Making Government Suck Again

The administration is on the hunt to destroy any program people might like.

Photo by SEO Galaxy on Unsplash

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In the first wave of the Trump administration’s assault on the federal government, their motivations were, if horrid, at least easy to discern. Donald Trump wants to consolidate power and take revenge on his enemies. Elon Musk loathes a great many things government does and clearly enjoys the very idea of dismantling significant federal agencies, especially those that might impose some kind of accountability on him. The officials Trump has installed through the federal government are often committed to eliminating entire federal functions, such as protecting the environment or preventing crypto scams.

But now that the administration has really found its groove, something else is happening: they seem to be on a quest to find every worthwhile thing the government does, large or small, and destroy it — even when there doesn’t seem to be much of an ideological purpose in doing so.

Consider a few stories that have come to light over the past few days. The Associated Press reports that the administration is planning to kill Direct File, a recently-created system that allows taxpayers to file their taxes for free, right to the IRS, without using commercial tax software. It was carefully designed and rolled out in stages, and has proven to be overwhelmingly popular with those who have used it. Not surprisingly, companies like Intuit, which owns TurboTax, successfully fought the creation of Direct File for years, since they want to keep making money off low-income people with simple taxes who generally had little choice but to use their service. They quite rightly saw Direct File as a threat to their profits.

But now that it’s in place, why should Trump or Musk care? Most people still use commercial software or accountants. Do they really need to target this relatively small program?

Apparently, yes they do (read more on this from Don Moynihan). As they did with AmeriCorps, which allows young people to perform a year or two of national service, doing things like cleaning up after disasters and working at food banks; it looks like it’s going to be shut down. As they did with the Institute for Museum and Library Services, a tiny agency whose function is right in the name. Its budget is less than a rounding error, but at least now the South Dakota State Library is closed to the public as a result of the cut, which I guess is supposed to warm the conservative heart. In case you were wondering, Trump won South Dakota by just under 30 points.

The real motivation

When you see the administration go after, say, reproductive health services, it’s loathsome but legible; it’s clear why they’re doing it. But why exactly would they want to fire the people at the CDC who work to prevent drowning deaths? It’s not like being a real conservative means you have to be pro-drowning. About 4,000 Americans drown to death every year, and presumably they’re not all liberals.

It’s possible that there is no method at all to this madness; they’re just smashing everything they see. But insofar as there is a guiding principle, it may be this: They don’t just want to ruin the federal government, they want to make sure that no one has a favorable view of it.

An old saying has it that Conservatives argue that government can’t do anything right, then when they take power they set about to prove it. But even the most committed Ayn Rand acolytes of the past would leave a lot of stuff alone; they didn’t bother trying to shut down the drowning prevention office. And while they might oppose the creation of something like Direct File, once it was in place and people liked it, it didn’t seem worth the hassle to try to take it away.

But now, even as they talk about phantom “fraud,” the administration seems particularly concerned with the programs that either work well, have obviously admirable goals, or both. The last thing they want is for anyone to feel that the government helped them out when they needed it, or even that they had a positive interaction with something that came from the government. Seeing an idealistic kid in an AmeriCorps t-shirt cleaning up a vacant lot? Absolutely not. Filing your taxes quickly and easily, or calling the IRS and getting prompt and friendly customer service? Hell no.

This principle is being applied to these small programs, and to big ones as well; it’s why Trump wants to shut down FEMA (and in the meantime is content to simply deny disaster aid to blue states), and why it looks like they’re going to try to eliminate Head Start. The administration’s reaction to congestion pricing in New York — a policy that has been so successful even its proponents are amazed — has been so fanatically enraged you’d think the city was yanking commuters out of their cars and subjecting them to involuntary gender reassignment surgery right there in the Lincoln Tunnel.

Why they’ll succeed more often than they fail

As I’ve noted before, one of the key lessons of this era is that it’s easier to destroy than it is to build. Democrats are certainly going to appreciate that fact the next time they take power and have to start reconstructing a functioning government out of the wreckage Trump and Musk leave behind. But what we’re really learning now, and I’ll bet even Republicans have been surprised at, is just how easy it has been for them to destroy even longstanding programs running complex systems and supporting thousands or even millions of people.

It reminds me of Michael Scott thinking he can just shout “I declare bankruptcy!” and his debts will be wiped out; he’s unaware that there’s a whole complex process that has to take place. Except in this case it actually works. DOGE says “This program no longer exists” — or this contract, or this entire agency — and before you know it, it doesn’t. The law may disagree, but the law is barely relevant.

For instance, is there still an entity known as the US Agency for International Development? Legally speaking, yes. Practically speaking, no. The contracts have been cancelled, the staff have been put on leave or fired, and the offices have been closed. And if at some point in the future a judge says it was illegal? They’ll just have their lawyers drag out the appeals for a few years, and if they ultimately lose at the Supreme Court, it will barely matter, since there will be no USAID left. The most that will happen is that some employees will be given back pay. That’s just money, and they don’t care; what matters to them is that the agency ceases to exist and its mission goes unfulfilled.

Once they realized that, it became clear to them that they could wipe out just about anything and everything they don’t like, whether for ideological reasons or because it might make people feel good about the government.

If there’s any reason for hope, it’s that sunlight is the enemy of their approach, especially since it’s precisely the popular programs they’re going after. They’d like all those programs to just disappear without anyone noticing, or perform more poorly without anyone blaming them. In the world they want to create, something like filing your taxes is more difficult and expensive, but you don’t realize it’s the Republicans who made it that way, and for a moment there, things worked better and could again.

So the more attention that can be cast upon the specific ways this administration is making government worse, the more that opposition to Trump and Musk will grow. If nothing else, there are plenty of compelling stories to tell.