civics: FDR and DOGE
Consider that F.D.R. first seized the reigns of the federal bureaucracy by moving the Bureau of the Budget — the precursor to today’s Office of Management and Budget or OMB — into the executive office. Under the stewardship of Harold D. Smith, the Budget Bureau centralized agencies’ legislative requests to Congress while embedding beachheads in each agency tasked with aligning the federal bureaucracy to F.D.R.’s New Deal agenda. This included moving disfavored agencies out of D.C., developing accounting and auditing system to automate clerical work, overhauling duplicative statistical systems, and forcing through agency-wide reorganizations. As one Congressman said at the time, “We grant the powers and Harold Smith writes the laws.”
Courts will be busy for years weighing which of his acts are legal, with virtually all under challenge. In the interim, carnage continues, with opposition in total message paralysis. Whether it’s planned or just Trump’s luck is unclear, but harrumphing bureaucrats are now daily rushing to defend the indefensible, from Jaffer’s slanderous networks to Schiffer’s waste and budget scammery. Monday scenes of legislators like Ilhan Omar and Jamie Raskin chaining themselves to the Matterhorn of suck that is USAID were just the beginning of what looks like a rash of optics suicides. We’ve never seen anything like it:
Smashing the ‘rice bowls’ — how elites are lashing out at Trump and Musk’s reforms
This is insane:
In 2025, $9.2 TRILLION of US debt will either mature or need to be refinanced.
The US now holds $36.2 trillion worth of government debt, meaning 25.4% of the total is set to mature.
This is the REAL reason rates are rising. Let us explain.
