OPINION: Make America Great Again is more than a slogan

It is necessary

For the first time since the reign of Franklin D. Roosevelt, which put the full-throated administrative state in place, America has aligned the executive, legislative, and judicial branches to restore power to the people and rip it out of the hands of their taxpayer-funded overlords in the federal bureaucracy. This is the time, purpose, and vision behind the founding of Americans for Limited Government more than 20 years ago. In the past three years, the U.S. Supreme Court has opened the door for the first time in decades to roll back federal regulatory overreach. The court declared that regulations that go beyond the law passed by the elected Congress are unconstitutional in West Virginia v. EPA. And just this past year, the Supreme Court overturned a 40-year-old decision that instructed courts to give deference to the wisdom and knowledge of the federal bureaucracy over those who were suing to prevent the expansion of the regulatory state. By ending so-called Chevron deference, the federal courts can listen to arguments and dismiss absurd or disputed claims by regulators when confronted with conflicting and credible testimony. These two cases, along with a few others that have the same effect, open the doors not only in the courts, but also for Congress to act to shut down this unconstitutional expansion of government. To make matters even more hopeful, President Donald Trump has appointed Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy to head a non-governmental Department of Government Efficiency (or DOGE). The goal of DOGE is streamlining government and providing the President and Congress a pathway to not only wring waste, fraud, and abuse out of the system, but also to provide a blueprint on government reorganization. These are hopeful times, but here is the secret that we all know. If changes are simply made using Donald Trump’s formidable [executive order] pen and paper, they can be rescinded as early as 2029. This is why Congressional action is essential. Narrow majorities in both the House and Senate will dictate some of the scope of changes that can be made. But Congress can help write overreaching regulations out of the law by refusing to reauthorize legislation unless the regulatory changes are made. It can strip funding for the implementation of regulations through the appropriations process. And Congress can affirm executive branch-recommended rescissions reflecting cuts in spending that have been deemed wasteful or unnecessary by the White House. The great news is Speaker Mike Johnson (R–La.) and House Majority Leader Steve Scalise (R–La.) have already started the ball rolling by directing their committee chairs to identify these overreaching regulations so that the House can hit the ground running on day one. The even better news is that with the bully pulpit of President Trump, media disruptors like Truth Social, talk radio, [podcasts], and X.com, and groups like Americans for Limited Government, the administrative state will face powerful grassroots pushback directly into Congress urging change. The great restoration of America is possible. There are many challenges ahead, and it will likely take 12 years of GOP presidential leadership to clean up the mess created on a bipartisan basis over the past century. But for the first time in generations, there is hope that the administrative-state dragon can be slayed, spending can be refocused upon constitutional priorities, and the great American economic engine will be unleashed to create a future that the baby boomer generation cannot imagine. Freedom is contagious and freeing the minds and talents of our nation’s entrepreneurs, inventors, and dreamers has been the key to our nation’s wealth, historically creating a prosperous middle class where parents can achieve their dream that if their children apply themselves, they will achieve greater things than their parents. Make America Great Again is not a slogan, it is a determination to fix what is broken in America including restoring individual freedom and today it is necessary and that is why there is hope unseen for generations.        

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Rick Manning is president of Americans for Limited Government.