All of Washington is acting like their hair is on fire with the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) requirement that federal employees list what they accomplished. Many are acting like they don’t know the answer and they want to phone a friend.
The Civil Service system is long overdue for a thorough review.
Let’s start with this simple fact: the most leftwing institution in America is the roughly 3 million members of the federal workforce. There is probably no group that comes even close. We know that more than nine of ten Washington, D.C., residents voted for former Vice President Kamala Harris. We know that the overwhelming number of federal employees are registered Democrats.
Workers have the right to vote for whomever they wish. But in an era when the left preaches nothing but diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) — there is no organized group of workers that has less diversity, are less inclusive and are less equitable than federal workers when it comes to ideology.
We know from Bureau of Labor Statistics data that the quit rate in the federal government is only one-third as high as the quit rate for those who work in the private sector. In the private sector, it’s up or out. In Washington it’s nearly impossible to fire a worker.
The unions and the workers know how to play the employment game like a master chess player. Try to fire an incompetent or belligerent or chronically tardy federal worker and get ready for a blizzard of discrimination or wrongful termination lawsuits. It’s a well-honed racket.
For federal managers trying to do right by the taxpayers, it’s less stressful and less costly to keep the worst workers on the payroll.
It’s unfair and demoralizing to those dedicated federal workers – and there are hundreds of thousands of them – who truly want to serve the country and help people. But even they get sucked into a punch-the-time-clock reward system that merely encourages mediocrity.
Until now. Trump and Elon want a new highly professional civil service workforce. They want to fire the bad actors.
Why shouldn’t a federal worker face the same scrutiny and job performance standards that are routine in the private sector? That’s especially true when the employer is losing money – in this case to the tune of $2 trillion a year.
In his first term Trump tried to install a pay for performance standard in the civil service system. This would have greatly benefited the very best employees. But Trump – much like Reagan back in the 1980s got his head handed to him for “politicizing” the hallowed civil service system. It was man against machine and the machine won.
Trump wants to downsize a bloated federal workforce. This will lead to a leaner, more productive and customer responsive work environment. And maybe even one that is more diverse in its politics. It’s about time.
Stephen Moore is a contributor to The Daily Caller News Foundation, a visiting fellow at the Heritage Foundation, and a co-founder of Unleash Prosperity.
The federal government owns multiple trillions of dollars of federal assets — from land, to buildings, to patent rights, to mineral rights, to immigrant visas, to oil fields to trucks and trains and unused office furniture equipment.
The government could earn well more than $1 trillion and perhaps as much as $10 trillion by selling off these assets that are simply hoarded (figuratively) in the dark and dusty basement of government buildings. These assets could then generate added annual tax receipts once they are utilized for productive purposes.
I’m not talking about selling the Washington Monument or Yellowstone National Park. The sales could and in most cases should be limited to American citizens and American businesses.
I’m referring to NON-environmentally sensitive properties that could be put to use growing our economy and using the money to retire some of our $35 trillion national debt. The sales could and should in most cases be limited to American citizens or businesses.
It’s a win-win for taxpayers, our children (who will be handed a lower debt obligation) and the U.S. economy.
One of the most valuable assets that should be put on the auction block immediately is tracts along the electro-magnetic spectrum. The spectrum contains the invisible airwaves that power mobile phones, Wi-Fi and other wireless technologies such as 5g communications.
In the past, auctioning spectrum rights to telecommunication firms and tech companies has raised more than $100 billion for the U.S. Treasury.
Congress could raise at least another $100 billion in another round of spectrum auctions. This would sell or lease space that the military doesn’t need and that other agencies of government (such as local police and fire departments) are fine without.
This strategy would help stimulate the economy in two ways. First, as in the past, the revenues raised can offset any real or imagined revenue loss from the imperative of making the Trump tax cuts permanent.
A new report by the economic consulting firm NERA, finds that auctioning 100 megahertz of mid-band spectrum that’s licensed for 5G will boost U.S. GDP by more than $260 billion, and create 1.5 million new jobs
On at least four previous occasions, Congress has used dollars raised from spectrum auctions to offset tax cuts in reconciliation packages. That’s exactly what they should do again.
“Effectively allocating spectrum to meet the ever-growing need is critical to promoting American innovation and protecting our national security,” Chairman Richard Hudson said yesterday at the first House Energy and Commerce Subcommittee on Communications and Technology hearing of the new Congress.
He points out correctly that the U.S. government has been conducting spectrum auctions for the past 30 years, and they have a track record of success. They are much fairer than giving bureaucrats the power to decide who gets spectrum, which can lead to allocations that are politically or ideologically motivated, with the result that spectrum would be used inefficiently (or not at all) by beneficiaries.
Auctions are open and transparent, minimizing the risk of shady backroom deals. They ensure that the spectrum goes to those who value it most and can use it most effectively.
Anyone who is concerned about ensuring the uninterrupted connectivity of our electric grid system and our daily Internet connection should be all for these auctions — especially as the world goes wireless and communicates less through cables and more through satellite beams.
This is also critical to maintaining our technology lead against the Chinese communist government. One Chinese news agency reported last July that, “China’s 5G network now covers every city and town in the country, as well as more than 90 percent of its villages.”
We are dangerously lagging behind and without timely spectrum auctions the gap will grow wider.
Auctions of the spectrum and other federal assets will drive progress and prosperity — and raise revenue to pay for tax cuts or retire our debt that is soon to eclipse $40 trillion. What’s not to like about that?
Stephen Moore is a contributor to The Daily Caller News Foundation, a visiting fellow at the Heritage Foundation, and a co-founder of Unleash Prosperity. His latest book is “The Trump Economic Miracle.”
Shortly before his death in 2006, I had the privilege of interviewing Milton Friedman over dinner in San Francisco. The last question I asked him was: What are the three things we had to do to make America more prosperous?
His answer I have never forgotten: “First, allow universal school choice; second, expand free trade; third and most importantly, cut government spending.” That was long before Presidents Barack Obama and Joe Biden came along.
There are not too many problems in America that cannot be traced back to the growth of big and incompetent government.
It is notable that the two big bursts of inflation during modern times both occurred when government spending exploded. The first was the gigantic expansion of the LBJ “war on poverty” welfare state in the 1970s with prices nearly doubling, and then the post-COVID era spending blitz in the last year of Trump and then the Biden $6 trillion spending spree with the CPI sprinting from 1.5% to 9.1%.
Coincidence? Maybe. But I doubt it.
The connection between government flab and the decline in the purchasing power of the dollar is obvious. In both cases the Washington spending blitz was funded by Federal Reserve money printing. The helicopter money caused prices to surge. (I still find it laughable that 11 Nobel prize-winning economists wrote in the New York Times in 2021: Don’t worry, the Biden multi-trillion-dollar spending spree won’t cause inflation.)
The avalanche of federal spending hasn’t stopped even though COVID ended more than three years ago. We are three months into the 2025 fiscal year and on pace to spend an all-time high $7 trillion and borrow $2 trillion. If we stay on this course, the federal budget could reach $10 trillion over the next decade.
This road to financial perdition cannot stand. It risks blowing up the Trump presidency.
Upon entering office, Trump should on day one call for a package of up to $500 billion of rescissions — money that the last Congress appropriated but has not been spent yet. Cancelling the green energy subsidies alone could save nearly $100 billion. Why are we still spending money on COVID?
We could save tens of billions by ending corporate welfare programs — such as the wheel barrels full of tax dollars thrown at companies like Intel in the CHIPS Act. The Elon Musk Department of Government Efficiency is already identifying low hanging fruit that needs to be cut from the tree.
Along with extending the Trump tax cut of 2017, this erasure of bloated federal spending is critical for economic revival and for reversing the income losses to the middle class under Biden.
This is especially urgent because the curse of inflation is NOT over. Since the Fed started cutting interest rates in October, commodity prices are up nearly 5% and the mortgage rates have again hit 7% — in part because the combination of cheap money and government expansion is a toxic economic brew — as history teaches us.
Nothing could suck the oxygen and excitement out of the new Trump presidency more than a resumption of inflation at the grocery store and the gas pump. Trump’s record-high approval rating will sink overnight if the cost of everything starts rising again.
Cutting spending won’t be easy. The resistance won’t just come from Bernie Sanders Democrats. Trump will have to convince lawmakers in his own party — many of whom are already defending green-new-deal pork projects in their districts.
This is why Trump should make the case in his inaugural address that downsizing government is the moral equivalent of war. Borrow a line from Nancy Reagan: just say no — to runaway government spending. Say yes to what Friedman titled his famous book: “Capitalism and Freedom.”
Stephen Moore is a contributor to The Daily Caller News Foundation and a visiting fellow at the Heritage Foundation. His new book, coauthored with Arthur Laffer, is “The Trump Economic Miracle.”
Here is my wish list for the incoming Trump administration to make America healthy and prosperous and great again in 2025.
1.Slash Job-Killing Regulations
The regulatory state is a $2 trillion tax on the American economy. We all want worker safety, a clean environment and consumer protections, but in too many cases the costs of regulations far outweigh the societal benefits. President-elect Donald Trump has promised to slash 10 rules for every new rule. Just do it, Mr. President.
2. Make The Trump Tax Cuts Permanent
As JFK, Ronald Reagan and others have proven throughout history, lower tax rates lead to more growth, more investment and more jobs. The Trump tax cuts meant that a typical family of four earning $75,000 a year saw their tax bill fall by half — a benefit valued at more than $2,000. And the corporate tax rate fell from 35% — the highest in the world — to 21%, bringing jobs and capital to America. Trump has promised to make all these tax cuts permanent. Why? Because they worked almost exactly as we anticipated they would.
3. Replace Welfare With Work
Growth will require more able-bodied Americans getting off welfare and into jobs. Welfare — which includes cash assistance, public housing, food stamps, disability payments, unemployment benefits and Medicaid — needs to be a hand up, not a handout.
4. Use America’s Abundant Natural Resources
America has well more than $50 trillion of natural resources that are accessible with existing drilling and mining technologies. This is a vast storehouse of wealth that far surpasses what any other nation is endowed with. We can use the royalty payments and leases to reduce our national debt while creating hundreds of thousands of jobs.
5. Cut Medical Costs by Demanding Health Care Price Transparency
One of many ways to bring health care costs down to consumers (and taxpayers, who pay half the costs) is to require hospitals, pharmacies, doctors and health clinics to list prices for what they are charging. The Committee to Unleash Prosperity estimates that $1 trillion to $2 trillion could be reduced from health care costs, with no reduction in the quality of care, by allowing consumers to shop around on the internet for the best price — just as we do when we buy groceries, a home or a car. This will foster free market competition and lower prices.
6. Allow School Choice for All Families
Test scores in America have been plummeting. Kids are graduating from high school — if at all — without even being able to read the diploma. America no longer ranks in the top 10 in many academic achievement ratings.
A child can get a better education at half the cost in the Catholic school system and in many charters.
Trump has endorsed universal school choice for all children regardless of income or ethnicity or race. This is the civil rights issue of our time.
7. Implement A Pro-America Immigration Policy
Trump’s committed to securing our border, but we also need legal immigrants through a merit-based immigration system. This visa system would select immigrants based on their skills, talents, investment capital, English language ability and education level. These characteristics all presage success in America.
8. Revive America’s Great Cities
Our once-great cities in America — from New York to Chicago to Detroit to San Francisco to Seattle — have come to look like war zones. Crime has run rampant. Businesses and people and capital are fleeing and leaving the poorest Americans — mostly minorities — stranded with tragically limited opportunities other than working at Walmart or McDonald’s for minimum wage. Since 2020, our major cities have lost nearly 1 million residents. And tens of thousands of businesses.
Trump wants to revitalize our cities and abandoned rural areas through deregulation, reduction in tax rates, changes in zoning policies and infrastructure investments.
9. Pull the U.S. Out Of The Paris Climate Change Treaty And Other Anti-America Agreements
We must end American participation in globalist treaties that hurt America most. This includes the Paris Climate Accords — a treaty with which most other nations have failed to comply, yet which places huge burdens on American companies and workers. Trump also has pledged to end global taxation — such as Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen’s global minimum tax. Do we even need a United Nations?
10. Finally, Drain The Swamp
There is a reason why three of the five wealthiest counties in America are in or around Washington, D.C. Washington is getting rich at the expense of the rest of us. Fewer than 10% of overpaid federal workers (of which there are more than 2 million) are working full time in the office even though COVID-19 ended three years ago. These are swamp employees that often get paid $150,000 or more a year. Fire them if they don’t show up. And relocate federal agencies in other cities.
These are admittedly bold aspirations for an economic transformation toward freedom and free enterprise. But the one person who can get it done is Trump.
Stephen Moore is a contributor to The Daily Caller News Foundation and a visiting fellow at the Heritage Foundation. His new book, coauthored with Arthur Laffer, is “The Trump Economic Miracle.”
One of the highest priorities for the incoming Trump administration should be to end the Democrats’ weaponization of powerful government agencies against taxpayers and businesses they don’t like. Nowhere has this mission been more pernicious than the party-line vote to fund the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) with nearly $80 billion and hire tens of thousands of new tax snoops.
By the way, according to the IRS press office, the additional audits have so far raised less than $2 billion, far less than the additional expenditures. So how is this program “paying for itself”?
This was never about seeking tax fairness as liberals claimed. It was about unleashing an aggressive, permanent and unchecked enforcement assault on U.S. taxpayers to rake in more tax dollars to pay for liberals’ political agenda. The American people voted to end such madness, and the IRS should now act accordingly and immediately by ignoring the Biden administration’s 11th-hour efforts to ram through a slew of costly new rules and regulations as they now head toward the exit.
Progressive leaders made wildly erroneous claims that a supersized IRS would raise nearly $1 trillion over 10 years from stepped-up enforcement against higher-income earners and businesses. And they attempted to justify their proposals by broadly portraying entrepreneurs, small businesses, family-owned private enterprises and the wealthy as tax cheats.
The entire exercise was designed to harass lawful taxpayers and threaten them as guilty parties until they could prove themselves innocent.
Fortunately, most voters saw their efforts for what they were: a liberal fantasy grab of other peoples’ money and an attempt to assert greater control over their livelihoods. Democrat leaders did not help themselves by immediately oversteering the car. This included efforts to have the IRS spy on personal bank accounts and require income reporting for basic Venmo payments among friends, as well as punitive measures on those whose incomes are derived from tips or numerous other types of transactions.
Another target for IRS harassment has been business partnerships. Such businesses are one of the most common and practical ways to structure private enterprises of all sizes. A simple analogy might be when one party owns an available tractor and another has available land, and they go into business together to farm the land.
All told, there are an estimated 4.5 million business partnerships in America. Collectively, these partnerships generate more than $12 trillion in revenue and employ millions of U.S. workers.
Yet the IRS, before President-elect Donald Trump returns to office, is now stealthily attempting to implement new rules that threaten the future viability of such partnerships. These proposed changes to the tax code impact what is known as “basis shifting” — a routine and legal practice that business partners use to adjust the tax basis of their respective assets. In short, the proposed rules would deliberately embed uncertainty and subjective IRS interpretations of how taxable assets are treated when one transfers or sells their interest in a business partnership. Basically, the opposite of tax fairness.
Meanwhile, the multibillion-dollar bounty the Biden administration claimed their newly armed IRS would secure through added enforcement and new tax rules has completely failed to materialize. The IRS recently disclosed that just $1 billion had been recovered since their aggressive campaign went into effect two years ago, and there is no way of knowing if that would have occurred with or without it.
How ironic and sad is it for taxpayers to learn that the vast amount of the $80 billion Democrats awarded to the IRS to recover or find new “savings” is instead on pace to serve as a massive cost to the U.S. Treasury?
The last thing voters now want is for the IRS to impose any more costly last-minute tax changes that will make problems even worse for taxpayers, workers and employers. Accordingly, the Biden team and the IRS should put down their pencils.
And if they persist with these fourth-quarter rule changes, the Trump team should be prepared to immediately repeal them in January.
Stephen Moore is a contributor to The Daily Caller News Foundation and a visiting fellow at the Heritage Foundation. His new book, coauthored with Arthur Laffer, is “The Trump Economic Miracle.”
