If you’re a right-thinking conservative, remember this name: Josh Hawley, the Republican senator from Missouri, who de-throned Democrat Claire McCaskill in 2018. He’s smart (Stanford University and Yale Law School), experienced (former attorney general of Missouri), and energetic (39 years old). Plus – he thinks like I do!
I have long been a critic of how our nation’s capital has become a Democrat echo chamber; which not only self-perpetuates, but grows increasingly hostile to those who live outside its tribal culture. To wit, the EPA tribe thinks energy voters in Oklahoma are dangerous, and the DOJ civil-rights tribe thinks Christian schools breed white supremacists.
The founding fathers envisioned “citizen” legislators and presidents to control the administrative state. Sadly, Washington is now filled with career politicians, who either govern or lobby the government. Since World War II, the Beltway has become a cozy swamp with the best health and retirement benefits, and a terminal case of nepotism (see Joe Biden). This is true, and it is in need of a major pomposity cleanse.
Hawley and Marsha Blackburn (R-TN) have introduced the HIRE (Helping Infrastructure Restore the Economy) Act, which will move 90% of the jobs from ten government agencies out of DC to states the agencies serve. “The HIRE Act will move policy makers directly into communities they serve, creating thousands of jobs for local communities and saving taxpayers billions of dollars along the way,” states Hawley.
The proposed moves are Commerce to Pennsylvania, Energy to Kentucky, HHS to Indiana, HUD to Ohio, Interior to New Mexico, Labor to West Virginia, Transportation to Michigan, and the VA to South Carolina. Of course, the HIRE Act will de-construct The Swamp, meaning Democrats will oppose it. Seriously, if the Department of Transportation moves to Michigan, its bureaucrats might have empathy for gas-guzzling autos.
Secretary Perdue has already moved Agriculture’s Economic Research Service to Kansas City Missouri, inviting an ex-employee, Andrew Crane-Droesch, to write a critical op-ed for The Washington Post. Get a load of his opinion:
Most people don’t need to think frequently about [our programs]: they need experts. [Perdue] claimed [the move] would lower costs and move us closer to the stakeholders. We don’t need to sit next to a cornfield to do our jobs: he wanted researchers to quit their jobs. I basically believed the Trump administration’s incompetence would get in the way of its malevolence.
Crane-Droesch left for a higher-paying job at Penn (he can presumably sulk amongst the snowflakes) rather than move to Kansas City. To call his op-ed bitter misses the point: his worldview is dangerous. A “research paper” is just that right because an expert wrote it – and Secretary Perdue is just that wrong to say the expert was “motivated by political science rather than on sound science.” I rest my case.
Crane-Droesch works at an Ivy League school – and he’s pissed off? He claims the new ERS employees won’t be as good – how can he know that? This – – is the arrogant culture inside the beltway that despises fly-over America. I posit the HIRE Act is good medicine for the bureaucrats and we the people. Intellectual elites should get to know the other 330 million Americans – and Main Street citizens can provide a dose of reality.