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30 sats \ 9 replies \ @Undisciplined 12h \ on: The Systematic Unraveling of the Administrative State econ
I saw someone posting the recent growth trajectory of the State Department. As fun as those layoffs are, they're but a drop in the bucket of Terror War bureaucratic bloat.
As fun as those layoffs are, they're but a drop in the bucket of Terror War bureaucratic bloat.
Yes, but there is always the first step in the trip of a thousand miles. Perhaps the big step was getting SCOTUS to admit that the administrative state was illegitimate, in the first place, and that the Executive can organize and reorganize the executive branch agencies under his authority, in the second place. Civil service is not looking like the hot road to riches that it was looking before, is it? They might actually have to start working for a change.
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the Executive can organize and reorganize the executive branch agencies under his authority
That's a little more than the courts did here. They allowed the layoffs to go forward because the executive order included language that directed the agencies to do them lawfully. There's still an understanding that the executive needs permission from congress to make significant changes.
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Perhaps the executive cannot close down a congressionally mandated agency, but what is stopping him from firing all but the Senate approved secretary and putting said secretary in an office in a closet? The agency remains, the mandate remains but the technocratic staff is gone!
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It's because Congress also allocates funds to be spent and mandates functions to be fulfilled.
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mandates functions to be fulfilled
Most of the time they don’t seem to clearly mandate very much, but delegate their authority to the agencies. That was not mentioned in the Constitution, as far as I can read it. Delegation of congressional authority is debatable as to whether they can do it or not.
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That's certainly true and presumably the reason there was such a freakout when they said they wanted to strip back to only what's mandated.