3 Reasons Why We Can’t Seem to Step Off the Government-Shutdown Merry-Go-Round

• Once again, Congress has been debating its annual spending bills. And once again, a fiscal deadline looms: There will be a partial government shutdown on Friday unless Congress passes something in time.
• Americans are understandably exhausted by the seemingly endless drama and dysfunction flowing from the nation’s capital, especially when there is so little to show for it.
• Here are three core problems with the current budget problems, along with solutions to address each: First, Congress struggles to complete the budget and spending problem on time, leading to awkward continuing resolutions and potential shutdowns.
• Second, spending bills get merged into “omnibus” packages that are thousands of pages long, and members are often expected to vote with only a few hours’ notice.
• Third, the federal government is on pace for a $2 trillion deficit, an amount that is unprecedented by any measure when there is no major war or sharp recession to explain it. However, the spending bills that Congress bickers over every year cover less than one-third of federal spending, because the rest is on autopilot.
• The last time Washington did anything meaningful to reduce deficits was because of pressure (and political consequences) from the tea party movement. The nation needs something similar once again to stop the endless flow of red ink from drowning the economy.

Schedule an Interview: David Ditch

Balancing Accountability With Civil Servant Protections in the Federal Bureaucracy

• The presidential election is a year away, and an unpopular President Joe Biden is visibly losing mental acuity. The response from partisans on the left is panic.
• In an op-ed for The New York Times, Georgetown University professor Donald Moynihan thinks “Trump Has a Master Plan for Destroying the ‘Deep State.’” He’s afraid conservatives, eager to avoid mistakes that hobbled the Trump administration, are getting better organized.
• Moynihan cites The Heritage Foundation-led Project 2025 as the blueprint to “elevate personal fealty” as the “central value in government employment, processes, and institutions.” He fears that Trump will “terrify career civil servants into submission” by converting existing career jobs with a policy role into new “Schedule F” positions without tenure (hirable and fireable at will).
• In brief, a “schedule” in federal employment refers to jobs that are managed outside the normal hiring and firing process.
• Civil servants should follow any order that is not either illegal or so unethical that they cannot in good conscience carry it out. They have a duty to advise decision-makers, but if they are unable to persuade, they should either resign or get on with the job.
• Civil servants who adhere to this standard would have no fear of Schedule F appointments or the fair administration of existing professional standards.
• Whether under a second Trump administration or not, it is time for a reform of the federal bureaucracy to strengthen American government, improve public services, and recalibrate the balance among our three branches of government.

Schedule an Interview: Simon Hankinson

Supreme Court Must Answer Whether Judges or Bureaucrats Have Final Word on Federal Law

• Will the Supreme Court uphold the Chevron doctrine, under which courts defer to contested interpretations of law by agencies in the executive branch? Or will the high court instruct lower courts to determine the best reading of the law, as they do in virtually every non-agency case?
• Those are the questions the Supreme Court must answer after hours of arguments Wednesday in Relentless v. Department of Commerce and Loper Bright v. Raimondo, two cases that challenge the Chevron doctrine.
• The Chevron doctrine requires courts to make the grand but dubious assumption that, where statutes and agencies are concerned, gaps and silences are enough to create ambiguity and thus something indeed can come from nothing.
• Keeping the Chevron doctrine, far from promoting stability, only would perpetuate the regulatory whiplash created when presidential administrations change and new agency heads promptly reverse their predecessors’ decisions.
• The magnitude of the eventual ruling in these cases hinges less on whether the Supreme Court overrules Chevron, an outcome that seems plausible, and more on what the court chooses to replace that regime with.

Schedule an Interview: Jack Fitzhenry