In his Dec. 9 emailed newsletter, Sixth District Congressman Ben Cline (R) wrote about his government efficiency planning with Elon Musk that immediately followed the Thanksgiving holiday. Cline wrote:
“I recently joined Vivek Ramaswamy and Elon Musk (and his son!) to discuss transformative ideas aimed at improving government efficiency and accountability through the new Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE). As a member of the new bipartisan DOGE caucus, I shared insights from the Republican Study Committee’s Balanced Budget Task Force report, which lays out 150 practical solutions focused on restoring fiscal responsibility, curbing wasteful spending, and cutting through the bureaucratic red tape.
“We are fully committed to tackling government inefficiencies head-on. Together, the DOGE and our bipartisan caucus are ready to prioritize legislative efforts that will reduce our federal deficits. With innovative thinkers like Musk and Ramaswamy bringing fresh perspectives to the table, we will fight to create a more effective government that serves the American people.”
Adding urgency to the meeting is the escalating US National Debt, currently over $36 trillion. Musk and others have pointed out that the current levels of federal spending and debt are unsustainable.
As a reference, it took over 200 years, from Presidents George Washington to Ronald Reagan, for the US government to acquire its first $1 trillion in debt. However, the debt has more than doubled in the past decade, adding $4 trillion in 2020 only (source).
Cline is a member of the US House of Representatives, and one group of that body is the House Budget Committee.
In an update posted May 16, 2024, that Committee cited these statistics:
- “The US now spends more on interest payments on its debt than on defense or Medicare.
- “Interest on the debt is currently the fastest growing part of the budget, nearly doubling from $345 billion (1.6 percent of GDP) in FY 2020 to $659 billion (2.4 percent of GDP) in 2023, and is on track to reach $870 billion (3.1 percent of GDP) by the end of FY 2024.
- “Spending on interest is also more than all the money spent this year on veterans, education, and transportation combined.
- “Spending on interest is now the second largest line item in the budget and is expected to remain so for the rest of the fiscal year. By 2051, interest will be the largest line item in the budget.”
- “Without reforms to reduce deficits and debt, interest costs will keep rising, continue crowding out spending on other priorities, and further burden future generations.”
The number of current federal agencies is 428, and Musk and Speaker Johnson are on record hoping to slash that number to 99, a reduction of 75 percent. According to Johnson in a recent interview on Fox News, among those singled out for the chopping block are PBS, National Public Radio (NPR), and abortion giant Planned Parenthood.
Speaker Johnson was quoted in the interview: “We have the opportunity to go in and really take back control from the administrative state….For a long time they’ve been acting as judge, jury and executioner on the rules that they make on industries and small business owners and the rest. We have the ingredients, we have the conditions right now to actually be able to make really dramatic change.”
According to the US Constitution, only Congress has the power to write legislation and spending bills, but over the decades, the so-called “administrative state” has taken on more and more of those roles, to which the Legislative Branch has generally acquiesced.
Whereas presidents and members of Congress must get approval from voters, career employees in the federal bureaucracy do not. Moreover, two recent US Supreme Court cases have reaffirmed Congress’ and the courts’ authority to rein-in the administrative state.
Those cases are the June 2022 West Virginia vs. EPA and June 2024 Chevron Deference opinions.
Argentinian President Javier Milei, who took office in December 2023, has popularized the image of the chainsaw to cut government waste. In contrast, most DOGE leaders are eschewing that imagery and instead using the metaphor of the blowtorch.
On Dec. 4, Speaker Johnson posted to Twitter/X: “Under President Trump, we will take a blowtorch to the administrative state and reduce the size and scope of government.”
Not only massive bureaucracy and waste have caught DOGE’s ire, but also potential corruption. On Dec. 9, Musk posted this to Twitter/X, which as of Dec. 14 had already garnered over 53 million views: “The Federal government computers & software are in such bad shape that they often cannot verify that payments are not fraud, waste or abuse! That’s why the government can’t pass basic audits. They often LITERALLY don’t know where your tax dollars went. It’s insane. My preferred title in the new administration is Volunteer IT Consultant. Need to fix the IT infrastructure in order to make government work. This is a grind & hardly glorious, but we can’t make government efficient & fix the deficit if the computers don’t work.”
Of particular relevance is what all these reforms at the national level might mean for Virginia politics. Over recent decades more and more of Northern Virginia has become bedroom communities for the nation’s capital for people whose livelihoods depend either directly or indirectly on the federal government. As that region’s population and house prices have skyrocketed, Virginia has become more blue politically.
In recent statewide elections, Northern Virginia has provided between one-fourth to one-third of all votes, so large blue margins there easily overwhelm red margins downstate.
However, if a large number of federal agencies and their positions are either relocated to elsewhere in the nation or terminated, that may change the current balance of power. The 2025 governor’s race shaping up as a contest between Democrat Abigail Spanberger and Marine and Republican Lt. Governor Winsome Sears may show us that outcome.
In another part of Cline’s email, he expressed outrage over the recent scandal where President Biden pardoned his son Hunter.
“Time and again, Joe Biden has lied to the American people about his family’s corrupt foreign influence-peddling schemes, falsely claiming he never met with any of Hunter Biden’s foreign associates. In June, Joe Biden promised that he would not pardon Hunter, yet he did it anyway. All Biden did during his presidency was deceive the American people. This pardon not only raises serious questions about deep-rooted corruption but also reflects the disdain for the rule of law that has plagued the Biden-Harris Administration from the very beginning. This pardon appears to be an attempt to erase the Biden family’s involvement in Ukraine and the millions that have flowed into their bank accounts over the years.
“The House Oversight Committee and the House Judiciary Committee have worked hard to follow the facts and evidence where they may lead as we continue to investigate the Biden family corruption. So far, our ongoing impeachment inquiry into President Biden has uncovered evidence of his involvement in and profiting from his family’s misconduct. No one is above the law, even if your last name is Biden.”
Demonstrating his support in the Sixth District, that runs from the Roanoke Valley north to Winchester, Cline won reelection in a landslide last November, beating his Democrat opponent by about a 2 to 1 margin.
–Scott Dreyer
