Wouldn’t Bureaucrats Work Better Amongst the People They Regulate?

U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) Secretary Sonny Perdue drives a tractor through a sweet potato field with Linwood Scott as he tours Scott Family Farms International in Lucama, N.C., Oct. 5, 2017. USDA Photo by Preston Keres

Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue announced this week in D.C. that the Economic Research Service, which provides research and statistical analysis for lawmakers, and the National Institute of Food and Agriculture (allocates federal research funding) would be moving most of their personnel and operations by the end of September.

“A gaggle of civil servants” protested the proposed relocation of a couple of Agriculture Department bureaus from Washington, D.C. to Kansas City by boldly turning their backs on Perdue’s speech, reports Joshua Sharf in American Greatness.

Even though these employees have had a year to either make peace or make plans, they did what any a mature person would do: wait until the final announcement to purse lips, cross their arms, and stare off into space.

As Mr. Sharf notes, it’s as though USDA has been violating child labor laws by hiring these toddlers.

CNN reports of the incident:

You would think Perdue is exiling these people to a remote outpost in Greenland. It may come as a surprise for these protesters to discover that, according to the latest U.S. Census figures, literally millions of people voluntarily live in the Kansas City metropolitan area. The place has NFL football, major and minor league baseball, and plenty of museums only slightly inferior to the Smithsonian that Washingtonians only visit when relatives are in town anyway.

In fact, the proposed relocation of federal agencies to the Western and Midwestern United States is one of the most innovative things to come out of the Trump Administration. They hope that bureaucracies, if they must exist, will do a better job if they are located among the people they regulate, rather than within the Beltway bubble.

Members of the American Federation of Government Employees turn their backs on Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue https://t.co/boG4uTGasx pic.twitter.com/rh3YLRzIWh

— The Hill (@thehill) June 13, 2019

About a year ago, Victor Davis Hanson wrote about busting D.C.’s stronghold. VDH had some specific ideas about dispersing power amongst the hoi polloi.

Washington elites, he noted, often wax eloquently in the abstract. “But rarely in the concrete do they live with those they purport to care about.”

Read more here.