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Red tape. Paper pushers. Bean counters. Vast, cookie-cutter buildings with fluorescent lighting and thousands of file cabinets.
These are the images that come to mind when many Americans think of the government. A bureaucrat is someone who works in administrative capacity for the government. How important are bureaucrats and their government agencies in actually running the government? Democrats call them public servants. Republicans say they're un-elected policy makers.
Watching the ongoing clown show in Washington, American citizens should be asking themselves, "Why did we give this bunch of clowns so much power over our nation and our lives?"
Don't feel so bad, my fellow citizens. Because we didn't actually give them that much power. They just took it.
In the early days of our Republic, bureaucracy was limited. But as the mass of voters became larger, more diverse and less elite, those who considered themselves the best and brightest looked to transform government into something run not by those deplorable unwashed voters but by a more congenial group.
Bureaucrats have gradually moved legislative power out of Congress and into administrative agencies to be exercised, in more genteel ways, by persons like themselves.
Administrative agencies have the extraordinary and illegitimate power to write rules and laws affecting people and businesses, creating larger administrative agencies through a process of informal rulemaking, a process whose chief virtue is that it's easy for the rulers to engage in, and hard for the ruled to observe or influence.
Non-judicial administrative courts decide cases, and impose penalties, without a jury or an actual judge. And the protections in the Constitution and Bill of Rights, like the requirement for a judge-issued search warrant before a search, are often inapplicable.
People say that the need for more responsible government is term limits, meaning term limits for elective public office-holders. I disagree. More effective for reining in the power, greed and growth of government would be term limits for government bureaucrats, especially federal government bureaucrats.
Washington, D.C. is a magnet for the most powerful, most vicious and longest-reigning but not necessarily longest-serving administrators. UN-elected government officers overtly or covertly thumb their noses at voter-chosen members of Congress. Knowing members of Congress are up for reelection in two or six years. And they will be here till they retire in 20 to 40 years because they are civil servants. They can't be fired. They can't be demoted or moved.
The swamp must be drained. Washington bureaucrats should be permanently rotated out.
Send the Department of Agriculture to Iowa. Send the Interior Department to Wyoming. Move the Justice Department to Missouri. The EPA to Adak, Alaska. The worthless Departments of Education and Energy should be abolished.
The only federal government departments that should be headquartered in or near Washington are State Defense and Homeland Security. The Treasury could be sent to New York. Commerce to Nashville. You get the drift. Before those leeches completely suck all the life-blood out of our beloved country they must be neutered and sent to far-away places where they can't reproduce their kind and destroy us.
Good day!
Robert Ware
French Creek