Talk about grade inflation …

Well! There you have it!

@ Mythx replies > “I think we are simply past the point where ANY executive. Has the ability to move in a direction contrary to the bureaucracies self interest.”

All of this is an indication of the power of the Deep State (however you want to define that term).
And the bureaucracies’ self-interest can have multiple facets: straight-forward personal gain of status or wealth or power; turf protection & empire building in their fiefdoms; and ideological agendas.
So, especially when you get the Perfect Trifecta of all three at once, what the president wants only gets done if it flows the same direction as their stream.

Eisenhower learned this the hard way, and I still remember the quote from somewhere. Peter Drucker uses it for his own purposes, but his advice is pretty good for presidents as much as anyone else.

https://meaningring.com/2017/10/13/testing-the-decision-against-results-by-peter-drucker/

When General Dwight D. Eisenhower was elected president, his predecessor, Harry S. Truman, said: “Poor Ike; when he was a general, he gave an order and it was carried out. Now he is going to sit in that big office and he’ll give an order and not a damn thing is going to happen.”

The reason why “not a damn thing is going to happen” is, however, not that generals have more authority than presidents. It is that military organizations learned long ago that futility is the lot of most orders and organized the feedback to check on the execution of the order. They learned long ago that to go oneself and look is the only reliable feedback. Reports—all a president is normally able to mobilize—are not much help.

ACTION POINT: Make sure you go out and “kick the tires” and get on-site feedback. Find out if decisions have accomplished their intended results.

The President’s General Staff needs a lot of designated tire-kickers; more to the point, he has to be able to FIRE those who don’t execute his orders.

Republicans seem to have more of a problem with this than Democrats, mostly because most bureaucrats already line up with the Democrat ideology underlying the orders, and most Dem politicians are only too happy to help with their empire building and personal gain.

I think we have several competing teams in “DC” (may not be physically in Washington, but in the upper elite circles).
Biden’s closest circle is probably not the one with real power.

Don’t need to shrink the cabinet. The government has an ant heap of ‘independent agencies’ which should be consolidated into departments and trusteeships. Somewhat north of 25 departments and a half-dozen trusteeships supervised by 7-member boards ought to cover the whole ball of wax. Some departments might have appended commissions which would be the ultimate authority in rule-making and adjudication.

Some targets:

1. HUD. Fish out the agency responsible for regulating lead paint exposure and append it to EPA or some such. Shut the rest of the department down and terminate its programs.

2. Education: send the National Assessment of Educational Progress and the statistical services to the Labor Department, set up a regulatory agency for vendor-vendor and vendor-consumer relations, set up a resolutions authority to phase out federal financing of tertiary schooling (with ROTC and veterans’ benefits a residue), and shut the rest of the department down and terminate its programs.

3. Food and Nutrition Service (once responsible for about 2/3 of the Agriculture Department’s budget). Shut it down, terminate its programs.

4. Transportation Department: collect tolls on long-haul Interstates and distribute the proceeds to dedicated funds in each state on a per-acres-of-macadam basis. Otherwise, end all special-purpose grants distributed by this department to any and all corporate bodies, public and private. Transfer the aviation safety apparat and the like to a new ‘health and safety’ department.

5. Health and Human Services: sort its agencies into about 10 piles. Distribute nine of the piles to extant departments and new departments and shut down what’s in pile number 10. Discontinue the grant facility of all surviving agencies, especially the National Institutes of Health. No more patronage; they do their work in house. Among the programs you should terminate entirely would be TANF, LIHEAP, and miscellaneous subventions to local social service agencies.

6. National Science Foundation: fish out the polar programs office and send it to the Interior Department. Shut down everything else.

7. Environmental Protection Agency: distribute part of its regulatory authority to a new agency in a new ‘health and safety department’. Distribute another part to a new bureau in the Interior Department. Send the ‘environmental public works’ programs run by federal officials to the Interior Department. End all grant programs.

8. Energy Department: break it up. Send the statistical agencies to the Commerce Department, send the loan portfolio to a resolutions authority, end the grant facility, send the regulatory component to a stand-alone agency or to a new department, and set up the national laboratories (sans grant-making authority) as a stand-alone agency or as part of a new ‘science and technology’ department.

9. Veterans Affairs: send the cemeteries to the Interior Department. Spin off much (not all) of the brick and mortar inventory and the staff employed therein, replacing their services with vouchers and insurance programs.

10. Farm Service Agency: establish a schedule of counter-valing tariffs on agricultural products and shut this agency down.

11. Miscellaneous grant-making offices (in the Departments of the Interior, Justice, Homeland Security, Agriculture, Commerce): shut them all down.

12. Miscellaneous grant-making stand-alone agencies (e.g. the National Endowment for the Arts, the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Corporation for Public Broadcasting) – shut them all down.

On the flip-side, you could enhance the EITC to replace certain federal welfare programs and set up a general revenue sharing program to replace special-purpose grants.

Trump has shown us that the only possible way to drain the swamp is with veto and filibuster proof majorities. Then it’s possible to starve leviathan. Shrink the cabinet – close whole divisions and cut budgets across the board. Put staffers on unemployment benefits.

Nothing else will work.

Here’s my bitter ray of sunshine – 2024 will be the best chance we’ll ever get!

Same here. That hearing disgusted me and changed me from being a Democrat voter.

I agree, but it also means he only had to grease a few wheels to open up the spigot of corruption that enriched his family. He’s done nothing meaningful to explain his personal family wealth.