Transcripts For CSPAN Campaign 20240703 : vimarsana.com

Ramaswamy and talking and remarks. Please help me welcome vivek ramaswamy. [applause] thank you. Its an honor to be here. I recognize the team for putting this on. I chose to be here for a reason. For delivering the speech that we are about to today. I think this will be quite possibly the most consequential speech about how we will get this shutting down the Administrative State. The reason i wanted to recognize many of the people in the audience today is you have been on the leading edge of this fight. This is not an individual sport. This is a team sport. There will be no political messiah coming from the white house to save us. We will save ourselves and that is the mentality i respect about this institute. And i thank brook for leading this great institute. Thank you, brook. I want to kick this off on a reflection on National Unity. We are deeply divided as a country today. And i think the way to summon both Political Parties and get to National Unity is through compromise. It would seem to me the obvious approach if you have people badly divided. Perhaps you get that through compromise. I believe that the way we will unite this country is by being uncompromising about the premises that set the country into motion in the first place. We have to be honest with ourselves that america was not founded on moderate ideals. America was found on radical ideals, that idea that you get to speak your mind and you do, you do, you do, too as long as i get to do in return. That is a wild idea. The idea that we are a nation of not of men but laws founded on the rule of law, that we pursue excellence without apology and get ahead not on the color of your skin but content of your character and contributions. These are stream ideals and this is not by hiding from the radicalism of the American Revolution but embracing. That is our true strength. Our strength is what unites us across that diversity. That is actually the subject of the speech today. One of those, perhaps one of the most foundational of those, a radical dream that our Founding Fathers had 250 years ago, a radical dream that i have that many in this room share as citizens in 2023, that the people who we elect to run the government ought to be the ones who actually run the government. The managerial bureaucracy in three Government Agencies, not elite leaders in the back of palace halls or black rocks Corner Office in manhattan today, not monarchs sitting in three lettered government buildings here in washington, d. C. This is part of the project of reviving and reuniting our country and say at the outset this is not a black idea or a white idea or a republican idea or a democratic idea, but a fundamentally American Vision that we fought a revolution to secure in 1776, that we, the people, create a government that is accountable to us, not the other way around. What has happened in the last century and it did begin with woodrow wilson, the godfather of the modern Administrative State perpetrated by f. D. R. And exacerbated by both Political Parties we saw a waterful of political responsibility, moving away from congress and the senate and u. S. Presidency, two words, threelettered Government Agencies that wield the most political power in the federal government despite having the least political accountability through unelected bureaucrats who have no backstop of actually being accountable to the public. I think about the standard we should measure how well we are doing as a country is how thomas jefferson, george washington, alexander hamilton, you john jay, john adams, how would they feel if they are Walking Around washington, d. C. , and they deeply disagreed with a lot of questions, but they agreed on one thing, at the very least the lawmakers and policy makers should be the ones making Public Policy in this country. Against that backdrop im here to announce how to revive the promise of that Constitutional Republic with three branches of government rather than four. That is the purpose of our meeting today and were going to get into a level of detail that is to this point in the last half century unprecedented which i believe will spawn nothing short of incremental reform but a revolution, ideal of the American Revolution and restore that republic. First it will be a plan that reduces the size of the federal employee head count by over 75 if im the next president. 50 which is implementable by the end of year one. Second, rescinding a majority, that is to say over 50 of federal regulations, which fail the major questions doctrine at issue in West Virginia versus e. P. A. , the most Important Supreme Court of our lifetime decided last year. And third, the president s power to use executive authority, to shut down redundant federal agencies and to reorganize the federal government accordingly. Thats what we are going to talk about today. Thank you. [applause] now before i get into the details of the first five agencies we will shut down and the basis for rezippedding a broad swath of federal regulations is first and more importantly worth understanding why it hasnt happened yet. This vision is not an original vision. I will be the first to admit that. Good president s, excellent president s from reagan to trump, have spoken to the same ideal and i give credit to donald trump for taking steps in the direction with the federal exceptions that they began late in the term aided by many people in this room. That was a step forward. But in order to get this job done, we have to confront several myths that have been perpetrated in this town by advisers and members of the very bureaucracy we are looking to shut down and confront and overcome to understand how the u. S. President can get this job done. We are going to go through this. Be patient and see how this goes, but its important to understand the specifics. The president of the United States does not single handedly have the ability to set what you call Human Resources policies, hiring and firing policies in the federal government. That view is wrong. [applause] the truth of the matter is the u. S. President enjoys Statutory Authority to prescribe the rules. Im going to read from the u. S. Code, may prescribe such regulations for admission of individuals into Civil Service of the executive branch that will best promote the efficiency of that service. Now most federal employees working on what is called the Competitive Service. The rules governing the Competitive Service are broader. 5u. S. C. 3302 says the president has similar power to prescribe rules governing the Competitive Service which includes most federal bureaucrats. What does that mean . Equivalent, the h. R. Department doesnt determine the rules without reporting to the c. E. O. It works the same way for the u. S. Federal government as well. That leads to a second myth that has perpetrated in this discussion of how we take on the Administrative State. We have established that the u. S. President has pursuant to 5u. S. C. 3302 to set the rules of office of Personnel Management. Myth number two that has been taken for granted is that the president of the United States is limited in his ability to fire those employees pursuant to part of the 5u. S. C. 3715a for cause limitations. U. S. President cannot fire a bureaucrat unless it is what you call for cause, breaking the law, doing something egregious. That has been the status quo in washington, d. C. Turns out that is actually a myth. Turns out largescale reductions in force are not covered by the statute. They are covered by a different statute 5u. S. C. 3502 that says reductions in force are subject only to 60day notice requirements and what you call order of retention rules. The order in which you fire those employees. The logic makes sense. If there is an individual federal employee who may disagree with the u. S. President and different views on abortion or on gun control and works in the e. P. A. , those rules are designed to protect employees from retribution. That is what the Civil Service rules say. But they do not apply to reductions in force, largescale mass layoffs. And large scale mass layoffs is what we will bring to the d. C. Bureaucracy because it is necessary and sanctioned by the law of the United States of america. Now i believe in getting into details. This is an occasion to dive into that detail. Under the current rules, the rules governing how those employees are fired are governed by the office of Personnel Management and o. P. M. Rules. The current rules give that many responsibility to agency heads. That is a fact. I think that raise he the importance of making sure the next u. S. President appoints agency heads in those roles. There should be a litmus test for anybody in the cabinet position that that agency head is prepared to carry out mass layoffs, huge reductions in force. If such agency head is unprepared to act on the job, recall the first point that i mentioned, the u. S. President has authority to set the rules of office of Personnel Management which gives the duly elected president of the United States to sing handedly to have those mass layoffs and reduction in force. This subverts the traditional wisdom over the last 40 years but necessary tool kit that says the c. E. O. , the leader of the executive branch does have the authority to decide who is and is not hired in the executive branch. Speaking of the c. E. O. , if somebody works for you and you cant fire them, that means they dont work for you. It means you work for them because you are responsible for what they do without any authority to actually change it. But the beauty of this is that our law tracks this directly if we are willing to leave the law in totality. Because now this is so important we will get a lot of pushback. I want to go to a common miss conception of how this is able to occur in practice. The next myth is that if you are carrying out these mass layoffs, you still have to do it within the structure of the existing agencies as they continue to exist. Thats actually false. The myth is that the u. S. President does not have power to unilaterally reorganize or shut down agencies. It turns out the truth of the matter is the key provisions of the 1977 reorganization act are actually still in effect. Im going to read to you 5u. S. C. 901. Active law today. Worth paying attention to the words of the law itself. The President Shall, the president may the President Shall from time to time examine the organization of all agencies and determine what changes in such organization are necessary to carry out any policy set forth in this statute. What are the policies set forth in that statute . Two examples for our purposes today. Number one, to reduce expenditures and produce economy to the full extent consistent with the efficiency of government. Number two, to reduce agencies by consolidating having similar functions under a single head and to abolish thats not my word, that is the word in the statute to abolish agencies or functions thereof as may not be necessary for the efficient conduct of the government. This is not a suggestion to the u. S. President from congress. This is a mandate to the u. S. President to congress to exercise the reorgan shut down, abolish such agencies if it promotes the economy or if it eliminates redundant federal agencies. This debunks the traditional mythology that the way the u. S. President has to act is by going to congress. Part of the reason why and im going to show you here is after i remove that second truth, what you are going to see a myth in a Supreme Court case which in 1984 dealt with a correction to the 1977. But this is important to get to the bottom of what is going on. What Congress Said in 1977 there could be a single house veto of a president ial reorganization. What was held in that case was the single house veto. They said youp cant do it with a single house veto but go with both houses of congress. It has been misinterpreted to people that im running to occupy that stops the u. S. President from acting unilaterally. The truth of the matter is those provisions that require that the u. S. President to seek congressional consent, those provisions had deadlines but the unexpired provisions that are still good on the books are the ones that mandates the u. S. President the Efficient Running of government from time to time. [applause] now im going to get into the specifics of how this actually works. What agencies are we actually going to shut down and how. The final real myth here that i think we have to Pay Attention to is this idea that the Administrative State as we know it is somehow an impartial Scientific Management project that is able to take on what we the people cant be trusted with. This is what is actually at stake here. It is a skepticism of we the people and our ability to set our differences on questions from Climate Change to racial injustice. So the old world view is that people cant be trusted, that people cant be trusted to sort out how to to change. We are going to have inequitable results. This is what is baked in. That old world monster rearing its head that is fundamentally skeptical of a selfgoverning people. But what what we have in this country is a constitution that article 2 of the constitution clearly states that the executive power shall be vested in a president of the United States and the person whom we elect to run that executive branch, the u. S. President , must actually once again be the person who actually runs that executive branch of government. That is the final myth that once we debunk it and we have democratic accountability rather than puppets in the white house. Instruments of an Administrative State. So the question is how do we on the back of debunking these myths, how do we proceed step by step to taking on and dismantling that Administrative State . It is the source of regulations, but what about the regulations that are already on the books. This is where West Virginia versus e. P. A. Comes in. So this is likely the most Important Supreme Court case of our lifetime when it comes to the ability to restore our Constitutional Republic. What the Supreme Court held here is that there are certain major policy questions called the major questions doctrine that have to be decided by publicly elected representatives, those who serve in congress and those who serve in the u. S. Senate. These questions cannot be delegated without expressed Congressional Authority to thirdparty administrative agencies. There was a Clean Power Plan perpetrated by the Obama Administration that came from the e. P. A. That restricted what coal industry participants could and couldnt do. And the reason they found that violated the major questions doctrine, that would result in about 2,000 of added experience per American Family and that was sufficiently major impact on the economy that it violated the Administrative State to actually do it. That was an outstanding and i give President Trump who game to the right place on this question. I take it to the next level if those regulations in the Clean Power Plan were unconstitutional, then that means that most federal regulations i dont use that i mean that literally, a majority quite likely and overwhelming majority of current federal regulations are unconstitutional under current law in the United States of america. And on day one, january 20, 2025, it is the job and duty of the next president of the United States under West Virginia versus e. P. A. To immediately res independent the rescind the majority of those federal regulations and how broadly that view expands from independent contractor regulations that trump rolled back and biden brought back. We have over a million across the country covered by these regulations that were passed in violation of the major questions question. And they are driving more of them into the black market like many regulations at the f. D. A. That doesnt match anything are unconstitutional. Car modeling standards for large cars versus small cars, emissions standards, emissions reporting requirements and accredited investment standard by saying who can and cannot invest in certain kinds of companies, they all fail on the major questions. If 2,000, an overwhelming majority of these federal regulations are on their way to be rescinded during the first days of an administration that actually understands whats going when it comes to the unconstitutional Administrative State. That is the first element, undo the damage by rescinding the federal regulations that are already on the books. It has come to actually not only rescind the regulations that Congress Never authorized, how about actually rescinding the existence of bureaucratic agencies that Congress Never authorized and im going to start with an agency despite getting appropriations yearly was not actually authorized by congress. Lets talk about the f. B. I. This is an agency im going to make a book recommendation, gman. Al yale historian laying out the history of j. Edgar hoovers legacy and how this was created to be corrupt in the beginning, the same one that used tapes to threaten is being used to target political opponents. Where does the corruption come from . It comes from something you predict should exist for a bureaucracy that sits in between a d. O. J. And say other police enforcement, like u. S. Marshals that havent been corrupted like the f. B. I. This is what the situation looks like today. Thats the status. And short version, there will be more detailed versions on vivek2024. Com laying out the reorganization plans. This is deeply pragmatic. 35,000 employees at the f. B. I. 20,000 of them are in none essential roles. Many of them report. The j. Edgar hoover building right here. They are going to and 15,000 of those employees are going to be reorganized into the u. S. Marshals and Financial Crimes Enforcement Network into other parts, the d. E. A. Taking on the Drug Enforcement problems. Because part of the problem that runs the bureaucracy is that they find things to do that they shouldnt have been doing. Post9 11 they took on counterterrorism, from Drug Enforcement to child sex trafficking and financial crimes and white quoll collar crime. They had no specialization in the first place and less effective in enforcing the laws on the books while creating the formula for the corruption that we suffer today and we face a choice. Do you want incremental, replace Christopher Wray with james comey or recognize it is the underlying machine that was the source of the corruption itself . And i believe the correct answer to restore the integrity of our Law Enforcement apparatus will be to begin with shutting down an institution like the f. B. I. Itself. Well move to the next institution. The u. S. Department of education. This is an agency spends approximately an 80 billion budget per year telling local schools that they cant get those federal funds unless they adopt dont end gender toxic ideology and denying if i had funding to schools across this country that dare to teach kids how to engage in hunting or teach them how to practice archery. Those are the bases for denying and telling other schools they cant get federal funding unless they develop toxic gender ideology. This is an institution that has driven the inflation and College Tuition costs and not doing a thing for people who want to pursue oneyear vocational classes. The federal government should have never been involved in local education in the first place. One of the bases for the u. S. The president to shut down and giving it back to the people meets that statutory test and thats why we wont just put a i respect betsy devos, we will get in there and shut it down while moving certain of the remaining functions like loan collections to the u. S. Department of treasury, that department of labor where it be longs. Thats how you drive change. And im going to quickly go through a sample of the remaining agencies that we will shut down. Take the Nuclear Regulatory commission that has stood in the way of advancing Nuclear Energy. We have no gen4 reactors. The only country is china. We have gen1 and gen2 reactors which are less safe. And in the name of the agency you could build a Nuclear Power plant in five years now the average is 2540 years and japan its five. France, 58. Falls at the feet of what brook talked about. This was never passed through congress, these regulations. It is the culture of an agency that believes there shouldnt be another Nuclear Power plant in the United States and since its inception there has never been a single Nuclear Power plant built in the United States of america. What we say you cant reform an agency with that culture. You have to get in there and shut it down. Move a small number of remaining employees to d. O. E. Where they can use expertise to promote Nuclear Energy in the United States. There is more poster boards and time permitting, this is just the beginning of the list of federal agencies that we will shut down or downsize by 75 or more. And i recognize matt gaetz proposing a piece of legislation, january of this year defunded the a. T. F. And caused it to abolish its existence. The problem with congress you have 500plus people that have competing interests that arent able to properly oversee an Administrative State that reports into the dual elected chief. If im elected will shut down the department of bureau of alcohol, tobacco and firearms which has misappropriated funds. This is one where and i quote the actual this is directly from within the agency and office of Personnel Management, this is an agency so corrupt, this is these words the a. T. F. Administration has had total disregard for federal management law regulations, policies and practices, an agency with its bump stock regulations so far reaching beyond its constitutional scope that it cant be reformed. The correct answer is we will get in there and starting to see a pattern here, shut it down. That is how you revive the integrity of a Constitutional Republic and tracing and possession move that to the u. S. Marshals and secret service, agencies that have not yet been corrupted. This begins to give you at least a preview of what the new administration starting in january, 2025 can actually begin to do. Im running to lead that movement for our country but not going to happen as a oneman show. Every one of us, every citizen in this country has to play a role in reviving our country and recognize people in this room who worked hard on the exceptions that are key part, a key step in beginning to reclassify federal employees to open up the possibility of firing. What im suggesting is the next president of the United States has to go further in having a personal conviction that these laws are unconstitutional that the regulations passed pursuant or not pursuant to these laws are unconstitutional and have the spine to ensure we have one executive branch in the United States of america. And that is the choice we face at this juncture. Do we want incremental reform . Or do we want revolution . I stand on the side of a revival of those 1776 ideals, a revival of that idea that yes, we the people create a government that is accountable to us, not the other way around. This is what unites as americans. And this is personal to me. I grew up into that generation where we were taught to celebrate our diversity and our differences so much that we forgot all of the ways. We are really the same as americans bound by that common set of ideals. From many, one. That is the dream that won the American Revolution. That is the dream that reunited us after the civil war. That is the dream that won us two world wars and the cold war. That is the