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Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-FL) is trying desperately to create contrasts between himself and Donald Trump. And the Governor believes that what Republican voters really want is a president who will push for far-right policy changes. Yesterday, he was on Fox, and was asked if there are any federal agencies he would like to abolish. DeSantis, who was clearly expecting the question, said there are four of them. And, to his credit, he even remembered which ones: Education, Commerce, Energy and the IRS.
Two of these are not a surprise. Conservatives in general, and DeSantis in particular, believe that the Department of Education is somehow responsible for indoctrinating millions of students into... something. Socialism, Critical Race Theory, Satan worship, something like that. Its real job is to collect data on how well the nation is educating its students and to oversee the disbursement of various forms of aid. It's worth noting that DoEd is also the smallest of the Cabinet agencies, and its budget (around $100 billion annually) is roughly 10% of that of the Department of Defense (nearly $1 trillion annually).
Meanwhile, many conservatives seem to believe that the Department of Energy has something to do with fighting global warming. That's woke, and so it's bad. It's also not what the DoE actually does; as we have noted many times, the primary job of the DoE is to oversee the nation's nuclear stockpile. We assume that DeSantis knows that, and that he's just pandering to those who are ignorant of the Department's true purpose. We also assume that DeSantis does not intend, if he becomes president, to leave the nukes unsupervised. Ipso facto, even if Congress went along with plans to kill the DoE (it wouldn't), then it wouldn't be a meaningful change. The job would just be placed in the hands of some other agency.
As to Commerce, we admit we do not understand what conservatives' beef is with that agency. Its job is to promote American business interests, both domestically and abroad. It was created in the early 1900s, and it was fleshed out by the very conservative and very pro-business Herbert Hoover, who served as secretary for nearly 8 years. This would seem to be something that the pro-business party would approve of, but Commerce was also on the list of agencies that Rick Perry wanted to shut down. Clearly there is something about it that right-wingers don't like; if any reader knows, we'd appreciate the information.
And finally there is the IRS. That's not really an agency, it's a subdivision of the Department of the Treasury. It's not a secret that Republican politicians are anti-IRS because the donor class is anti-paying taxes. It's also the case that, right now, Republican politicians have succeeded at making the IRS a part of the culture wars, basically because Joe Biden and the Democrats gave the IRS more money to go after rich tax cheats, and anything Biden and the Democrats do is socialist, anti-American, woke, etc., so the IRS is now the antichrist.
In the end, the current anti-IRS shtick requires a fair bit of sleight of hand, and also requires Republican-leaning voters not to pay too much attention to the facts of the situation. The problem is that it's one thing to say "we need to take back the money Joe Biden gave to the IRS." It's another thing entirely to say that the IRS should be shut down, since taxes have to be paid somehow. DeSantis has a solution to that, however: A flat tax.
Of course, presidential candidates have run on a flat tax in the past, and have gotten nowhere with it. Eventually, even most of the folks who are on board with the Republican Party in general figure out that a flat tax means that rich people pay less, which in turn means that non-rich people pay more. None of the other flat taxers have been able to sell the idea, and there's no reason to think DeSantis is any different.
And that brings us to the ultimate point of this item. We haven't the faintest idea who DeSantis thinks he's impressing with these proposals—proposals that, by the way, have zero chance of getting past Congress, even if he becomes president. Maybe the flat tax bit is a bone for the surviving Koch, in hopes that he will back DeSantis (see below). But in general, the Trumpy voters that DeSantis is trying to attract care little about wonky stuff like getting rid of the Department of Energy. And the more that the Governor lays out his agenda, the more it becomes clear that he doesn't really understand what drives Trumpism. (Z)