There are nearly 3,500 trades or firms with dedicated lobbying operations in Washington, D.C., reports Roger Kimball in American Greatness. And that number does not include union headquarters in D.C.

(T)hey’re all there, hands out, telephones working overtime to get a little bigger slice of the government pie, made with 100 percent locally sourced materials, namely your tax dollars.

Donald Trump came to office promising to “drain the swamp.” He has made a little, mostly rhetorical, progress around the edges. But the swampiness of the swamp is deep and inveterate. He will never succeed in that stupendous sanitary engineering project until he removes the thing that attracts the swamp creatures to Washington just as a rotting carcass attracts flies and other necrophagites: centers of power and influence.

Move Washington Out of Washington

Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue took a small step in the right direction when he ordered that part of his department, the National Institute of Food and Agriculture, be relocated to Missouri. But now Senators Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.) and Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) have worked up that tentative suggestion into a real plan: Move a lot of Washington out of Washington.

“Now we’re getting somewhere,” Mr. Kimball continues, referring to the Blackburn-Hawley Plan.

• The Department of Transportation would go to Michigan. Maybe it would help Detroit recover its mojo.
• The Department of Housing and Urban Development would go to Ohio. Ohio is nice state, centrally located.
• The Department of Agriculture would go to Missouri. That’s Hawley’s state, and he might have picked Kansas for the sake of appearances, but you get the point. What does Washington know about growing anything, besides the deficit?
• The Department of Education would be moved to Blackburn’s home state of Tennessee. (Kimball would just abolish it.)

Could the Blackburn-Hawley Plan mark the beginning of a sunny new chapter?

“Taking a good bit of ‘Washington’ out of Washington is a good way to start,” writes Roger Kimball.

Victor Davis Hanson also would bust the D.C. stronghold. Read more here.