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