Washington, DC, is riddled with parasites sucking the life out of our nation.
Time for a thorough deworming.
Jonathan Rauch, in a book by the same name, called it “demosclerosis.”
Mancur Olson, in his classic “The Rise and Decline of Nations,” called it a “web of special interests.”
I call it the “parasite class.”
All refer to a collection of bureaucrats, lobbyists, contractors, nonprofits, non-governmental organizations and connected unions and corporations that have increasingly run our federal government for their own benefit, fattening themselves with the help of diverted taxpayer dollars.
I confess that until recently, I assumed nothing could be done about these problems until an unmistakable financial collapse took place, forcing massive slashes in spending and regulation of the sort that we’ve seen in Argentina under Javier Milei.
The situation was desperate, but no one was serious about dealing with it.
That has all changed now.
The Trump administration and the Department of Government Efficiency are making some of the cuts that it would be forced to make in the event of a financial collapse — ahead of the collapse.
This has made the parasites unhappy, and there has been much squealing.
DOGE’s audit of the United States Agency for International Development demonstrated what others, such as a 2022 Foreign Policy report, had indicated: Most of the money went to feed the Beltway Blob, not to help poor people in foreign countries.
In many cases, the recipients were NGOs that used the money for political purposes.
Years ago I wrote that one of the benefits of democratic elections was to ensure turnover in the elected government, disrupting the web of special-interest connections.
But over time, the bureaucracy itself became part of the ruling class, connecting itself to foundations, nonprofits, academia and the like.
That made it immune to elections as part of an enormous unelected power structure.
President Donald Trump’s second term is upending that system, suggesting that, at least sometimes, American elections are in fact still capable of wreaking change — not only on elected offices but on the bureaucracy, media and academia.
But to make these changes stick, spending cuts, as important as they are, won’t be enough.
We have to go beyond and change the system itself, to shield it and immunize it against the parasites.
First of all, we need tighter regulation of nonprofits and NGOs that receive public money, either directly or indirectly.
Nonprofits in the United States operate with a near absence of oversight, compared to companies in the for-profit sector.
They’re not just orphanages and small charities, but huge businesses, with top executives earning six- and seven-figure salaries; they also serve as revolving-door employers for ex-politicians, bureaucrats and their relatives.
That needs to change.
Any outfit that operates as a nonprofit — with all the tax benefits that entails — should have to spend nearly all of its revenues on charitable acts: feeding the poor, sheltering disaster victims, supporting the sick.
And they should have to report their financials under rules as strict as those for publicly traded for-profit businesses.
NGOs are misleadingly named: Though called “non-governmental,” they’re largely funded by governments (mostly ours).
They often serve to implement government policy without government accountability.
Many are given officially recognized status at the United Nations, allowing them to participate in meetings and to serve as partners in UN and US State Department programs.
They even enjoy a sort of de facto (though not actual) diplomatic status.
All that should end. Only governments, operating openly, should fulfill government roles.
In addition, as the unfolding ActBlue scandal illustrates, we need to make it harder for untrackable foreign cash to flow to American candidates and causes.
Democratic fundraising colossus ActBlue appears to have served as a knowing conduit for illegal overseas contributions, given under false or assumed names, that were “smurfed” — broken up into small chunks — to avoid attention and end-run campaign-finance laws.
No precautions were taken to stop illegal donations from Russia, China, Venezuela and Iran, according to the House Administration Committee.
Now, with Republicans in charge of Congress and Trump in the White House, ActBlue’s management and staff are bolting.
Most importantly, we need to shrink the size of both the federal government and its budget.
USAID is no more, and Trump has promised to abolish the Department of Education.
That’s just the beginning.
Many more cuts to the bureaucracy must follow.
Requiring a balanced budget will go farther still toward reining in corruption and fraud.
Today, with everything paid for by endless borrowing, it’s easy to funnel money to political projects.
Without unlimited funds, that’s much harder to do: Popular programs would have to take a hit.
Make the government smaller, force tough choices, and we’ll make Washington less corrupt.
Let the parasites work for a living for a change.
Glenn Harlan Reynolds is a professor of law at the University of Tennessee and founder of the InstaPundit.com blog.