Which Candidate Will Shrink The Federal Government? Let's Take A Look.
As a lifelong libertarian, I've always felt that the biggest obstacle to a free and prosperous society is an oppressive and parasitic government. In the United States we have a federal government that began with good intentions more than 200 years ago, but has since become a hostile, angry monster that can never be fed enough. The size of the government is staggering: as of 2022, "the federal government employs nearly 9.1 million workers, comprising nearly 6 percent of total employment in the United States. The figure includes nearly 2.1 million federal employees, 4.1 million contract employees, 1.2 million grant employees, 1.3 million active duty military personnel, and more than 500,000 postal service employees." [source: The Hill] There are more federal employees than the total population of Austria. The federal budget for 2024 is $6.9 trillion, and that number is expected to grow no matter who is elected president in November. The national debt is currently more than $35 trillion [source: Statista] and that number rises by another trillion dollars every 100 days. The federal debt to GDP ratio is now at 122%, meaning we're broke.
The United States is a bankrupt nation that functions on debt and the intimidation of the world through our military. This is an unsustainable situation, and an economic crash is inevitable unless drastic action is taken to reign in the spending. Painful decisions will have to be made to ensure the long-term security of the nation. But politicians don't like to make decisions that cause pain. They'd rather kick the proverbial can down the road and hope someone else comes up with a real solution, after they've left office.
And beyond the financial woes, our monstrous government is a burden on society, imposing oppressive laws, rules, regulations, and red tape that cripple our ability to get anything useful done. Picture Star Wars' 'Jabba the Hut' sitting on a throne and eating everything in sight and you'll have a good idea of what our government has become.
It's critical that we reign in this obese monster before it destroys and consumes everything it can reach. But will anyone do it? Does anyone have the courage? I decided to take a look at the campaign platforms of the top four candidates and see if any of them are taking the situation seriously with plans to shrink the government.
Kamala Harris (and the establishment players she represents), offers little hope or change in the size of the federal government. She is the face of the deep state, the entrenched bureaucrats who remain in power for decades and run the nation un-Constitutionally via policies and regulations. Harris is the vice-president because of the deep state, so you can bet she won't do anything to upset them. One of the first items in her platform says she will "make affordable health care a right, not a privilege by expanding and strengthening the Affordable Care Act" (socialism). She claims she will "make millionaires and billionaires pay their fair share in taxes", although she doesn't say what a "fair share" is. She brags about the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, the CHIPS and Science Act, the Inflation Reduction Act, and the American Rescue Plan, all of which combined added trillions to the national debt.
Unfortunately for us, Harris' platform contains very little other than references to things she did in the past. On issue after issue, her website talks about what she did as a prosecutor in California or as a member of Congress. There are no specific plans listed for what she will do in the future, except vague statements such as promising to work on the (alleged) climate crisis, or saying she'll end the fentanyl crisis by "signing the bipartisan border bill that will fund detection technology to intercept even more illicit drugs".
So we're left wondering what she'll actually do. But we know her ideology is rooted in Marxism, so it's a fair guess to say a Harris presidency will be one of taxing, spending, unfettered government growth, and more intrusions into our lives.
Jill Stein of the Green Party, starts out with drastic cuts to our military (50-75%). I applaud her desire to close military bases overseas, disband NATO, and stop military funding of Israel and Ukraine. But she then pledges those funds as a "peace dividend" to a number of spending plans, such as the bogus "climate change" agenda and "universal access to basic human needs for food, clean water and sanitation, education, and health care for every human being on Earth". Stein is promising to build 15 million green, union-built, publicly-owned homes, expand HUD and US Department of Agriculture (USDA) Rural Development Programs for first-time home buyers, guarantee lifelong free public education for all institutions of learning, including trade schools and Pre-K through college and graduate school, and guarantee free childcare.
In other words, Jill Stein loves a big government, as long as that government is administering far-left social programs instead of wars. Her platform doesn't mention the federal budget or the national debt at all, except to recommend that we "tax the ultra-wealthy and giant corporations heavily". Unfortunately for Stein, even if the government stole every penny of every wealthy person in the country, it still wouldn't make a dent in the $35 trillion debt.
Our next Marxist candidate is Cornel West. His platform repeats the word "justice" 17 times just in the category list alone. This should give you some idea of where a West presidency would end up. His platform mentions universal basic income, an expansion of parental leave & disability benefits, "fostering businesses that embody the principles of collective ownership" (communism), a "vow to significantly amplify funding for maternal health initiatives tailored to the needs of Black women (racism), free tuition for higher education, "climate reparations to recognize the deep injustices of climate change" (fake science), on top of a number of other so-called "green" initiatives that you and I will have to pay for. Like Stein, West proposes cuts to the military, including "disbanding NATO" and closing overseas bases. But then he says we need to cancel the debts of developing nations, despite the U.S. itself being bankrupt. It's hard to make the math work on his Marxist vision for America.
Cornel West loves a big government that taxes heavily, spends freely, and imposes itself upon us at every turn. That's not much different than what we already have. The only real difference is what the money gets spent on.
As the MAGA Republican candidate, we should expect Donald Trump to be the candidate most likely to tame the savage beast that is our government. But what does he have to say about it?
He says he wants to "stop outsourcing and turn the United States into a manufacturing superpower". Reducing imports and increasing exports would certainly help our situation, but Trump offers no details on how he will actually do this. Will it involve more government spending or the creation of a new trade agency? He doesn't say. Unfortunately he does say he will increase military spending, including by building a "great iron dome missile defense shield over our entire country". Such a system, which has proven to be a failure in Israel, will cost us billions of dollars...possibly trillions, and isn't needed since we have no enemies with intercontinental missiles who are foolish enough to start World War 3. An iron dome is nothing but a hand-out to the military industrial complex, the same people who have helped to bankrupt our nation and have kept wars going throughout the 20th and 21st centuries.
Trump also says he will "rebuild our cities", but again doesn't say how he'll do it. Is this another spending program? It sure looks like it to me.
I wish I could tell you more, but Trump's platform is completely lacking in details. It's a collection of grand words and concepts. But I can tell you there's nothing in it that mentions shrinking the government, cutting spending, or reducing the debt.
If you dig a little deeper, you can find the Republican Party's platform which is different in some ways than what you'll find on Trump's campaign website. There, you will see the Republican's promise to "rein in wasteful federal spending: Republicans will immediately stabilize the economy by slashing wasteful government spending and promoting economic growth." How will it be slashed? They don't say. They also promise to "cut costly and burdensome regulations: Republicans will reinstate President Trump's deregulation policies, which saved Americans $11,000 per household, and end Democrats’ regulatory onslaught that disproportionately harms low and middle-income households." That one statement alone is the most encouraging thing I've seen on any of the platforms. But I question why it's on the Republican Party's platform but not on Trump's website.
Another positive note on the Republican's platform is this: "Republicans will end Democrats’ unlawful and un-American crypto crackdown and oppose the creation of a Central Bank Digital Currency. We will defend the right to mine Bitcoin, and ensure every American has the right to self-custody of their digital assets, and transact free from government surveillance and control." That's a huge statement, and I hope the Republicans have the guts to follow through.
While there isn't much in either Trump's or the RNC's platforms that suggest they'll cut spending, (and Trump's platform has the wasteful "Iron Dome" boondoggle) their agendas do appear to have the goal of stimulating the economy, reducing the trade deficit, ending at least some of the government's burdensome regulations, and protecting the Constitution and the Bill of Rights. None of the other three candidates are proposing anything similar.
My reservation with Donald Trump and the Republican Party is we've had a lot of promises in the past and an equal amount of disappointments. We don't need four more years of excuses. We need results. And we need results that will last beyond the next election season.
And it's important to note that none of the candidates have said anything in their campaign platforms about reversing Joe Biden's massive funding increase to the IRS that would enable up to 80,000 new agents to be hired. None of the candidates mention eliminating or greatly downsizing any of the "three letter agencies" such as the CIA, the FBI, the CDC, or the FDA, that have done so much harm to the American people in the past several years. They won't even touch easy targets such as cutting funding to Planned Parenthood or NPR.
But after reading the campaign platforms, I can say without any doubt that the only candidate who has a chance of controlling the "hostile, angry monster that can never be fed enough" is Trump. The other three candidates don't even pretend to care about the problem.
Vote accordingly.
