For more than a century, one trend has defined American politics: the relentless expansion of federal power. The Founders built a limited framework of law and order to protect liberty and promote a flourishing society. That framework has morphed into a sprawling leviathan that reaches into nearly every aspect of American life. Each crisis, often of the government’s own making, brings the same answer: more bureaucracy, more spending, more control.
Generations of Americans have paid the price to support a self-described “problem-solving” class that fails to solve anything — and demands even more to fix the failures it created. Under President Trump, however, the country finally has a leader who sees bureaucracy not as the solution but as the root of the problem.
The choice is clear: a government that serves the people — or an unaccountable leviathan that consumes them.
In the 1930s, Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal exploited economic collapse to justify a sweeping expansion of federal agencies. Lawmakers used the crisis to transform the relationship between government and the free market.
By the 1960s, Lyndon B. Johnson’s Great Society pushed federal overreach farther, binding millions of Americans to Washington through government handouts. Decades later, after 9/11, George W. Bush signed the Patriot Act, giving federal agencies unprecedented access to Americans’ private lives — all in the name of national security.
Today, the federal government reaches into your doctor’s office, your child’s classroom, and even your kitchen appliances — often without a single vote in Congress.
This unchecked sprawl, always justified by its own failures, has saddled taxpayers with $37 trillion in debt, a crushing weight that future generations must carry.
Enter Donald Trump.
In fewer than 100 days, Trump removed 126,000 federal workers and targeted another 100,000 positions for elimination. He gutted USAID — a bloated redistribution agency infamous for funding “Sesame Street” in Iraq — cutting more than 99% of its workforce. The IRS shed 3,600 auditors, directly rejecting President Biden’s plan to hire 87,000 new agents through the Inflation Reduction Act.
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For the first time in years, an American president has moved decisively to dismantle the administrative state — rejecting Washington’s bipartisan instinct to grow government and funnel more power to unelected bureaucrats.
No one should be surprised that Trump’s efforts to downsize the federal government have sparked outrage from Democrats, who now portray federal workers as the new victim class. Their narrative paints Trump and Republicans as “cruel” and “heartless.”
But here’s the truth.
While more than
60% of Americans live paycheck to paycheck, Washington’s bureaucratic elite dominate six of the 10 richest counties in the country — all clustered around the nation’s capital.
During the 2008 financial crisis, 8.6 million Americans lost their jobs — 5.5% of the national workforce. Yet Washington barely flinched, shedding just 1.1% of its taxpayer-funded positions. While global economies collapsed, the D.C. bureaucracy grew, kept afloat by billion-dollar federal contracts. Politicians demanded more money for “problem solvers” to solve the problems they created. After all the “assistance” and bailouts, average Americans were left with just one thing:
nearly $1 trillion in new debt.
Trump’s war on the administrative state doesn’t stem from cruelty — it reflects a long-overdue reckoning with bloated federal power. His success represents a win for working Americans. While Trump has made historic gains against the bureaucracy, many of his reforms remain tied up in court, blocked by forces determined to preserve the status quo.
If real change is the goal, Congress must do more than applaud. Lawmakers must codify Trump’s actions and pass his proposed spending cuts. The choice is clear: a government that serves the people — or an unaccountable leviathan that consumes them.
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