Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis is vowing to make a bold move to begin breaking up the bureaucracy in Washington, D.C., if he becomes president of the United States.
Taking a page from President Donald Trump’s term in office, DeSantis is taking aim at the U.S. Department of Agriculture and has pledged to move the entire agency out of D.C. and into real farm country.
“When I’m President, Iowa will have first dibs on the Department of Agriculture,” DeSantis announced in a Thursday post on X.
“An agency like the USDA should be staffed by Americans who understand agriculture and farming, not pointy-headed bureaucrats imposing an agenda.”
When I’m President, Iowa will have first dibs on the Department of Agriculture.
An agency like the USDA should be staffed by Americans who understand agriculture and farming, not pointy-headed bureaucrats imposing an agenda. pic.twitter.com/xc3A0RuIM9
— Ron DeSantis (@RonDeSantis) December 14, 2023
In an accompanying video, the governor told voters that he hopes to take many of the federal agencies now headquartered in D.C. out of the Beltway to make them “more reflective” of the people they are supposed to be serving.
“So instead of having the civil rights division of the Justice Department in D.C., you know, you could have it in Oklahoma. Instead of having the Department of Agriculture [in D.C.], you could have it in Iowa,” DeSantis said.
“We want to really look to get power outside of Washington.”
This has been a dream of many conservatives.
Should the Department of Agriculture be moved out of D.C.?
Trump, for instance, moved the Bureau of Land Management headquarters to Colorado as part of his plan to “drain the swamp.” But, naturally, as soon as Joe Biden’s regime took over, the bureau was moved right back to D.C., as The Hill noted in 2021.
Moving a federal agency out of D.C. is one thing. But many conservatives would rather just eliminate them altogether.
According to ABC News, GOP presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy wants to defund and shut down the Department of Education, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, the IRS and the thoroughly disgraced FBI.
As for DeSantis, he’s said he’d also like to dump the Departments of Commerce and Energy.
In a June interview with Fox News’ Martha MacCallum, the governor said that if Congress won’t help him eliminate these departments, he’ll use them “to push back against woke ideology and against the leftism that we see creeping into all institutions of American life.”
Moving them is the least a president could do, certainly. Eliminating many of them would be incalculably better for this great nation.
