Economic Corner 15 - 02/17/2025

Financial Federalism

This edition of the Economic Corner has three articles in the following chronological order, after my thoughts
1) The legality of the Executive branch in the second term of Schrumpf
2) The need for efficiency in the Federal Government and how it became ever more inefficient in the nineteen hundreds
3) The failure of presidencies before Schrumpfs first term from elephants or donkeys to diminish the federal governments bureaucracy while make it a better operator.

Financially, the Black populace in the usa has a heritage in the united states of America few mention; it is the following. 
Only the federal government in the united states of America has been positive in some course of time to the black populace in the usa as a bureaucratic body. I restate, each town/city/county/state in the usa have provided negative environments, legal or communal, for black people, averaging out their history. 
This means the federal government of the usa relates to Black people in the usa, especially Black Descended Of Enslaved (BDOS), other than non blacks, especially whites, in the usa. Whites of European descent talk of the usa, but tend to relate to the town, the city, the county, the state because even though the federal government protects/defends the overall system, the specificity of local law, the flexibility of local law, provided and provides to whites of European descent opportunity/safety/comfort. While for blacks , said towns/cities/counties/states provide horror/abuse/terror. 

Said heritage, led to a federalism in the black populace in the usa unlike any other demographic in the usa. Said federalism is an advocate of greater bureaucracy in the federal government to undo state/county/city/town governments negativity. The more the federal government can watch/penalize the lower ranked municipalities the better. 
I think of two black women. Years ago, one said to me privately, she lives in the Midwest region, that only the federal government has ever supported the black people in her region. It isn't impossible to live there, she does, but it is never welcoming, never with ease, always with a barrier.  And more recently, the other said on local news in NYC, that maybe the states need to go in the united states of America. The only person I ever heard publicly say the states in the union need to all go, was a black person, for honesty's sake said person is a she. 

When I think of these two points, it exposes why Whites despise or fear or dislike ever expanding federal bureaucracy. White people's local power requires local strength or local allowance. Black towns exist, but they exist in White counties. Black counties exist , but they exist in White States. So all majority black , in populace, municipal zones in the united states of America, exist within a larger municipal zone lower than the federal government majority white. 

The situation of Black Farmers proves this reality more than anything else. [ https://aalbc.com/tc/topic/11483-economiccorner014/ ] United States America system allows for local empowerment, but for Blacks who never had control of a state within the union, such local power has never existed. 

So, with the Federalism in the Schrumpf era which is to diminish/lessen/delete any place where Black presence has been or can be aided. For example, the Department of Education is a large reason why in many states, the funds to Black schools exist. States like Mississippi had for years and some argue still now managed ways to have black schools non funded. Not underfunded, none funded. If a school gets no government money but is a public school it is financially a private school. But the problem is, the black populace in Mississippi for example don't have the financial means to support all that children need. Ivy League schools still get federal money and they have huge private endowments so federal money shouldn't be deemed a negative when given to all white organizations in the usa. But living under a state, like Mississippi, influences black financial reality.

The Question is simple, with no governmental aspect aiding Black people [no federal, no state, no county, no city], what does the black business owner in the usa do? Black buying power has a serious problem, most of the firms have always been white. I challenge any Black person in the usa to go one whole month without buying something from a white owned firm. How do you eat? How do you buy clothes?  How do you wash clothes ? How can you do this in a city? 

To the Articles below
1) I said to another the president of the usa already has a post at their privy, it is called the white house chief of staff which came from the Presidents Personal Secretary. So having Musk as a person at their privy isn't illegal. And the constitution doesn't say a limit exists to a person at the president's privy and by extension, the D.O.G.E. is equivalent to the Staff at the White House Chief of Staff. The issue isn't illegality but change. Not change you need believe in but change you are living in. 
2) Again, a majority of whites in the 1960s despised the advance of federalism but the same whites local environments is what led the Kerner Commission, with only one black person in leadership, to suggest to Lyndon B Johnson, a complete overhaul of the usa is needed. Johnson wasn't amused but what the Kerner Commission exposed is the problem I say in hindsight.  [ Kerner Commission- https://1drv.ms/b/c/ea9004809c2729bb/Ea852rXxcnFEteIzm8I5Y0IBOmiGCYl_rT1lsPKEio-5mg?e=OiDxRo ; https://aalbc.com/tc/profile/6477-richardmurray/?status=2685&type=status ] 
3) It is clear the impotency of Presidents from Reagan to Biden, old elephant or donkey, to make the government more efficient opened the door to Scrumptf. Many said they would and never did. They all kept growing the federal government and , yes made some important administrative elements, but the overall inefficiency grew and grew aided by a congress , which in reflecting the multiracial populace of the usa, became deadlocked.

Is Trump Acting Illegally
U.R.L.
https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/constitutional-scholar-on-whether-trumps-actions-are-executive-overreach

VIDEO

TRANSCRIPT

Geoff Bennett: The first weeks of the Trump administration have brought dramatic changes to the shape, scope and function of the federal government. Our new series On Democracy is taking a step back to look at big questions about the institutions, norms and laws that have shaped the country and the challenges they face today. Ilya Shapiro is director of constitutional studies at the conservative-leaning Manhattan Institute and the author of "Lawless: The Miseducation of America's Elites." Thanks for being here. Appreciate it. * Ilya Shapiro, Manhattan Institute: Great to be with you. * Geoff Bennett: Well, as we sit here and speak, we have got another case that is raising questions about the rule of law in this new Trump era. At least seven prosecutors and officials have stepped down over the DOJ order to dismiss corruption charges against New York Mayor Eric Adams. Danielle Sassoon, who was Manhattan's top federal prosecutor, she describes an explicit quid pro quo, whereby the Trump DOJ would dismiss the criminal charges against Adams in exchange for his support for President Trump's agenda. What questions does all of this raise for you? * Ilya Shapiro: Well, I think it's a disagreement of political judgment between different prosecutors. The U.S. attorney disagrees with what her superiors say. The principals are denying that there's a quid pro quo, so we don't quite have evidence of that. And Eric Adams, for the last year or so, has been moving in a direction to crack down on illegal immigration anyway. So I don't know whether he'd be behaving differently in the first place. But, ultimately, this is a judgment call. And the U.S. attorneys, whether in the Southern District of New York, which sometimes thinks of itself as its own sovereign, Sovereign District, they sometimes call it, doesn't get to make that call at the end of the day. And if the superiors decide that the underlying evidence is flimsy or the prosecution itself was politically motivated and doesn't serve the purposes of justice, that's their call to make. And, ultimately, the voters will evaluate that. * Geoff Bennett: The deputy A.G. in his letter explaining why the case against Adams should be dropped, he cited the need for Adams to help with Donald Trump's immigration policy. And then Adams and the immigration czar, Tom Homan, were on FOX News this morning. And Homan said: "If he doesn't come through, I will be in his office up his butt saying, where the hell is the agreement we came to?" I mean, hardly anything about this is subtle. I mean, how is this not a breach of… * Ilya Shapiro: I don't know if that agreement means the dropping of the prosecution. It might be an agreement of, here's how we can help New York, because clearly there's a crisis, a law and order crisis in New York, and Adams wants to prolong his political career in some way. The primary is coming up, what have you, and he wants to clean it up. And so there's some agreement. It may involve the quid pro quo that everyone's talking about, but it could just mean here's what I will do, open up Rikers, what have you, and we will send you federal funds or we will send you more law enforcement. I don't know what the agreement might be. But Adams wants to work with this administration on the illegal immigration problem. * Geoff Bennett: So, in your view, this is not, so far as we know, a fundamental breach of justice? * Ilya Shapiro: We don't have — there's no evidence in the record, a prosecutor would say, to say that. There are allegations, and you could make a case. But on the face of what has come out, the dueling letters and what have you, this is just a disagreement on prosecutorial discretion. * Geoff Bennett: President Trump, the Trump administration, they have frozen domestic spending, frozen foreign aid without congressional approval. They have dismantled USAID, threatened to dismantle the Education Department. There are dispassionate observers who look at this and say that this is textbook executive overreach. How do you see it? * Ilya Shapiro: Well, executive overreach is when you're creating new programs out of thin air, like Barack Obama with his pen and phone government with DACA or DAPA or all of these other things, or President Biden forgiving student loans that was blocked by the Supreme Court, said, I will do it another way, or vaccine mandates, all of these things that are creating new authorities that didn't exist. Here, they're putting a pause on spending. They're reorganizing the executive branch, which is within the executive's power. * Geoff Bennett: Why not go through Congress, as the framers intended? He's got a pliant House Republican majority, a Senate majority as well. And if you legislate this, the impact would be enduring. Why not? * Ilya Shapiro: Well, it depends what the "this" is. I do hope that the Trump administration goes to Congress and asks for restructuring of these various agencies and things like that, because if it's all done through executive action, then, as we see, you live by the executive action, you die by it, and the next Democratic president will just reverse it. So it would take an act of Congress to eliminate the USAID or to eliminate the Department of Education, but reorganizing certain things, shifting funding priorities, auditing the accounting and the finances and things like that, that all is fully within the purvey of the government, including of DOGE. * Geoff Bennett: I want to ask you about Elon Musk, because President Trump, by all outward appearances, has given him a fairly broad mandate. Any cause for concern about the lack of checks on Musk's actions and the fact that he is in many ways the arbiter of his own conflicts of interest, given his very lucrative government contracts? * Ilya Shapiro: Well, the conflict of interest is a political story. I mean, if the administration takes political hits for having a lax conflict of interest policy for President Trump himself, for example, that's a judgment call for the voters to make, ultimately, in the midterms coming up and what have you. Musk is a special government employee, which means he has authority to run this. He has his tech gurus, these guys with spreadsheets and green eye shades and whatever else that are identifying money that looks like it's mismanaged, misspent. Again, not saying Congress had spent that on this, but we're not going to do that. That's not the case. Whether it's discretion by the agency, they're looking at things that this administration might have different priorities. * Geoff Bennett: There have been arguments, as you well know, that we are either in or that we're approaching a constitutional crisis. I'd imagine you would disagree with that. But what to you would signal a constitutional crisis? What to you would signal that this democratic experiment is in peril? * Ilya Shapiro: Well, it's interesting that you say democratic experiment, because when the executive branch, when the bureaucracy does not implement the directives of the political leadership that's responsible to the voters, that's a problem. I mean, a constitutional crisis is something like one branch going and doing things that are not within its authority that courts are telling it to stop and to do, ignoring court orders. Trump has said he's not going to ignore court orders. He's going to appeal them and he's taking it to the Supreme Court. And, almost certainly, most of these things won't get to the Supreme Court. Certain things, he might win on. Certain things, he might lose on, but that's the process. The American people are not buying this language that is simply an indication from the left that they don't like this restructuring of government, the new priorities, all of these certain things. Fair enough. That's a political argument to be had, but this is not any sort of a constitutional crisis. * Geoff Bennett: Ilya Shapiro with the Manhattan Institute, thanks for coming in. * Ilya Shapiro: Thank you.

What should be made efficient in the federal government?
U.R.L.
https://www.pbs.org/video/philip-k-howard-and-will-marshall-awjvp6/

VIDEO

TRANSCRIPT

- Are Donald Trump and Elon Musk dismantling the Deep State or doing something else? This week on "Firing Line." - The people voted for major government reform. And that's what people are gonna get. They're gonna get what they voted for. - We've already found billions of dollars of abuse, incompetence, and corruption. - [Margaret] Some people are saying that Trump's newly-established Department of Government Efficiency is moving fast and breaking things. - We have this unelected branch of government, which is the bureaucracy. So it's just something we've gotta fix. - [Margaret] But will this blitz on the bureaucracy really make government more efficient? - So Musk is right, in my view, that it's broken, but he's not really focusing on fixing it. - [Margaret] Attorney and author Philip Howard has championed the cause of government efficiency for decades, with books including "The Death of Common Sense." - Well, the tragically-missed opportunity here is that Elon Musk could have done us a lot of good. - [Margaret] Will Marshall is the founder and president of the Progressive Policy Institute, and has recently written that Democrats need a DOGE of their own. I sat down with these two reform advocates before a student audience at Hofstra University to discuss what DOGE is getting right, what it's getting wrong, and whether America is careening toward a constitutional crisis. - [Announcer] "Firing Line" with Margaret Hoover is made possible, in part, by Robert Granieri, Vanessa and Henry Cornell, the Fairweather Foundation, Peter and Mary Kalikow, Cliff and Laurel Asness, the Meadowlark Foundation, and by the following. Corporate funding is provided by Stephens Inc. - Philip Howard and Will Marshall, welcome to Hofstra University, and this episode of "Firing Line." - Thank you. - Listen, Philip, in November, you called in the Wall Street Journal for Elon Musk, not to hobble government, but to make it work again. Since Trump established the Department of Government Efficiency, Musk has moved to gut USAID, gained access to Treasury payment systems, and has worked to eliminate the employment of tens of thousands of federal workers. You have spent your life thinking, and writing, and talking about how to make government work better. Is this what you had in mind? - No. Musk is focusing on cutting what government does that he thinks is stupid. He's not focusing on changing and improving how government works, which I think is the bigger opportunity. Most of Americans think government needs major overhaul. So Musk is right, in my view, that it's broken, but he's not really focusing on fixing it. Efficiency means actually being responsive and delivering the goods to the public that the public needs. - How do you know he's not focused on fixing it? - Because that's not what he's doing. He's focused on cutting costs, cutting people, which I don't think is actually going to add up to much in the way of cost. Whereas, for example, if he changed the way the Defense Department procured new weaponry, he could save, pick a number, a third of the money that's spent, by getting rid of all the red tape processes that take years and deliver poor products with too much delay. - Will, you have recently written in The Hill that Democrats need a plan for fixing government that's their own. You said, quote, "Before Democrats dismiss DOGE as just MAGA trollery, it's fair to ask, what is their plan for making government more efficient and effective? Inexplicably, that plank is missing from the platform of the party that believes in active government." Should Democrats have their own version of DOGE? - Absolutely, or not DOGE, they should absolutely have their own plan to make government work better. The public demand for that is palpable and it's nothing new. We all know that trust in government's been tanking, really since the '60s. 21% of people trust the federal government to do the right thing most of the time. So to not have a set of ideas that is responsive to a public that wants deep change in government is a sort of political malpractice. - Given the speed and ruthlessness, perhaps efficiency, at which DOGE is operating, or which Elon Musk is operating, will there be a government to reform? (Will chuckles) - Yeah. - When he's finished. - It'll survive, I mean, what's happening now is that there are lawsuits proliferating all over the landscape. There're gonna be a million checkpoints here, and I think this is going to slow down. But this is the shock and awe phase, and I think we're gonna pass through it pretty quickly because reality is beginning to intrude. These are real lives, these are real functions. We have deep investments here. I'm a government reformer, but this is not the way to go about it. Elon Musk is a great entrepreneur, but this isn't the private sector, this is the government, and it's not an optional thing. I don't have to buy a Tesla, but I've gotta get services from my government. - This isn't something you can change, in my view, by pruning the jungle. You can't just clip, here and there, the red tape. You actually have to go back to a system which the framers contemplated in the Constitution, where law provides a framework of goals, and principles, and accountability, and checks and balances, but real people make choices, and they're politically accountable. Today in Washington, you can't find a real person who has authority to give a permit. And that's the reason we never get permits. - How did we end up in a place where it was the process that hamstrung us? - It was a change in legal philosophy. We came out of the '60s feeling guilty for lots of good reasons. We woke up to racism, pollution, lots of other things. So we wanted to create a system where there were no more abuses of authority, and it just doesn't work. Now you have no authority, and so you have a government that's increasingly paralyzed by the kind of stuff that Will's written about and others, by this red tape state. And the goal is not to, in my view, to get rid of government. The goal is actually to pull it back so we can do it, pull the law back so it can do its job. - Your solution is for government to unshackle itself from laws and regulations to empower individuals to make decisions and use their judgment. - Within the framework of law. And courts would only get involved when an official transgresses those boundaries. - So then, how are individuals held accountable? - Well, any way you want, but by someone. - For their judgment. - By someone above them. - No, no, no, that's where we get hamstrung by this process, right? Because there's so much process, and the process is ultimately what takes any sort of agency away from individuals to make these decisions. - That's right. So if you go to a, say to give a permit for a transmission line, you can't have 16 agencies bickering over whether to give the permit. One agency has to have the authority to make the decision, and that's subject to the approval of the White House in a democracy. Today, you get 16 agencies bickering about it around the table, and it goes on for years. - And it's unclear who has the ultimate authority. - Well, no one has the ultimate authority. - Well, so then isn't this what Musk is trying to fix? And how do you keep Musk? I mean, if the idea is to give an individual the authority to make the decision, isn't that what Musk is doing? - Well, Musk is taking the authority himself to tear apart agencies, but he's not trying to change the operating structure to give anybody else the authority. The problem with government is that the people inside it have been disempowered by all this process and all these procedures. They're also not accountable, by the way. So the American public is. - Musk has a bad theory. The theory is that there's waste everywhere, there's abuse, there's fraud. He calls AID, our foreign aid agency, a criminal organization. Now I have my criticisms of AID, they could be reformed, should be, but they're basically doing good humanitarian work around most of the world, they're not a criminal organization. But why does this freelance billionaire get to come and superimpose his judgements on what's working and what's not? There's no theory of change here. There's no good analysis of where we're failing. It's just he's bringing the entrepreneur's methodology, which is I'm gonna cut everything by 60%, wipe the slate clean, and we're gonna start over, and that'll yield efficiencies. It's not the way it works in the public sector. - Right, and what's, where's the vision for the day after these changes? How's government gonna work better after Musk finishes going through all these agencies? And so again, I think what's missing here is not the diagnosis that it's broken. It is broken, it is paralyzed, and broken, and wasteful, and not delivering things. But the proper cure is to actually let it do its job. Pull back the red tape, let there be permits, let Defense Department officials use their judgment and be accountable up the chain of authority for whether they do a good job or not. - We have fetishized process, and legal obstacles, and veto points, and everybody having their say. And it all adds up to a retreat from the exercise of public authority. But that's not what Musk is talking about. He's just getting rid of whole agencies he doesn't happen to like. It's all on a whim, there's no analysis, there's no predicate being laid for any of these changes. - Both of you have been critical of certain processes, review processes. One of them is environmental review processes. You've both written about how environmental review processes actually have inhibited government efficiency, and in doing so, have actually made outcomes for the environment worse. How do you account for environmental priorities in a more efficient way that doesn't inhibit a project from actually moving forward? - Well, I mean, the problem here is more political. We have a lot of folks on the Democratic side who do not want to take away the permitting. They don't want to relax the permitting process because they think that's their best protection against environmentally ruinous things. But what they don't understand is that if you can't upgrade and modernize your energy grid, you're building in higher pollution. You're not laying the framework for a cleaner grid. And that's happening all over the country. It's not just the grid, it's everything on the environmental side. - Well, delays are bad for the environment. We need new transmission lines to take power from the solar, wind farms in the Midwest to Chicago. Well, you can't get a permit for it. And every permit is not, it's not a question of legal compliance, it's a question of trade-offs. Are the benefits of the transmission line worth the harm of cutting through a pristine forest? That's not a legal question, that's a political question. - And it's a judgment question. - It's a judgment call. And we've, and so the purpose of environmental review, as it was initially enacted, was to have a few months of review in dozens of pages that would alert the public to the fact that there are these issues that are political in nature that are gonna be decided. Instead, it's become this years-long, no pebble left unturned kind of process that virtually never, never ends. And we have to make trade off judgements in order for the country to move forward. - You've written, Philip, that, quote, "Rebuilding government requires not just a wrecking ball, but trust." Polls suggests that Musk is losing the public's trust. In a recent YouGov poll, only 13% of Americans, and 26% of Republicans, said they want Musk to have a lot of influence in the Trump administration. So can an initiative like DOGE survive if it doesn't have the trust of the American people, Philip? - One, no, and two, it also can't survive if he doesn't have the trust of people who work for government. One of the biggest problems in government today is if you make a decision to give a permit, there's always somebody who doesn't like it. - Yeah. - So they will attack you. So in my view, what senior civil servants need is, not to live in fear, but to have cover for important decisions. They need to be, to feel that the people in charge, Musk or whomever, will actually protect them when they make decisions. And so no organization works in an atmosphere of distrust, whether it's government or society. - We need radical disruptors. We need 'em in the entrepreneurial sectors of our economy, that's what we want. But that's not what we, that's not how you fix government's problems, for the reasons we just talked about. And Elon Musk doesn't really know what he's trying to do. He wants to cut $2 trillion in spending. Well, that's a nice goal. If you got rid of every single federal employee, 2.3 million of them, you would cut 5% of public spending and you wouldn't come anywhere near that goal. So he doesn't even really have an understanding, I think, of the end game. The end game seems to be here just disruption for its own sake, sowing fear, telling employees they're no longer wanted, tell 'em to stay home, sort of putting down whole agencies as worthless. And again, pretending that the problem is waste, fraud, and abuse, which is a really kind of simple-minded understanding of what's wrong with government. He thinks that there's just waste in large quantities lying around that he's gonna excise through this radical surgery. - There's one area with hundreds of billions of dollars in savings that requires major overhaul, which is in the healthcare administration area. And if Musk and Trump really wanted to save big amounts of money, they would simplify the healthcare reimbursement and regulatory system, because 30% of the healthcare dollar goes to administration, which is over $1 million per every American doctor in red tape. That system is crazy. And it needs to be completely, basically replaced. - Well, there is waste all across the government, okay. But it isn't sitting there in large piles that you can just go into a room and find. You have, it's like Elaine Kamarck, who was the re-inventor-in-chief for Bill Clinton, said, "It's like fat marbled in the steak." And so the point is, you have to go and find it. And the people that know where it is are the people who work in government. So if you go in there and you attack them and say they're worthless, and they're idiots, and they have to get going and pack up, and we're gonna shut their agency down because we don't need it, and everything they've been doing for 15 years is worthless, well, they're not gonna be very cooperative to you. So if you were serious about trying to find pockets of waste, or even fraud, these are the people that could help you find it. So again, it's just a marker of seriousness to me. If you were serious about changing government, you wouldn't go about it by attacking everybody in sight. - As Will said, it can't be done by just by amputation. It needs to be done somewhat more surgically. And I will say that the biggest supporters of my somewhat radical reform efforts have been the senior civil servants. They want more authority to manage the civil servants below them. They want more authority to cut through the process and get permits. They actually want to do these things. And they exist in this red tape jungle that doesn't allow them to. - Why do you think that is? Why do you think they are the ones who are most eager to see reform? - These are the senior executive service, which are the top civil servants, are people who have generally devoted their lives to public service and are experts in specific areas. And they actually get, their life work is making. - You're saying they're serious people. - These agencies happen and deliver the goods, and they can't do what they feel is necessary. - Over the course of American history, there have been several attempts to reform government, starting in 1883 with the Pendleton Civil Service Reform Act that established the modern civil service. And there was the Taft Commission, there were two Hoover Commissions, the Grace Commission under Ronald Reagan's presidency, and then of course, the National Performance Review, in which you participated, and you both contributed under President Clinton's presidency. What can Elon Musk learn, if he wanted to learn from American history, from these previous efforts? - Well, what I would hope he would learn is that he's right that periodically government has to be reorganized to look at if it's meeting its goals and to change how it meets its goal. What's happened through history is, actually, you've had changes in operating philosophy over the years. The last real change in philosophy was in the 1960s. - So what was the change in that governing philosophy, Phil? - The change in philosophy was don't trust anyone to use their judgment, because human judgment is fallible. And we need to create a new system that will guarantee that all choices are correct. Let everyone who complains have a hearing. And the result of that is paralysis. So I think the solution is to actually change our operating philosophy and go back to the one that the framers contemplated, which is one based on human responsibility. Law sets goals, law sets guardrails, law sets a hierarchy of authority to make sure that people don't do stupid things, but people make decisions. Law can't govern. And we've created this massive system over the, only in the last 50 years, on the premise that actually we can make government into a kind of a software program. - Will, do you agree with Phil's diagnosis of the governing philosophy that changed in the '60s. - I think I partially agree with it. It clearly did. We got a lot more liberal process-oriented attempts to protect citizens against abuses of government power, which was, government was getting bigger, and it was intruding itself in more parts of American life. And in the '60s, we radically expanded government under the Great Society, and we have been doing that ever since. And so it just became a more intrusive thing with tentacles everywhere. And that just built this kind of resistance, has built antagonism from the public that now saw government trying to do too much, trying to spend too much, and trying to direct them too much. And so I do think it has to do with the scope of government's responsibilities, and we need to have a serious conversation about that. - We have a question from one of our Hofstra University students, Mark Lussier. - Hello, my name is Mark, I'm from Connecticut, and one of my senators, Chris Murphy, said that we are in the midst of a constitutional crisis. I wanna know if you agree, and the step, and I also want to know the steps that the other two branches can take to address that, and their odds of succeeding at addressing it. - Are we in a constitutional crisis? Let me add to that, actually. Where are the other branches of government? We know that the judiciary is exerting itself, but why couldn't these reforms be legislated and then signed in by the executive branch? - That's a very good question. - Are we in a constitutional crisis? - Oh, yes, we are. I mean, I wrote a piece this week about ruling by decree. It's un-American, there's no basis for it in American history and no basis for it in the Constitution. The president can't just make policy willy nilly across the whole scope of what federal government does. That's why the courts are getting involved. We've got a raft of lawsuits. I think a lot of this is gonna slow down. But the point is the courts are doing their job. Who's not doing its job is Congress, and it's because it's under Republican control. He's got them absolutely cowed, and they're not raising objection to his taking over the power of the purse, which is clearly delegated to the legislative branch. So yes, that's a crisis. - Phil, do you think we're in a crisis? - Well, we're certainly building towards one, and now we have Trump saying that maybe the courts don't have authority. And if they really disavow court rulings, then we will have a constitutional crisis. - Do you have anything you wanna follow up on with, Mark? I wanna make sure you're fully answered because you had a couple of different questions. - Actually, one piece was what's the likelihood of them succeeding and like being able to address those concerns of a crisis, if we get to that point? - Well, hey Phil, you said we're getting there. You think we're there, you said we're getting there, especially if they just defy the court orders, then we'll be there. - Right. - So then what? - Well, here's what scares me. Suppose he defies the courts, in other words, the court's are the only thing that are, is the only source of resistance now to Trump's imperial will. What if he just says, "No, I'm not gonna do what the court's prescribed." The other possibility is that the higher courts, the Supreme Court, might side with him on some of these issues. - Well, you know, I do think they're gray areas, and I've written about this in large arguments and such about the scope of executive power. But whatever gray areas there are, you still have to respect the rule of law in this country. And I believe that the rule of law is a foundation that most Americans believe in, and that once you abandon it or disavow it, then we really are in trouble as a society, and we have to sort of come together and do something different. - Let me ask you both this. In 1990, William F. Buckley Jr's original "Firing Line" hosted a debate that was titled, "Government Is Not the Solution, It's the Problem." And of course, borrowing from Ronald Reagan's line, listen to this defense of government from none other than George McGovern. - This debate proposition reminds me of Groucho Marx's observation that marriage is the chief cause of divorce. (audience laughs) The answer is not to abolish marriage, but to strive for better marriages. And so it is with government. Government has caused some problems, no question about that. And I've spoken out against some of those problems. But it has also come up with some inspired solutions. - Right, so the question is, is DOGE's attempt to fix government an example of getting rid of divorce by abolishing marriage? - I'd say, so far, yes. And while it's true that, and Musk is right, the government isn't working very well, to the point that government is the problem, government should get out of people's daily lives. I mean, much of the resentment that got Trump elected was government telling people how to talk, how to get along in the workplace, how you run the local school. And I do think government is the problem when it gets in our daily lives. But I think government, in a crowded, global, really fearful environment of warring powers and such, government is incredibly important to make government strong. We can't be strong abroad if we're weak at home. So we need to make government work better, not get rid of it. - Will. - Well, you know, the problem with what Mr. McGovern said is that it's not about whether you like government or you dislike government. I mean, it's a necessary evil, as Jefferson said, we're gonna have it. And so the question is how can you make it a better servant of the popular will, but also how you constrain what it does so that it doesn't try to do everything, which when it tries to do that, it doesn't do anything well. - Last question to both of you. If you had one piece of advice you would offer to Elon Musk to get it right, if there were still an opportunity for him to correct course, what would it be? - I'd say focus on how government makes decisions. If you can streamline government decisions, give people authority to take responsibility, you will save countless billions, probably hundreds of billions of dollars, and make government much more responsive to public needs. - Will. - Well, the tragically-missed opportunity here is that Elon Musk could have done us a lot of good. If Trump had sent him over to the Pentagon, for example, and said, "Modernize this. Let's get software, let's get modern IT, let's get AI working." This is something he actually knows how to do. And what he's been set on is tasks that he doesn't know how to do, doesn't understand even how to define the problems properly. - Okay, so that's your analysis. What's your advice for Elon Musk? - Go back to the private sector and leave us a alone, please. - All right, all right. (laughs) With that, Will Marshall and Phil Howard, thank you for joining me on "Firing Line," here at Hofstra University. - Thank you. - Thank you. (audience applauds) - [Announcer] "Firing Line," with Margaret Hoover is made possible in part by Robert Granieri, Vanessa and Henry Cornell, the Fairweather Foundation, Peter and Mary Kalikow, Cliff and Laurel Asness, the Meadowlark Foundation, and by the following. Corporate funding is provided by Stephens Inc. (intense music) (intense music continues) (gentle music) (peaceful music) - You're watching PBS.

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Geoff Bennett: From Elon Musk gaining unprecedented access to sensitive government information, to Democrats trying to build what they call a bigger and better party, we turn tonight to the analysis of Capehart and Continetti. That's Washington Post associate editor Jonathan Capehart and Matthew Continetti with the American Enterprise Institute. David Brooks is away this evening. It's good to see you both. Matthew Continetti, American Enterprise Institute: Good to see you. Geoff Bennett: So, Donald Trump and his allies are making quick progress toward their stated goal of the deconstruction of the administrative state. We have got takeovers and the hollowing out of major government agencies, offering severance agreements to government workers, pausing federal grants and loans, which, of course, is now tied up in the courts. Jonathan, are the shockwaves being felt across the government signs of a super committed new administration shaking up the status quo, or are we witnessing the full assault on the limits of executive power? Jonathan Capehart: Both, Geoff. Both. Remember, Donald Trump campaigned. He told us this is what he was going to do. Project 2025 is all about doing what is happening right now. And so they are trying to deconstruct, as I think of Steve Bannon, who said, the administrative state. And they are — as I said last week, President Trump and Elon Musk, in particular, are taking a wrecking ball to the federal government by sowing, sure, chaos and confusion and fear. But he's following through on what he promised to do. Geoff Bennett: How do you see it, Matt? Matthew Continetti: I think Jonathan's right. This was a promise made, promised kept, as they like to say in Trump world. And I think what's important to understand about Trump and how he's going about these initial weeks is, he wants to deliver results. Trump always feels as though the political class that preceded him talked a big game, but never accomplished anything. So we had the Grace Commission during Reagan. We had Al Gore's reinventing government. We had the commissions dealing with the debt and taxes during the Obama years. Nothing happened. And so here he is. Elon Musk says he wants to treat the federal government like a new acquisition. Well, Donald Trump says, go for it. Let's see what happens. Geoff Bennett: What about the question Democrats are raising, Jonathan? Where are the guardrails? Who's going to stop any of this? Democrats in Congress obviously don't have any power. Republicans in Congress are moving in lockstep with this administration. The courts have stepped in where they deem appropriate, but obviously can't keep up with the velocity of the Trump administration. Is there any guard against his instinct to wield, to really claim and wield expansive power? Jonathan Capehart: Well, see, here's the thing. Right now, the courts are the only guardrail. And I think people need to understand that the courts operate on a timetable that is completely different than the rest of us. And we just have to appreciate that. The fact that citizens and lawmakers and organizations have gone to court to stop President Trump on a whole host of things, from birthright citizenship to the buyout plans, that is right now sort of the, for lack of a better saying, court of last resort. In the old days, Geoff and Matthew, it used to be that Congress would be the backstop, would be the entity, the legislative branch standing up for its prerogatives and saying, Mr. President, no, we are the ones who decide what agencies come and go. We are the ones who decide what the budget will be. But, instead, the MAGA Republicans who were there in Congress, from Speaker Johnson on down, they're happy. They're happy to go along with what President Trump and Elon Musk are doing, which is why they are silent on a whole host of things that even 10 years ago would have had Congress up in arms. Geoff Bennett: How do you view Congress really abdicating their role, ceding their power to the executive? Matthew Continetti: Well, I think this process of ceding power to the executive is decades in the making, and it's bipartisan. Congress has really just become an investigatory body that delegates tremendous authority to the executive branch of government and the bureaucracy. And we now see the results when you have Trump come in his second term wanting to leave a profoundly changed government in his wake when he departs the Oval Office. And you see that, because of acts of Congress, Congress' own denial of its role, the president has enormous power to wield. And let's remember, when President Obama said he had a pen and a phone, the first Trump administration used a lot of executive orders. Joe Biden tried to cancel student debt through executive order. This process we're seeing is long in the making. And I think one reason Washington is stunned is that you have an outsider in Elon Musk actually punching the delete button on some of these programs. Geoff Bennett: Jonathan, Matthew raised the question I was going to ask you, because that's what I have heard from Republicans this past week, that Democrats can't in good faith criticize Donald Trump, when Joe Biden tried to unilaterally without Congress waive $400 billion worth of student loan debt. And when the Supreme Court said no, you can't do that, he basically shrugged and then tried to do it via piecemeal approach. Jonathan Capehart: This is like comparing apples and cannonballs. What we're seeing coming from the Trump administration is executive orders uprooting and upending the federal government. And what makes this all the more galling and terrifying for a lot of people is that he has delegated a lot of power to someone who was elected to no office, to someone who was not confirmed by the Senate. He is accountable to no one, except for maybe, except for maybe President Trump. And President Trump has already said, well, he will only do things that we want him to do. Well, so far, Elon Musk is doing everything that Donald Trump wants to do. That is what is so terrifying about this moment, is that you have an unelected person, who also happens to be the wealthiest person in the world, and also the wealthiest person in the world who owns a huge social media megaphone, and is able to manipulate the information that the people on that huge platform receive. That's what is so dangerous about what is happening now. And as we're trying to compare President Biden's executive order on student loans and what Donald Trump is doing, Donald Trump is destroying. President Biden signed an executive order and, yes, pushed the limits of executive action, but to the benefit of people who were drowning in student debt. He did it in order to help people, not to destroy the government that the American people depend on for a whole host, a whole host of things. Geoff Bennett: Let's shift our focus back to Elon Musk for a second, because, Jonathan, we actually have the sound that you mentioned. Here is how President Trump responded to a reporter's question about whether he gave Elon Musk any red lines. Question: Is there anything you have told Elon Musk he cannot touch? Donald Trump, President of the United States: Well, we haven't discussed that much. I will tell him to go here, go there. He does it. He's got a very capable group of people, very, very, very, very capable. They know what they're doing. They will ask questions and they will see immediately if somebody gets tongue-tied that they're either crooked or don't know what they're doing. Geoff Bennett: So, Matt, it would appear that Elon Musk has a fairly broad mandate, in that it's not spelled out at all, I mean, if you take into account what President Trump is saying there. Matthew Continetti: I think President Trump has told Elon Musk, let's change the government, let's slim it down, let's dramatically reduce the federal work force. And if you need to go fast and break things, as they say in Silicon Valley, to do that, that's fine. I will say that if Elon Musk were the health care czar or the energy czar coming up with big plans for government spending or to combat global warming, I'd think there'd be a lot less uproar in Washington, D.C. It's the fact that he has the goal of changing the federal government and limiting it, at a time when we have record deficits and debts, that I think is angering a lot of people who are invested in the current system. Geoff Bennett: In the time that remains, I want to return to this open question about the path forward for Democrats, because, Jonathan, you wrote a column for The Washington Post this past week, the thesis of which is that the Democratic Party's issue isn't rooted in policy. It's rooted in perception. Tell us more about that and whether Ken Martin, the newly elected head of the DNC, can effectively change that. Jonathan Capehart: Well, the perception of the Democratic Party is it's filled with elites who only care about niche issues and don't listen to the rest of us. And, as everyone knows, in a lot of instances, perception is reality. I was one of three people, MSNBC anchors, who hosted the last DNC forum. And there were two instances that happened that sort of put this perception in high relief. One was a question asking for a commitment to dedicated seats for transgender folks within the party to be — the serve within the party in the governing structure. Another was protesters who were loudly screaming about climate change and getting big money out of politics, something that everyone on that stage was for. And yet no one wanted to listen to what they had to say. And what was great about — good about those two moments that were instructive, Faiz Shakir, a friend of "PBS News Hour," was the only person the stage who did not raise his hand on the transgender question. There was also one on the question for seats for Muslim DNC members. He said, I don't think we should be dividing people up by identity. We should focus on people who are up for the mission and the program of the DNC and have them bring their identity to the table. He's absolutely right. And then with the protesters, Jason Paul said, this is the way people in the country view the Democratic Party, and that is our problem. That's why I say the policy isn't the problem. Democrats have policies that address the American people's issues. It's the perception. And that is what Ken Martin has to do. And we're about to find out if he's able to do it, to change that perception. Geoff Bennett: Jonathan Capehart and Matthew Continetti, thanks again for being with us. I appreciate it. Jonathan Capehart: Thanks, Geoff.

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