马斯克:DOGE部门改革政府计划
发布时间:美国当地时间2024年11月20日
主题:遵循最高法院的指引,将扭转长达数十年的行政权力扩张。
中文版全文
我们的国家建立在一个基本理念之上:由选民选举产生的人来治理政府。然而,当今的美国并非如此!
如今,大部分法律不是由国会通过,而是由那些没有经过选举的官僚通过“规则和条例”制定出来的。每年,这些规则和条例的数量以成千上万计增长。
更夸张的是,大部分政府的执行决策和开销安排,也不是由民选的总统,甚至他的高层任命官员决定的,而是由数百万没选过、没任命过的公务员拍板。他们仗着公务员制度的保护,觉得自己根本不可能被解雇。
这种现状不仅背离了民主原则,还完全违背了建国者的初衷。同时,它还让纳税人付出了巨大的代价。不过,好消息是,现在我们终于迎来了改变这一切的机会。11 月 5 日,选民们明确支持川普总统,并授权他进行大刀阔斧的改革。
政府效率办公室:干实事的团队
为了解决问题,川普总统任命我们成立“政府效率部”(简称 DOGE,也叫政府效率办公室)。我们的目标很明确:精简联邦政府。
英文版全文
Our country is built on the basic idea that the people we elect to run
the government are the ones we edict. But that's not the case in America
today. Most of the provisions of the law are not laws enacted by
Congress, but "rules and regulations" enacted by unelected
bureaucrats... there are tens of thousands of rules and regulation every
year. Most of the government's law enforcement decisions and
discretionary spending are made not by the elected president or even his
politically appointed officials, but by the millions of unelected,
unappointed civil servants in government agencies who believe they will
not be fired because of the protections of the civil service.
This approach is anti-democratic and runs counter to the vision of the
Founding Fathers. It imposes significant direct and indirect costs on
taxpayers. Thankfully, we have a historic opportunity to address this.
On November 5, voters decisively elected Trump and authorized him to
make sweeping changes that they (taxpayers) deserve.
President Trump asked the two of us to lead the new Department of
Government Efficiency.Of Government Efficiency, DOGE- Also known as the
Office of Government Efficiency) to reduce the size of the federal
government. The entrenched, ballooning bureaucracy poses an existential
threat to our republic, and politicians have tolerated it for a long
time. That's why we're taking a different approach. We're entrepreneurs,
not politicians. We are outside volunteers, not federal officials or
employees. Unlike government committees or advisory committees, we don't
just write reports or cut ribbons. We're going to cut costs.
We are assisting the Trump transition team in identifying and hiring a
lean team of small government reform fighters, including some of the
nation's brightest technical and legal talent. The team will work
closely with the White House Office of Management and Budget in the new
administration. The two of us will advise the Office of Government
Efficiency at every step to implement three broad categories of reform:
deregulation, administrative reduction, and cost savings. We will place
particular emphasis on promoting reform through executive action based
on existing legislation rather than through the enactment of new laws.
The polar star of our reform will be the Constitution of the United
States, focusing on two important Supreme Court decisions during his
tenure.
In West Virginia v. Environmental Protection Agency (2022), the justices
held that agencies cannot enforce regulations that involve significant
economic or policy issues unless Congress expressly authorizes them. In
Loper Bright v. Raimondo (2024), the Court overturned the Chevron
principle, holding that federal courts should no longer defer to federal
agencies' interpretation of the law or to their own rulemaking.
Together, these cases demonstrate that a large number of existing
federal regulations go beyond the authority given by Congress by law.
The Office of Government Efficiency will work with legal experts in
government agencies to apply these rulings to federal regulations
created by those agencies, with the help of advanced technology. The
Office of Government Efficiency will present the list of regulations to
President Donald Trump, who can immediately suspend their implementation
through executive action and initiate a review and repeal process. This
would free individuals and businesses from illegal regulations that
Congress never passed, and stimulate the American economy.
When the president nullifies thousands of such regulations, critics
accuse the executive of overstepping his authority. In fact, this is
correcting executive overreach, i.e. the thousands of regulations
enacted through executive orders that were never authorized by Congress.
The president should obey Congress when legislating, not bureaucrats
within federal agencies. Using executive orders to add cumbersome new
rules to replace legislation is a violation of the Constitution, but
using executive order to repeal statutes that wrongly circumvent
Congress is legal and necessary to comply with the Supreme Court's
recent authorization. And, after these regulations have been fully
repealed, future presidents cannot simply press the switch to restore
them, but will have to ask Congress to do so.
The drastic cuts in federal regulations provide a reasonable industry
logic for mass layoffs across the federal bureaucracy. The Office of
Government Efficiency intends to work with agencies' in-house appointees
to determine the minimum number of employees required for an agency to
perform constitutionally permitted and statutory functions. The number
of federal employees cut should be at least proportional to the number
of federal statutes repealed: Not only will fewer employees be needed to
enforce fewer statutes, but the agency will create fewer of them once
its scope of authority is properly limited. Employees whose jobs have
been eliminated deserve to be treated with respect, and the Government
Efficiency Office aims to help them transition into the private sector.
The president could use existing laws to encourage them to retire early
and pay voluntary severance payments to facilitate their dignified
departure.
Conventional wisdom holds that statutory civil service protections
prevent the president and even his political appointees from firing
federal workers. The purpose of these protections is to protect
employees from political retaliation. But the regulations allow for
"laying off" that does not target specific employees. The statute
further authorizes the president to "develop rules governing competitive
services." This power is very broad. Previous presidents have used this
power to amend civil service rules by executive order, and the Supreme
Court ruled in Franklin v. Massachusetts (1992) and Collins v. Yellen
(2021) that they were not subject to the Administrative Procedure Act
when they did so. With this authority, President Trump could curb the
excesses of the executive branch by implementing a variety of "rules
governing competitive services," from mass firings to relocating federal
agencies out of the Washington area. Requiring federal employees to
work in the office five days a week will lead to a wave of voluntary
departures, which we welcome: if federal employees don't want to work,
American taxpayers shouldn't pay them the privilege of staying home in
the age of the coronavirus.Finally, we are committed to cost savings for
the taxpayer. Skeptics question how much federal spending the Office of
Government Efficiency can control with administrative means alone. They
point out that the Appropriations Control Act of 1974 prevents the
president from halting spending authorized by Congress. President Trump
has previously said the bill is unconstitutional, and we believe the
current Supreme Court is likely to uphold his view on this issue. But
even without relying on this view, the Office of Government Efficiency
will help end federal overspending by targeting more than $500 billion a
year in federal spending that Congress did not authorize or used in
ways that Congress never intended. From $535. million a year for public
broadcasters and $1.5 billion in grants to international organizations,
to nearly $300 million for progressive groups such as family planning.
The federal government's procurement process is also deeply flawed. Many
federal contracts have gone unreviewed for years. Large-scale audits
during the suspension of payments could result in significant financial
savings. The Pentagon recently failed an audit for the seventh time in a
row, suggesting that the agency's leadership knows almost nothing about
how its more than $800 billion annual budget is spent. Critics claim
that we can't effectively and meaningfully close the federal deficit
without targeting entitlement programs like Medicare and Medicaid that
Congress needs to shrink. However, this diverts attention from waste,
fraud and abuse, which almost all taxpayers want to end, and the Office
of Government Efficiency aims to save taxpayers immediately by
identifying precise administrative measures to address them.
With a decisive electoral mandate and the Supreme Court's 6: 3
conservative majority, the Office of Government Efficiency has a
historic opportunity to make structural cuts to the federal government.
We are ready to deal with a shock from entrenched interests in
Washington. We look forward to winning. Now is the time for decisive
action.
Our primary goal for the Office of Government Efficiency is to eliminate
the need for its existence by July 4, 2026... the deadline we set for
the project. On the 250th anniversary of our founding, there is no
better birthday present than building a federal government that our
founding fathers are proud of.