The Democrat establishment is wilting before the Doge insurgency

Yahoo

21-02-2025

Senator Elizabeth Warren, the architect of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau – one of the most unaccountable agencies in the federal apparatus – is indignant that it is in the crosshairs of the Department of Government Efficiency (Doge). She has dismissed Doge and its leadership as 'an unelected billionaire and an unknown number of his unqualified flunkies'.
Washington's entrenched class predictably recoils at the notion of accountability. The District of Columbia, after all, hums along in large part thanks to 2.3 million unelected federal employees whose decisions impact nearly every facet of American life. Whether these bureaucrats qualify as 'unqualified flunkies' is a matter of perspective. But the exposure of how tax dollars are being spent doesn't inspire confidence.
Particularly galling to the Washington swamp is the fact that at least six of Doge's employees are whizz kids, ranging in age from 19 to 24 and now meddling with their fiefdom. In most contexts, ambitious young people who are capable of rigorous data analysis might be regarded as prodigies – or even, affectionately, as nerds. Yet here, they are derided – perhaps because they pose a genuine threat to business as usual.
Washington today is reminiscent of the campus of Adams College, the fictional battleground of the lowbrow 1980s slapstick comedy 'Revenge of the Nerds'. That film, heralded by Rotten Tomatoes as a 'minor classic', provides an apt metaphor for the current clash between Doge and the administrative state. In the movie, the entrenched campus aristocracy – the Alpha Betas – becomes so incensed at the success of a few outcast freshmen, led by a computer science major, that they resort to bullying and sabotage to maintain their grip on power.
The entrenched federal bureaucracy is a perfect stand-in for the Alpha Betas. For decades, it has faced no opposition to its wasteful ways. And, like the privileged bullies of Revenge of the Nerds, it is now resorting to smear campaigns to defend its turf.
As the title suggests, the nerds eventually win in the movie. Whether Doge can pull off a similar upset remains to be seen.
Under the civil service system, many entrenched federal bureaucrats are effectively immune from firing. Although they are charged with implementing the policies of elected leaders in an impartial manner, in reality many bureaucrats operate under the assumption that, because presidents are transitory, they – the permanent government – should be allowed to get their way. Not every federal worker fits this mould; some, no doubt, are principled professionals who take their responsibilities seriously. But those ones are likely to be the least concerned about efforts to reform the system.
In 2023, Congress passed a few dozen bills. Unelected bureaucrats, meanwhile, finalised 3,018 new regulations, according to the Ethics and Public Policy Center's Administrative State Accountability Project. This vast discrepancy underscores the reality that policymaking in modern America often bypasses the legislative process entirely.
Furthermore, the political leanings of the bureaucracy are no secret. The political action committee for the American Federation of Government Employees, the nation's largest federal employee union, directed 94% of its political contributions to Democrats in the last election – a pattern consistent with previous cycles.
Meanwhile, a recent survey found that 42% of federal government managers admitted they would actively work against the policies of a second Trump administration. And that's only those who would admit as such to a pollster.
Yet, curiously, any effort to impose oversight on this unelected class is hysterically denounced as an assault on democracy. Elon Musk addressed this paradox in the Oval Office.
'If you have rule of the bureaucrat and the bureaucracy is in charge, then what meaning does democracy actually have?' Musk asked. 'If the people cannot vote and have their will decided by their elected representatives in the form of the president, the Senate, and the House, then we don't live in a democracy, we live in a bureaucracy.'
Ultimately, the most significant governmental reforms will require congressional buy-in – no small feat for a body that has spent decades indulging in deficit spending. Yet president Trump has already initiated executive actions to rein in spending.
One such move was restructuring the White House's US Digital Services office into the US Doge Service, granting Musk and his hand-picked staffers the designation of special government employees, and with it, the authority to act.
This is significant since, historically, blue-ribbon commissions have produced voluminous reports on Washington's fiscal dysfunction, only for those reports to gather dust while career bureaucrats smirk and unions shield their own.
But this time, something is different. The ruling class is melting down. The bureaucratic and political establishment, accustomed to wielding power unchecked, did not anticipate an insurgency of nerds with calculators and spreadsheets.
Whether this unlikely band of government reformers can tame the unwieldy Leviathan is uncertain. But they have already forced it into the light.
Fred Lucas is manager of the Investigative Reporting Project at The Daily Signal. He is the author of 'The Myth of Voter Suppression: The Left's Assault on Clean Elections'
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