: to the Supreme Court. Questions like these commissions and boards
Speaker 2: and departments of since they're no longer doing what Congress
Speaker 2: told them to do and they're not accountable to the
Speaker 2: executive agent, the executive branch, can we end them or
Speaker 2: how can we trim them and restructure them? And if
Speaker 2: it runs a foul of any constitutional principles we have,
Speaker 2: thank God and Trump Frankly, we have a lot of
Speaker 2: constitutionalist judges who are very, very protective of the bones
Speaker 2: of the Constitution, the original intents of the Constitution. So
Speaker 2: I think it's the perfect circumstance. We've got an agent
Speaker 2: of change and agents of stability that are going to
Speaker 2: work together to make the government better for all of us.
Speaker 2: Hey la, hey la.
Speaker 1: I love it extra large