DOGE needs The REINS ACT to Codify its Goals

Untill recently, quietly but at an accelerated pace America was creeping towards socialism. The allocation of capital over the years have increasing been decided by the concentrated regulatory power the vast unelected bureaucracy who it dictates ideological directives to. As such, economic freedom where the free movement of capital is allocated to where it is most productive, was fleeting. Americans were having less say in policies and rules which will affect our lives in every way such as our economic, social and even national security well being. More so, the traditional capitalists in the corporate and asset management world who normally would counter balance big government instead colluded with it. Then came President Trump and his DOGE ( Department of Government Efficiency) lead by Elon musk.

Within weeks, Mr. Musk uncovered billions of waste, political money laundering of tax payer funds and vast efficiencies which most of the lifers in Congress should have seen and done something about. Instead, politicians and bureaucrats squealed in horror, not because they were surprised because someone has uncovered the vast gravy train feeding the hogs along the Potomac swamp. President Trump and Mr. Musk has been vilified. Mr. Musk's Tesla brand and his customers have been a target for domestic terrorism. Akin to the founding fathers both Mr. Trump and Mr. Musk who pledged  in the concluding words of Declaration of Independence. 

 "… We mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes, and our sacred Honor”

Both wealthy men who did not need to be involved in politics have personally risked their lives which are still under threats, their personal wealth and brands and their names to do something many lifers who have garnered great wealth in politics never did. Actually take the government back for the people with efficiency and common sense accountability from the expanse of unelected bureaucrats who pilfered  taxpayers for decades. In Mr. Musk’s case an immigrant took great risk to also defend and protect the First Amendment by buying Twitter while many natural born American billionaires capitulated away from defending. America’s founders would have been proud. 

Before Mr. Trump became president again and DOGE, private companies were allocating a higher percentage of their capital to product portfolios dictated by the government regulations or enticing taxpayer subsidies instead of market conditions. Many asset managers abandoned their fiduciary duty to allocate private investors capital from where they should gain maximum return or economic viability, and instead based on government regulations such as ESG ( Environment and Social Governance). Taxpayer funded subsidized industries favored by the government artificially boosted stock value and prices. Like many previous economic bubbles and busts, it involved the government forcing the misallocating of capital with the compliance of corporate leaders.

We were becoming an Amerisocialist nation. However, a major legislation and the need for public awareness of the principles around could galvanize and codify aspects of DOGE to ultimately reverse this trend, and return crucial governing decisions to the people as the founders intended. In 2022 Republicans in the House passed the REINS Act ( Regulations from the Executive in Need of Scrutiny Act) which would require Congressional approval or rejection on every major regulation that is defined as costing $100 million or more per year that is advanced by executive agencies. However, the Democrat led Senate at the time blocked it from advancing to President Biden's desk which he most likely would have vetoed anyway.

Aptly described by Nick Stehle from the Foundation for Government Accountability in a New York Post Op-ed, "Such democratic accountability stands in stark contrast to the current system, which can best be described as ' regulation without representation'. Thats fundamentally un-American."

However, since the new Trump administration, DOGE and GOP majorities in congress, there have been no efforts or even any mention to of the REINS Act or to prioritize it being passed again while the GOP has majorities and a Republican President. Without the GOP majorities in both the House and Senate and a Republican President, this legislation may not go anywhere especially if Democrats win a chamber of Congress next year and revert to ignoring basic economics, and blocking President Trumps agenda.

The playbook for Democrat brand of American Socialism creep is similar to socialist and Marxist ideas before. It is cloaked in a virtue of providing a common good for equal results by enabling a concentration of power and decision making by the state. However there are stark distinctions to this new iteration of Amerisocialist experiment which seeks to fundamentally uproot and replace the original American experiment. In order to make it more palatable to an innately freedom loving society both young and old, the word 'socialist' is rarely or ever used as it would raise red flags of previous historical references. Instead words such as 'equitable' 'sustainable', 'climate crisis' and 'diversity' are used in the contexts of mission statements or acronyms as a preface of purported virtuosity.

As opposed to historical socialist movements that pandered mostly to the working class to surrender power to the state, Amerisocialism appeals to the elites who have already have vast influence of directing or managing trillions of dollars of capital whether their own or of others, entrusted to their management so they can coral it towards the direction of the government determined causes while ignoring pragmatism. In return, despite the prospects of viability, the government promises to underwrite it with subsidies to guarantee favors and continued wealth creation for the elites while the elites in cyclical fashion reward officials with donations. Elites also get a sense of moral superiority as their public status is elevated as being part of the 'greater good' and literally earn social credit points such as from ESG from the government that enhances their status and economic standings. The catalysts for all these elements to work in sync is that there must be crises or emergencies so the general public surrender absolute authority to the government to break laws, uproot established norms and remove freedoms. Once allowed, the government will then continue to create 'emergencies' to break laws, remove established norms and freedoms.

The Covid-19 pandemic was the accelerant of Amerisocialism. It inspired the thought and allowed practical examples of government commandeering capital, removing freedoms in name of a common good and censoring undesired speech called ' misinformation' to defeat the pandemic. An underlying aspect of Amerisocialism is that worse than having questions that cannot be answered, there are 'answers' that cannot be questioned. With the diminishing ability to use Covid-19 as a crisis, the same context to control vast elements of the economy and society was transitioned to using Climate and identity politics as the 'existential crises' to allow the continuation and expand of doing so.

Amerisocialism became the basis to defy basic economic principles for the ideological grasp of attending to the embraced crisis of Climate Change and the Green Industrial Complex behind it. One of President Biden's first action was to start a war on a major factor of production, energy. He cancelled the Keystone pipeline and signaled to American energy that he was out to coming for the rest of it. He also signaled to elites in asset management and banking directly with regulation to do the same. Thus many in asset management started forming pacts like ClimateAction 100+ to urge divesting from American fossil fuel energy and find ways to punish it. Some of these companies still manage billions invested in foreign oil and coal industries that supply China. He also prolonged employment benefits way longer than necessary while the country was coming out of Covid. Basic economics says if something or someone causes the scarcity of the factors of production such as energy and labour, their costs will go up as supply gets more limited.

As America was coming out of Covid, growth was 6% while inflation was less than 2%. The Amerisocialism of Bidenomics started to reverse those numbers and that trend even before Russia's war on Ukraine last year which helped to exasperate the worldwide energy shortages and prices. Europe had already self-inflicted energy suicide and vulnerabilities from their own Eurosocialism of climate alarmism by curbing their domestic fossil fuel and even nuclear power sources which inevitably led to a dependence on Russian oil and gas.

Instead of proven supply side economics which would incentivize market based productivity and growth, the Biden administration over relied on the Federal Reserve to tame inflation through rising interest rates which hasn't had a substantial desired effect. This manufactured crisis of runaway inflation has led to the Amerisocialistic ideas of Bidenomics on steriods to steer even more government mandated 'investments', reckless ideological spending and a misallocation of capital away from where they otherwise would be more productive on a scale never seen in America's history. Many of these laws and directives are being made by 2.1 million unelected bureaucratic officials in various agencies who face no accountability to the american people and keep their jobs no matter the damaging results. Only the REINS Act can return the decision process to the American people so we can identify such threats and prevent them before they cause irreversible damage.

Most auto companies have been directing investments in product portfolios not based on market demand but to meet EV mandates. Even oil and gas companies are investing in subsidized green energy and forgoing investment in viable traditional oil and gas. Goldman Sachs estimates that the EV subsides that were scored in the IRA to be $14 billion will actually be $1.2 trillion more than the CBO's estimate because they are open ended. China's EV bubble spiked by its subsidized economy is starting to bust with thousands of unsold EVs. See Bloomberg's article China's Abandoned EV Graveyards. Amerisocialism is about imitating communist and socialist policies no matter how often they are proven to fail.

Amerisocialists wanted to take away the fundamental decision and choice of what powertrain powers vehicles and force EV transition even if it was not economically or scientifically viable or cost effective. Biden's Transportation Department proposed a 696 page rule raising corporate fuel economy (Cafe) standards that would effectively require 100% of new cars to be electric by 2032. The Biden administration also proposed a 236 page revision to the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) with guidelines to require that federal agencies consider climate change and " environmental justice" in project reviews. Consequently this empowered China who controls over 80 percent of the world's limited resources to make EV batteries and to transport electricity such as copper. This is while China have been making steps to secure reliable supplies of fossil fuels very often extracted with very low environmental standards. Ironically, communist countries are doing more to enable and access efficient or reliable sources of energy than capitalist or 'free' first world countries.

Yet another reason the REINs Act is necessary to protect Americans. Amerisocialists want to get rid of another basic principle and most important concept of economics: Opportunity Costs. This is the cost of the opportunity lost or what would have happened if the resources or capital had not been used for a certain purpose such complying with federal regulations and mandates. The Biden White House Office of Management ( OMB) tried to phase out regulatory cost/benefit analysis to further unleash federal regulators to have been more control of the economy. The original opportunity cost guidance was meant to protect taxpayers or American voters by requiring that any proposed regulation justify its cost based on certain criteria and serve as a check to prevent exact runaway regulatory assault that is happening now. The Biden OMB rule aimed to redefine "significant regulatory action" to be one that has a $200 million annual economic cost, up from $100 million annually. The cost side was then subjected to accounting gimmickry that reduced the apparent impact on the U.S economy and society. (See: Regulators Gone Wild - WSJ)

A practical example of opportunity costs can be illustrated by a topic in my previous article: Asset Manager's Misguided EV Bet to Oust Toyota's Chairman. Toyota which has resisted the government and asset management class intimidation to go all electric has outlined the inconvenient facts that the minerals to make one EV battery could instead make 90 hybrids, and those 90 hybrids reduce the carbon output over their lifetimes 37 times more than ONE single EVs lifetime. Both government officials and asset managers tried to oust Akio Toyoda off the company's board for stating this fact because so much money is tied into EV mandates and subsidies that benefit them and their donors plus spiking stock prices. Since the premise behind man made climate change is primarily due to carbon emissions, this is one example that the Amerisocialist control of allocation of capital to mandate EVs is grossly misdirected, misconceived and economic malpractice based on false premise. The opportunity cost of the EV mandates is that you could have 90 cars produced that has benefit of being 37 times cleaner while being less expensive and practical for a customer compared to one EV. Competition and innovation has also made the conventional internal combustion engine increasingly efficient and there are still more ways it will evolve in that direction. The REINS Act could evaluate facts such as these so the Americans could re-claim the choice of what they drive and most importantly prevent trillions of mis-allocated capital to fundamentally transform the economy and transportation industries for impractical and unscientific goals. In addition to actually allowing resources going to where they are more realistically environmentally friendly, it would make us less vulnerable to a Chinese dominance of critical minerals and supply chain disruptions.

The inability Republicans and conservatives to effectively communicate awareness of their policies, why they are a benefit and to counter false narratives, for too long ceded an advantage for Democrats to be the charlatans of virtue and righteousness. Returning the government to the people via the REINS Act should be advocated by the GOP as an essential and genuine act of virtue especially after DOGE. Democrats have been much more tactful in achieving their causes. They purport to be called 'progressives' while their policies are causing cities and the country to regress into 3rd World standards in many aspects. Instead the GOP should stop calling Democrats what they want to be called and instead rebrand them what they really are as 'regressives'. Democrats have claimed to be about racial diversity and equity, but they impose regulatory assaults such as ESG and DEI inject race and identity political mandates or racial preferences in hiring in private companies over qualifications. Not only does this revive racial resentment after years of making significant racial progress and diversity, it will affect America's competitiveness and innovation if the criteria of hiring the most qualified is mandated away. We cannot remain a first world country if we remove merit standards and adopt socialist economic policies that make or keep countries third world nations.

There has never been a time when there is so much information and mediums for it and people know so little. Liberals with such control of the narrative and freedom of speech in every area of life means people are overly mis-informed of things that are actually not so. The REINS Act would bring freedom of speech, proper debate on real science and transparency to major issues especially those that are being weaponized as the context under Amerisocialism for vast regulatory control such as Climate Change. The American public would resonate if parallels are made with the bad decisions during Covid especially by the elite 'expert class'.

In making the case for the REINS Act, Republicans should dispel the caricature branded on them by liberals of being against a clean environment by making actual environmental case for American 'all of the above energy' and facts carbon emissions. Republicans believe in Climate Change because it has been having for thousands of years. Even by liberals own data the regulatory actions they propose will have only have a 0.0010 % effect on the climate by the end of the century, while allowing China and the rest of the world to emit what the want and have control and use of energy supplies. Opportunity Cost or cost/benefit analysis of policies would be a key criteria restored to measure regulatory action under the REINS Act. Most importantly it restores to the people a say in that decision process via their elected representatives. Elected representatives would now be more directly held accountable on making decisions based on real facts and debate especially if they they made decisions as consequential to Americans such as what they drive. Corporate leaders and asset mangers will also be held accountable in how they allocate capital, especially of those they manage and be less inclined to follow false premises and ideology such those as under global warming catastrophism. Instead the REINS Act would restore the economic freedom for more productive allocation of capital in the private sector instead of based on a subsidy driven or directed economy.

America has led the industrialized world in lowering carbon emissions even further than the requirements under the Paris Accord, mainly due to our transition to cleaner natural gas derived from the technology demonized by climate alarmists: fracking. American oil and gas is 70 % cleaner and extracted with higher environmental standards than countries Biden has made concessions to such as Venezuela. Despite major increases in the demand for energy, America's reduction in CO2 emissions remains at the rate it was in 1970 even though the economy has expanded 30 times larger. While there will be increasing demand for electricity, the REINS Act would encourage more efficient innovation of nuclear technologies than subsidy driven wind and solar such as modular nuclear plants. The freedom of debate aspect of REINS Act would also highlight where some issues are falsely blamed on man made climate change but rather caused or worsened due to climate or environmental policies. Wildfires (which have been having for millennia) in Canada, California and in Maui have been exasperated by 'green' policies which diverted resources away from fire prevention or limited forest management. Some have even been tied to scoring ESG points by not removing trees that actually fuel wildfires. Restricting pipelines or export terminals have meant that cleaner American oil and gas were replaced with dirtier extracted oil and gas from the Venezuela, Russia and the Middle East. Even restrictions and bureaucracy limiting extraction of rare earth minerals to make electrical components in the U.S means the supply chain is more reliant on minerals mostly controlled by China extracted with low environmental and labor standards.

During the debates discussed in the The Federalist to create our Constitution there was a common theme to argue why there should be limited government power and why government should be for and by the people. " For man is not infallible and subject to fault"

The massive expansion of government and the greed for power behind it has shown its many faults. American's need to be reacquainted and empowered to take back the government for the people by passing the REINS Act again and signed into law by President Trump.