Vivek Ramaswamy continues to climb the in Republican polls and I think it’s for two reasons: First, he’s aggressively opposed to wokism in every form and, second, he has very detailed statements about how he intends to curb the federal government. Not only does he name the departments he intends to cull, he claims to know how far his executive power can stretch to make it happen.
In an interview with Glenn Beck on July 15, Vivek said that he intends to shut down the FBI and that he can do so without going through Congress—and even if Congress were entirely Republican, you know it would never act to clip the FBI’s wings:
“I’m coming in with a clear-sighted view, Glenn, of shutting down most of the administrative state,” Ramaswamy told talk show host Glenn Beck shortly after his interview with Tucker Carlson, a co-founder of the Daily Caller and Daily Caller News Foundation. “First of all, do it on strong legal authority, so I’m a unique combination. I don’t like to brag a lot, but I’m a CEO, but I’ve also studied the Constitution deeply and the Supreme Court right now shares my view of the Constitution.”
“The U.S. president already has statutory authority, the Presidential Reorganization Act of 1977, says you can shut down redundant agencies,” Ramaswamy explained to the former Fox News host. “Well, when I look at what the DEA does and what the U.S. Marshals do, there’s my legal justification for shutting down the FBI without asking Congress for permission or forgiveness.”
Additionally, Vivek says that the civil service law cannot prevent him from acting. This is because it only covers firing federal employees for political reasons. “They [the civil service laws] do not apply to mass layoffs, and mass layoffs are absolutely what I’m bringing to Washington, D.C.”
Image: Vivek Ramaswamy. YouTube screen grab.
Having explained his authority to act, Vivek is starting to name the federal agencies that, in addition to the FBI, he’d do away with, starting with the Department of Education:
“This is the head of the snake when it comes to the spread of wokeism, transgenderism, indoctrination of our kids.”
[snip]
“The hard truth is that those school boards are actually responding to economic incentives created by this department,” Ramaswamy said, noting that the funds from the Department of Education are often conditioned on the adoption of critical race theory, race-based quotas and “gender ideology.”
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“I do not believe we can reform this agency,” Ramaswamy said.
It’s worth noting that President Nixon created the Department of Education in 1973. Between that time and today, the difference in reading and writing test scores has been, at best, minuscule. The only real difference is that students are coming out of our educational system indoctrinated in anti-American leftism and swearing that sex is infinitely malleable with enough pharmaceuticals, surgeries, and affirmations. Today’s graduates certainly don’t justify the $88.3 billion the DOE asks for in its Fiscal Year 2023 budget request.
Vivek also wants to shut down the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, which has squashed any attempts to increase America’s reliance on the ultimate clean energy—something especially important given that it will take a long time for America to recover from the Biden administration’s ongoing war against fossil fuel:
“This is an agency that quietly is the single wet blanket, the damper on the revival of nuclear energy in the United States,” Ramaswamy said, noting that developing a new nuclear power plant takes 32 steps over as many as 40 years, when prior to the NRC’s creation it took three to four years.
“That’s why there has not been a single new nuclear power plant built in this country in the last 30 years,” Ramaswamy said. “There has not been a new nuclear power plant’s plan that has made it through this 32-step process since this organization ever came to exist.”
Most Republican candidates talk a good game about shrinking the federal government, but Vivek is making headlines by explaining his authority and naming his targets.