In a bid to outflank former President Donald Trump and show off his conservative bona fides, Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-FL) is once again touting a plan to move federal agencies out of Washington.

In response to the former president saying he would build a "new and spectacular building" for the FBI, DeSantis attempted to differentiate himself from Trump by saying that "draining swamp requires taking power out of D.C., not cementing power inside D.C."

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It's a cheeky line and one that is certain to get a good applause line from his supporters, but the governor and others who have called for this policy fail to recognize that moving federal agencies to other parts of the country will not solve the problem of an entrenched bureaucracy that is unaccountable to the people.

The reality is that the money spigot for the federal bureaucracy will follow the agencies wherever they go. And the infrastructure required to maintain the agency will follow it as well. An Iowa-based Department of Agriculture will still employ thousands of bureaucrats with highly specialized degrees in farming and nutrition policy, and it will still dish out billions in federal contracts to specialized white-collar companies that employ highly credentialed graduates from major universities all over the country. And you can count on lobbyists to simply move from Washington to Des Moines.

The functional effect of moving the Department of Agriculture to Iowa will be to create a new safe space for far-left government bureaucrats to congregate and live in red states — and, if the state is sparsely populated enough, could even turn a ruby red state into a purple state.

It already happened to Virginia, which voted for every Republican nominee between 1968 and 2004 and has since become an increasingly blue state as the Washington, D.C., suburbs in northern Virginia have seen an explosion of population growth as the federal government has continued to expand. Once ruby red Loudoun County voted for George W. Bush in 2004 but has not voted for a Republican nominee since.

It is a similar story outside of Washington, where a major governmental facility in a given municipality can indicate a far more liberal lean than would be expected.

Los Alamos, New Mexico, of Manhattan Project fame, has a population of less than 20,000 people. The town is still home to the Los Alamos National Laboratory, which is the largest employer in the county and is under the purview of the Department of Energy's National Nuclear Security Administration. In 2020, Joe Biden secured 61% of the vote in Los Alamos County, outpacing the 54% he received statewide.

Moving an agency outside of Washington won't drain the swamp; it will only move it. The only way to bring federal agencies to a heel is to abolish them entirely or cut their budgets and replace ideological staff with new employees accountable to the elected president. Keeping the swamp in one place keeps it from metastasizing.

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