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PaperclipPerfector  3d ago (text post)   2437 thread views

Small-Scale Question Sunday for March 9, 2025

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I am very interested in his efforts of reasserting the power of the executive over the unknown (this is literally true, nobody knows how many of them even exist) number of government offices that so far have been pretty much living their own lives controlled by nobody and doing whatever the hell they want.

What offices are these?

All kinds of things like CFPB which has recently been in the headlines, but there are a ton of them: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Independent_agencies_of_the_United_States_federal_government and at least some of them seem to be under impression that they are not responsible to anyone. While there may make some sense for agencies like the Fed for which independence from the fleeting passions of day-to-day executive operations may be a very important feature, for most of the agencies I think being isolated from control by executive also means being isolated from control by pretty much anything. That was especially bad combined with Chevron deference, which means basically the agency, at least within its own domain, is the supreme sovereign without any check on their power. Even with that gone, having a myriad of agencies inside the government that basically conduct their own policy without any input from anywhere does not feel right.

Assuming the current administrations statements on them were accurate, wasn't USAID literally that?

Not exactly. USAID was somewhat unique as it was created by an executive order, not by an act of Congress, and thus can be also destroyed by another executive order. However, many of the independent agencies are created by the Congress, and some like CFPB are even provided with financing schemes that makes them immune from future Congresses defunding them. Thus, the agency created this way is basically immune from either legislative or executive control (and until recently also from judicial control due to Chevron deference). The premise that Congress can create agencies which are further uncontrollable and self-perpetuating is highly questionable, just as the premise - that a lot of people on the left are advancing - that the President can only execute a very remote and hands-off control at best over those, like removing clearly criminal officers, but can not participate substantially in political control over them (somehow they never object about Democratic presidents controlling them, go figure). In a Republican (not as party, but as system of government) system in the US, this just doesn't make sense, and I am glad that Trump is pushing back on that.

Elimination of USAID however, while welcome, is unrelated to that because USAID was always on a very weak foundation compared to many other agencies which have been established on much stronger legal grounds. IMHO sometimes too strong.

What Congress gives, Congress can take away. Per Moldbug, Congress also has investigative powers which can be used to end the career of individual mid-grade Deep Staters. The reason why there is no effective accountability of the CFPB to Congress is that Congress is feckless, not that it lacks the necessary powers.

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