We only think about the plumbing in our homes when something goes wrong. The same is true for government bureaucracy. Rules, procedures, and bureaucrats operate largely out of sight, making sure food is safe, Social Security checks arrive, workplaces are safe, and children with disabilities receive the services promised to them by law. Yes, there is plenty of red tape in government, just as an old house can accumulate pipes that no longer serve much purpose. But ripping out pipes simply because there are too many of them is not much of a plumbing strategy. Yet the Trump administration has made the number of federal regulations it eliminates a measure of success. That raises a more important question: When does cutting bureaucracy stop making government more efficient and start making it less capable?
1. The Case for Cutting Red Tape
Critics, including Trump, have a point when they say Washington has too many regulations. Rules, like weeds, accumulate over time. With each passing year, some become outdated, others duplicate existing requirements, and for still others, costs start to exceed benefits they once provided. Businesses, state and local governments, and ordinary citizens can spend an enormous amount of time trying to comply with them.
Trump claims that eliminating these rules is a major goal of the administration. Trump's 10-to-1 policy requires federal agencies to eliminate at least ten regulations for every new one they issue. The administration boasts it has already surpassed that goal. This is evidence, according to Trump, that the government is becoming more efficient.
Few would argue with getting rid of rules that no longer serve a useful purpose. Indeed, some should have disappeared years ago. But fewer rules don't automatically mean better government. Food safety rules, environmental regulations, and protections for workers exist because there were things government needed to protect. Getting rid of the rule doesn't get rid of the problem it was intended to address.
2. Rules Make Government Work
Consider Head Start. The program provides important services to children with disabilities. Federal rules govern how children are screened, how they are referred for additional help, how parents are involved, and how Head Start works with other agencies. These may sound like bureaucratic details. But they are also how good intentions get translated into actual services for a child.
Now Trump wants to get rid of many of these requirements, and he frames it as giving local programs more freedom. On the surface, that sounds reasonable. Why should Washington tell every Head Start program exactly how to do its job? The problem is what happens next. Without common requirements, services that children receive in one community may be radically different from those available in another. A right isn't worth very much if whether you receive it depends on your ZIP code.
Environmental regulations present a similar problem. Business owners have complained about their cost for decades, and some of those complaints are justified. But these rules weren't created to make things more expensive for businesses. They were intended to keep pollution out of the air and water. Common sense dictates getting rid of regulations that don't work. But eliminating the rule doesn't eliminate the pollution that gave rise to it in the first place.
Food safety provides another example. This summer, thousands of people became sick in a Cyclospora outbreak linked to Mexican iceberg lettuce. Hundreds were hospitalized, and two people died. We can't say that deep cuts at the FDA caused the outbreak. But those cuts have led FDA staffing to fall and foreign food inspections have declined. Given how much of our food comes from outside the United States, that's something worth worrying about.
Most of us don't think much about food inspectors until thousands of people get sick. Then suddenly the bureaucrats don't seem quite so unnecessary.
3. A Weaker Bureaucracy Can Mean a Stronger President
Something else is going on here. Trump isn't simply getting rid of regulations; he is bringing more of the federal government under his control in the process. White House oversight has been extended to independent agencies, while civil service rules have been changed for some federal workers involved in policymaking. The administration says this makes bureaucrats more accountable to an elected president and hence, indirectly, the people. It also gives the president more control over the workforce who carry out the law.
The Framers would have understood the problem. They distrusted concentrated power, no matter who exercised it. That is why the Constitution divides power among Congress, the president, and the courts and then gives each branch ways to check the others' overreach. Madison wrote about this in Federalist 47. Putting legislative, executive, and judicial power in the same hands, he said, was the “very definition of tyranny.”
This can make American government maddeningly inefficient. That's not an accident. The Framers were willing to sacrifice some efficiency to make it harder for one person or institution to dominate the government. If the Framers lived today, they might say the system's inefficiency was a feature, not a bug.
Trump is attempting to move us in the other direction. Giving a president more control over federal agencies and career officials makes it easier to carry out his agenda. For Trump's supporters, that's part of the appeal. They elected him to change Washington and don't want unelected bureaucrats getting in his way.
But there is a price. A president who faces fewer restraints has more freedom to act on his own. That may work fine when you agree with the person in the White House. It looks rather different when you don't. Fewer checks and balances also mean fewer opportunities to catch mistakes before they become policy.
This is where deregulation becomes about something larger than red tape. Concentrating power in the presidency doesn't by itself make a government authoritarian. But it removes some of the obstacles that make authoritarian government harder. And once presidential power expands, it rarely goes back to what it was before. That is how the threat of authoritarianism grows.
Robert Cropf is a professor emeritus of political science at Saint Louis University.
