The Silent Gutting of Government

Michael Lewis is by now a well-known journalist who manages to find scandals or unknown areas of chicanery to expose in a highly readable way. Previous books have focused on Wall Street (The Big Short), baseball (Moneyball), and football (The Blind Side). His latest book is titled The Fifth Risk, and what it exposes is the scandalous nature of the Trump Administration’s transition, or more precisely, lack of transition, when it took the reins of power in 2017. Normally, that is, an incoming administration will devote a whole team to preparing itself to take over the running of the major agencies of government: the State Department and the Justice Department most visibly, but then the agencies that reallymanage the nation—the Department of Energy, the Department of Agriculture, the Department of Commerce (within which is NOAA, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration), and so on. It will appoint a head of transition to oversee the thousands of details and massive learning it takes to successfully keep these huge departments of government running smoothly. And the Trump administration actually did try to appoint someone, ex-New Jersey governor Chris Christie, to be the overseer. The problem that emerged almost immediately, however, was that Christie wanted to spend money on the transition, and the President expressed outrage at this alleged waste. Then the fact that Christie had been involved in a lawsuit against son-in-law Jared Kushner seems to have sealed his fate, and he was fired. The Trump administration from then on decided it could simply ‘wing it’ and that is where Lewis focuses his story and his outrage. For in the crucial early weeks and months of the Trump administration, Obama agency heads, prepared to brief their successors on critical details of agencies like The Department of Energy, found themselves waiting in vain. The new administration simply didn’t show up. “Across the Federal government, the Trump people weren’t anywhere to be found,” writes Lewis. Indeed, the same Jared Kushner who got Christie fired was so naïve about how transitions transpire that he expressed surprise that so much of the White House staff was leaving. “It was like he thought it was a corporate acquisition or something,” says an Obama White House staffer. “He thought everyone just stayed” (p. 36). So all across Washington, heads of departments were waiting with voluminous reports on the major activities of their departments they figured the new people would need, and for months, they waited in vain. The Trump administration seemed deeply uninterested. 

            Lewis focuses much of his attention on the huge Department of Energy. This is the department that, among other things, monitors our very large and very dangerous nuclear arsenal. The DOE, which oversees 115,000 employees spread throughout the nation at national labs like Los Alamos, Livermore, and Sandia, operates all this with a multi-billion-dollar budget, but the CFO of this department, Joe Hezir, after waiting and waiting to brief someone about its workings, simply left. When a few young Trump apparatchiks finally did show up, “They were just looking for dirt, basically,” said one of the veterans who briefed them about national security. They had no idea that U.S. scientists no longer test nuclear weapons, but relies on simulated explosions carried out at the labs. Nor did they have any idea of—and still may not be interested in—the risks that DOE monitors and is responsible for. These include losing a nuclear weapon (this has actually happened), and “cleaning up all the unholy world-historic mess left behind by the manufacture of nuclear weapons” (54), and where to store the hazardous waste. These risks are as serious as anything in government gets (one glitch involved using organic kitty litter instead of inorganic litter to soak up nuclear waste, which caused an explosion), such as the “Broken Arrow” syndrome: this refers to a nuclear accident, like losing a weapon somewhere, that doesn’t lead to a nuclear war. It also includes keeping track of weapons to prevent them from being stolen and used by terrorists. But again, the Trump people were simply content to remain ignorant of all this. As Lewis concludes at one point, “Trump’s budget, like the social forces behind it, is powered by a perverse desire—to remain ignorant” (p. 80). 

            The same pattern governed the transition at the huge United States Department of Agriculture (USDA). This is a department with over 100,000 employees and a budget of $151 billion. It runs food stamps, free school lunch for kids, food for pregnant women and their infants, and programs that literally finance the rural America that so loves Trump, and many others. And yet, no one from the new administration showed up for over a month. Then in came a gaggle of idiots with no relevant experience (a long-haul truck driver, a clerk at AT&T, a gas-company meter reader, a country club cabana attendant, and the owner of a scented-candle company) who were mostly interested in rooting out any ‘subversives’ who had displayed an interest in climate change. The man chosen to head the transition team was Brian Klippenstein, also rumored at one time to be Trump’s pick to head the entire USDA (Trump eventually chose ex-Georgia governor Sonny Perdue). Klippenstein’s main bona fide was that he headed a group called Protect the Harvest, an organization rabidly opposed to the Humane Society of America, which it says intends to “put an end to animal ownership” (actually, its opposition likely stems from the Humane Society’s backing of legislation meant to end the brutal elements of factory farming, such as tight cages in egg and pork production). Protect the Harvest puts its mission more popularly, saying its purpose is “to protect your right to hunt, fish, farm, eat meat, and own animals” (88). This is the guy Trump wanted to put in charge of the entire Department of Agriculture, but saner heads apparently prevailed. Not too sane, though, for the main effort of the new administration seemed to be a) to root out anyone with an interest in climate change (which will, in time, have a huge and possibly apocalyptic effect on American agriculture), and b) to eliminate those ‘radical’ Obama programs like the one to make school lunches actually nutritious instead of laced with junk food. Shortly after being confirmed by the Senate, therefore, Sonny Perdue announced that “USDA would no longer require schools to meet the whole-grain standard, or the new sodium standard (less salt), or ban fat in artificially-sweetened milk” (105). 

            There are similar outrages throughout this book. The bottom line is that Lewis asked John MacWilliams, the chief risk officer in the Department of Energy, what he opined the chief risks were if government agencies were run badly. The five risks were not surprising: 1) a nuclear weapons accident; 2) a potential conflict with North Korea; 3) a nuclear conflict with Iran (which is why the Iran Nuclear deal was so important); 4) a terrorist attack on the United States electrical grid. That left the fifth risk, which gives the book its title, and which I actually had to search for (my biggest criticism of the book). It turns out to be, according to MacWilliams, Project Management; or rather, Project Mismanagement. This is the kind of thing that can result from putting in charge of major government agencies people who have no interest in or qualifications for those jobs (or worse, whose interest, like NOAA nominee Barry Myers’, is in prohibiting the National Weather Service’s public forecasts so his private company, AccuWeather, can charge big bucks for the very information it gets from NWS). And the numbers of such people Trump has put in charge is terrifying. They all seem to have no interest in what government agencies actually do (and one of the takeaways from Lewis’ book is that these agencies actually keep immensely important operations humming, with dedicated bureaucrats, such as nuclear scientists, doing the major work). Their main interests are political—rooting out those who actually believe government does anything worthwhile (and many of the most experienced have indeed been driven out). This is the real legacy of the Reagan era—which insisted that “government IS the problem.” Government agencies, to this type of zealot, only muck things up with red tape and excessive regulation. Which, of course, became Trump’s mantra for what he planned to do: end regulations wherever possible. Which itself means ‘end regulation where such action can mean windfall profits for my contributors.’ 

            To bring this idea home, Lewis has many great portraits and interviews with pre-Trump bureaucrats. One of my favorites is Lillian Salerno, the Obama-appointed head of Rural Development Solutions (part of the Department of Agriculture). This agency makes $30 billion in loans and grants a year, often to rural banks that finance poor farmers who usually have difficulty getting loans elsewhere. But most of these farmers have no idea that the rural bank money actually comes from the government. “I had this conversation with elected and state officials almost everywhere in the South,” said Salerno. “Them: We hate the government and you suck. Me: My mission alone put $1 billion into your economy this year, so are you sure about that? Me thinking: We are the only reason your shitty state is standing” (122). Nonetheless, despite the fact that Rural Development Solutions helped the very people (rurals) who put Trump in office and keep him there, this critical government department was one of the first ones eliminated by Trump. 

Lillian Salerno’s comment on this gutting of the very agency that makes rural life possible is priceless: “At the end of the day, what do I think they are going to do?” she said. “Take all the money and give it to their banker friends. Do things like privatize water—so people in rural Florida will be paying $75 a month for it instead of $20” (125).  

That pretty much says all you need to know about Trump world and how it is ravaging the very elements of government designed to protect the masses of the American people—especially from the predatory nature of the corporate sector. Whether or not the nation can survive this onslaught remains to be determined. But one way or the other, the damage will be extensive and severe (just think what Scott Pruitt has already done to the EPA), and will require decades to recover from. 

Lawrence DiStasi