A Novel Idea: Breaking Up DC

 OPINION OF CHARLIE KIRK, Newsweek, February 13, 2020

Over the past 12 to 18 months, an argument has been made by liberals and conservatives alike that it's time to apply our antitrust laws to the Big Tech monopolies like Google, Amazon and Facebook. The reasoning is that these companies have become so large and powerful that they pose a threat to our continued freedom. In that spirit, we must seriously consider a different sort of breakup. The president has the authority to do it on his own. It's constitutional, and its time.

We need to break up the federal bureaucracy and scatter the various departments to the four corners (and the middle) of the country.
Alexis de Tocqueville, the great observer of democracies around the Western world, once wrote of England in the 1830s, "It is not in the nature of things that a central government should be able to supervise all the wants of a great nation. Decentralization is the chief cause of England's material progress."

This is not a new idea, but it is new in its potential to become a reality. For the first time in our country's modern political history (perhaps ever), we have a president who is willing to consider bold ideas and see them through. If President Donald Trump embraces this during his 2020 campaign, you can bet you will start to see it happen in 2021. The best part is that even the 9th Circuit can't stop him!

Here are my suggestions for decentralizing the central government, making it simultaneously more accessible and responsive to citizens and less vulnerable to control by Washington Beltway lobbyists:

Department of Housing and Urban Development: Moves to the state of Michigan, where a variety of reform programs over the past two decades have contributed to that state's revitalization.

Department of the Interior: Colorado is the new location (Utah is also worthy of consideration). The only way to get more "interior" is to go subterranean. Colorado is situated at the continental divide, is a state that is home to a variety of natural resources and is proximate to other states that occupy much of the department's time. It's a "natural" fit.

Department of Labor: Perhaps Youngstown, Ohio, and Pittsburgh, Pennysylvania, can vie for the location of this department. Each of them has earned the opportunity after suffering from years of neglect by an agency unconcerned with protecting American jobs.

Department of Health and Human Services: This department goes to Minnesota. The home of the Mayo Clinic is a natural location for a department in charge of protecting the health of Americans.

State Department and Department of Treasury: Both move to Manhattan, where they can be near the United Nations and Wall Street, respectively. While I'm not happy about this placement, it makes too much sense to let my own personal bias get in the way. We will, however, need oversight of the foxes watching the henhouses.

Department of Education: In lieu of simply closing up shop altogether and returning control to the states, Milwaukee gets the nod. Wisconsin is the original state to embrace school choice programs. Its reward is the prestige and the jobs that will come with the relocation. Perhaps it can teach the feds a few things about Milton Friedman and vouchers?

Department of Justice: Make the current regions even more autonomous with only the attorney general and a small staff staying behind in Washington. Perhaps a "federal republic-like" structure will produce a higher level of integrity than the current swamp-led Washington model.

Department of Agriculture: Iowa. Next.

Department of Energy: Texas is the obvious choice. The Green New Deal will have to work its way through the Lone Star State. Big hat, no cattle Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and the rest of her cronies will find it harder to tank the world economy if they have to take on Texas to do so.

Department of Transportation: Chicago has to be the choice. Despite the gross negligence and mismanagement of the city and the state for decades, it remains the transportation hub of the country. While they get the initial award, they are starting out on "host probation." One false move and transportation gets transported, maybe down to Dallas or Atlanta.

Department of Commerce: California, city to be determined. I'm hoping that giving California responsibility for commerce oversight will become a teachable moment for all of the anti-capitalists in the state that has perhaps benefitted the most from capitalism over the past century.

Department of Defense: Stays in Washington, D.C. Those charged with defending our nation's liberty have to stand at the side of the president at all times.

Department of Homeland Security: Phoenix, Arizona. Let's move the department close to our greatest threat, which is the chaos, the drugs and the human trafficking surrounding our southern border. Perhaps if the bureaucrats in the department start to suffer some personal loss from illegal immigration and stare its consequences in the face on a daily basis, they will become more motivated to act.

Department of Veterans Affairs: Tampa, Florida. With the United States Special Operations Command already located at MacDill Air Force Base, the people in this area have a natural love and concern for our nation's most important working class. This will hopefully translate into a more responsive agency.

Environmental Protection Agency (honorable mention): Abolish it.
No other presidential term in office has exposed the Washington establishment rot fighting the manifest, democratic will of the people. It's time to uproot the weeds that have gathered in Washington that constantly corrupt, self-enrich and obstruct. Breaking up the pieces doesn't reduce any existing regulations or decrease any budgets (at least not at first), but it does send a message that a change in philosophy is here. Geography is culture. Bureaucrats will know they aren't being moved from Fairfax to Youngstown to preserve the status quo.
Washington, D.C., and the surrounding area has become the most morally and institutionally corrupt region in the country, and it's the region that controls all other regions. Power will be harder to consolidate with a dispersed executive branch. The ruling class and the parasites that feed from it will find their ecosystem disrupted.

If and when the president follows through on big, bold thinking like this, he will leave our nation a better place for generations to come. He's just the man for the job.