President-elect Donald Trump recently announced a commitment to abolishing the federal Department of Education. This announcement, coupled with the news that Elon Musk will be running DOGE (Department of Government Efficiency), suggests that Trump is keen to remove what many of his supporters consider to be burdensome, costly and culturally corrupt institutions. Amid the recent news, some important piece of information seems to be missing: instructions for how to exactly dismantle a government agency or department. While cutting spending and eliminating wasteful or harmful agencies may be a praiseworthy policy, it is harder to do than it might first appear. Despite conservatives and libertarians on both sides of the Atlantic spending years talking about shrinking the state, there is no clear ‘How To’ manual to get that done. In order for those seeking to shrink the state to be taken seriously they need such a manual, not rhetoric.
The need for such a manual is perhaps most stark given Trump’s recent announcement about the abolition of the Department of Education. Although widely praised by Trump’s supporters, the announcement will not bear fruit. Like it or not, the federal Department of Education will still exist when the next presidential election takes place.
First, there are numerous political and legal barriers. The president cannot unilaterally close a government department created by Congress. In order to abolish the department outright, Trump would need at least 60 allies in the Senate to overcome the filibuster rule. Even with every Republican in the Senate on his side, Trump would still need the support of some Democratic senators to pass legislation dismantling the Department of Education. To state the obvious: Trump should not expect that support.
Even if Trump was capable of snapping his fingers and abolishing a federal agency it is unclear how that abolition would take place. The Department of Education employs thousands of people, oversees billions of dollars worth of funds, loans and other support. There are contracts and agreements between the department and other institutions across the United States. Dismantling such an agency would not be impossible, but it would be difficult to do absent a guide or clear plan.
On the other side of the Atlantic, ‘bonfires’ of Brexit-related regulations and quangos ended up looking more like candle flames. As my colleague Robert Colvile and former colleague Tom Clougherty noted in a CPS report published earlier this year, ‘the relative number of regulatory personnel appears to have quadrupled in just over a decade. Likewise, the number of regulatory entities has been growing steadily, despite promises of a “bonfire of the quangos”’.
Much of the lack of deregulation can no doubt be attributed to a lack of political will and shifting priorities, but it is also the case that even a politician intent on lighting a bonfire of regulations, agencies or departments will struggle to know where to begin.
It is curious that despite decades of conservatives on both sides of the Atlantic complaining about the size of the state there is still no ‘how-to’ manual for dismantling wings of the government. This is not to imply that deregulation or privatisation does not occur. But it is the case that absent a crisis, governments are reluctant to shrink themselves.
Take for example the Democratic president Jimmy Carter, ‘The Great Deregulator’. Although by no means a Reaganite limited government conservative, Carter engaged in a policy of deregulation. But these deregulations were not the product of ideology. Rather, they were deemed necessary given the situation Carter faced. As Susan Dudley, director of the George Washington University Regulatory Studies Center, explains, many of the federal regulators had implemented price controls that yielded unwelcome and unintended consequences. As a result, Carter abolished the Civil Aeronautics Board (CAB). He also signed legislation that deregulated trucking, long distance phone services, and railroads.
In the 1980s, it was a New Zealand Labour government that implemented ‘Rogernomics’, a suite of economic reforms that transformed New Zealand from the most controlled economy outside the communist world into one of the freest. Among the reforms implemented by New Zealand finance minister Roger Douglas and prime minister David Lange was the restructuring of state-owned businesses.
One recent example of enthusiastic deregulation and privatisation is the current Argentine government, where President Javier Milei has been pushing his small government agenda. Earlier this month, the Argentine senate passed reforms paving the way for privatisations. It remains to be seen if these reforms will have long-lasting positive effects.
Like Rogernomics in New Zealand, Milei’s push for reform comes in the wake of a terrible economic situation: hyperinflation, currency devaluation and high unemployment. It would be wrong to portray the situation Carter faced as anything like as dire as the situation Milei inherited or as bad as that tackled by Douglas and Lange in New Zealand, but it remains the case that Carter’s deregulation also stemmed from necessity rather than ideology.
It would not be right to wish for a crisis in the UK or the USA, even if such a crisis might be a means to a deregulatory end. Those pushing for a smaller state should instead take some time to devise a plan for deregulation and shrinking the state that goes beyond political rhetoric or campaign pledges.
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