Republicans are only slightly less heinous and self-serving than Democrats. There is a saying that Republicans like big government, but Democrats like bigger government. President Turmp won a “landslide” election. So what? Even during Trump’s first term, the size of government and the budget increased. Does anyone really think that a Republican Congress is going to repeal Bankrupt Back Better, shrink government, approach engery independence, open the Keystone pipeline, cut inflation, reduce prices, increase manufacturing jobs, drastically curtail the bloat of regulatory agencies, depart all illegals, eliminate anchor babies, purge the military of woke sycophants cosplaying as warrior leaders, fix the border, return to energy independence, get biological males out of women’s sports, wipe out the Department of Education, reduce private sector censorship and get control of the tech tyrants, drastically CUT the federal budget, convert the secret police (FBI) back into a law-enforcement agency, dismantle DHS, reign in the intelligence community, and prevent a repeat of the fascist response to the pandemic madness? That is a lot to do in two years, while he has a Republican Congress. And you know an army of Leftist lawyers is going to do everything they can to thwart him. They are already making plans to do so.
Can anyone name a single federal office, department, or program that is run effectively and efficiently? Elon Musk will be the cut-government-spending “czar,” so that he can gut the federal swamp like he did Twitter. Very much needed. The problem he is going to have is that everyone wants to reduce government fraud, waste, and abuse, but not my fraud waste and abuse. Every piece of bloated overreaching government has aset of K Street advocates. Corruption runs deep in DC. The swamp is going to fight him every step of the way. I consider most politicians to be without honor, and politicians will never willingly give back power. (For this reason, one of my friends thinks that Trump and others like him will succeed: they are not career politicians.) Republicans usually slow the growth and overreach of government, but in my lifetime, I have never seen meaningful reduction of government.
This is note time for revenge, but this is time for aggressive legislative action. Republicans have shown their only method of governance is losing gracefully, going along to get along, and infighting. While some will argue that the Republicans have purged their ranks of RINOs, I am not so sanguine. With control of three of four branches of the federal bureaucracy (the fourth branch being the unaccountable staffers, GS civilians, and swamp creatures), the Republicans need to prepare to really govern for a change.
So, what is needed is a Covenant with America, created NOW.
We all know that politicians, with few exceptions, are good at promise making and bad at promise keeping. So while fixing the economy, President Trump needs to smash the federal government. Most Americans have an effective tax rate near 50% with all the hidden and embedded taxes. If 10% is good enough for God, it should be good enough for the Federal government. 90% of the federal government budget must be demolished, with power being returned to the states. That is not going to happen in one four-year term, but even if he cut just 20% that would be a miracle of Biblical proportions. Then continuing the blood letting would fall to Vance or DeSantis.
Why the term “covenant,” when the previous attempt by Newt Gingrich was a “contract?” The dictionary definition of covenant is “a formal and serious agreement or promise.” It should be clear, actionable, and in layman’s terms. Contrast this with “contract,” which is “a binding agreement between two or more persons or parties.” I use the term “covenant” in the vain hope that dishonorable politicians will work harder to fulfill their covenant with the American people than a bunch of lawyers looking for loopholes in a contract. I know: naïve.
What would this covenant look like? Here is what I’d like to see in the Covenant:
- Shrink the federal government. Actually shrink it. When Al Gore claimed to have shrunk the government, he merely transferred labor from government employees to contractors — raising the cost of government. Shrinking the government means slashing and burning through regulatory agencies, massive reductions in Congressional and Presidential staffs (personal and professional), cutting the self-licking ice cream cone that is the Pentagon, and drastically reducing the size of cabinet departments. My going-in position is to cut the budgets of most regulatory agencies in half and let them decide what is important and what to jettison. Re-evaluate after a couple of years my measuring outcomes before and after the cuts. You know, use data, which is something the Federal government rarely does. Then cut it all in half again. Move power to the States where it belongs.
- Focus on the 10th Amendment. Get the Federal government out of our lives. Move power to the States and local communities where it belongs and where the people have greater influence and control.
- In his first term Trump had a doctrine that no new regulation could be added without four being removed. That is a good start, but that should be one new regulation = twenty repealed. The same with new laws. The same with new taxes. The swamp is rushing through a whole bunch of new regulations to “Trump proof” their fiefdoms.
- Eliminate FEMA. It is sickening that we have sent billions to Ukraine but very little to Americans in North Carolina and Lahaina, HI.
- Do not apply federal money to bailing out cities that have defunded their police, encouraged lawlessness, or bankrupted themselves with stupid, Marxist, and woke policies. As an American, I have no trouble with FEMA using my taxes to help a community impacted by a natural disaster, but I resent my taxes helping Chicago, Los Angeles, San Francisco, New York and others recover from their own stupid decisions.
- Fix the food supply. It is killing us. Start outlawing all those food additives that are outlawed in most parts of the country. Get us off the treadmill created by big ag and big pharma. Big ag creates food that has driven shameful rates of obesity, diabetes, heart disease, and other chronic illnesses. Then big pharma makes a fortune filling our bodies with chemicals to combat those conditions big ag has created.
- Eliminate the Department of Education. We need to get woke Federal Vogons (a bad-tempered, bureaucratic, officious, and callous race from The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy) out of education. Since the creation of the Department of Education, we spend more money per student than any country in the world while our educational outcomes in the bottom of the middle third of the western world. Return control of schools and standards to local communities. See my articles on education here, here, and here.
- Return the FBI to the premier law enforcement agency in the world. The FBI behaves more like a Secret Police. That means purging the upper ranks of politics. While many advocate disbanding the organization entirely, I am not suggesting a Biden-like purge of everyone who supports the opposite party. I am talking about making the organization — at all levels — scrupulously apolitical.
- Ditto for the intelligence community.
- Ditto for the ranks of General and Flag officers in the military. I have written several articles on the woke rot within the military here, here, and here. We need to purge the military of woke sycophants cosplaying as warrior leaders — particularly at our military academies. At least 75% of flag officers (generals and admirals) and 75% of GS-15 and above civilians need to go. Don’t make this about the people. Eliminate the positions. Forever.
- Close off the border. Cut off the flow of illegal drugs, human trafficking, and illegal immigrants. Enact massive deportations of people here illegally, whether they crossed the border illegally or overstayed their visas. Find illegal immigrants and deport them. If they want to come to the US, they need to go through legal channels. Period. Eliminate “anchor baby” status. Enforce remain-in-Mexico for asylum claims. (By the way, by international law, Mexico, not the US, should be providing asylum, as the rule is that you stop in the first country you enter. And there is no such thing as “economic asylum.”)
- Clean up the Department of Injustice.
- Stop government funding of Nationalist People’s Radio.
- Return to energy independence. Renew our arrangements with Canada. Build pipelines. Build lots of nuclear power plants. And, yes, explore alternative sources of energy where they make sense.
- Eliminate the hyperbole over the climate “crisis.” We can all be better stewards of our environment, but that should include real data collection, real science, not “Fauci science,” analysis, and reasonable actions. The US already exceeds the Paris pledge, so we don’t need to destroy our economy.
- Pass legislation that protects women’s athletics from men pretending to be women.
- Curtail the ability of de facto monopolies (the tech tyrants) from censoring free speech. See my article on regulating the Internet here.
- Repeal the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act and the about to be enacted Build Bankruptcy Better plan and most of the rampant spending that has occurred in the past 20 months. There is little about infrastructure in any of these obscene spending orgies.
- Invest in real infrastructure improvement. That means roads and bridges. That also means pushing broadband Internet connectivity out to rural areas, not just Blue cities. That also means reliable power throughout the country.
And how would this covenant be used? I see the Covenant with America as akin to the party’s platform. All candidates should refer to the covenant in campaign speeches, campaign adds, talking points, appearances on Sunday “news” programs, etc. Each Republican must sign the covenant and publicly take ownership for working to achieve its tenets and take responsibility for failing to do so. The Republicans need to be on guard to not let Soros and the media pervert the covenant, turning it into something it isn’t like they perverted the Tea Party. More importantly, it should guide the creation of legislation and voting patterns by all Republicans. Only by abiding by the covenant and working together (for a change) can the Republicans hope to ease America back from the brink of civil war and destruction.
A Covenant with America is a good start, but it will take a lot of work to build trust among taxpayers that Republican politicians will even TRY to live up to it.
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