There is so much going on with the Trump administration I thought I would begin a periodic blog post feature that highlights major items going on with Trump along with commentary from time to time when it is appropriate.
Merry Christmas!
The Trump agenda is being implemented so swiftly and in a such a sweeping manner in so many areas that his supporters have started saying that every new day feels like Christmas.
All will be well as long as a Happy New Year follows.
Trump and the Media
We are once again hearing the narrative that Trump is attempting to be a dictator and is dismissive of many in the media who are covering him. The argument is made that Trump is restricting access to him from the media as an authoritarian would.
However, compare Trump with Biden when there were rarely any unscripted interactions with the media and, when he did meet with the press, it appeared the questions were often pre-arranged.
Consider the number of questions that Trump has taken in the first month compared to Biden, Obama and Trump's first term.
Could any President be more transparent?
The Gold Card
President Trump announced this week that he plans to offer a "Gold Card" that would allow those who want to immigrate to the United States the opportunity to receive a Green Card for permanent residency with a pathway to citizenship.
The most common path for citizenship for Green Card holders is through naturalization after maintaining a continuous relationship in the U.S. for at least five years and being physically present in the country for at least half of that time.
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| Source: https://www.cbsnews.com/news/trump-gold-card-eb5-visa-5-million-immigration-oligarch-cbs-news-explains/ |
A Gold Card could be obtained by payment of $5 million to the U.S. Treasury and being able to pass a strict vetting process.
The Gold Card would replace the EB-5 visa that is currently in place that provides the opportunity for wealthy non-U.S. citizens to gain permanent residency. However, that program has been subject to abuse and fraud at times. It also does not require a payment to the U.S. Treasury as Trump's plan does. It just requires a commitment to invest $1 million in the United States and commitment to create or preserve 10 full time jobs for American workers.
Clearly, the objective of the Gold Card is to get high net worth individuals into the country who can bring capital and entrepreneurial skills to fuel the economy and create jobs for Americans.
According to Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, there is a reported waiting list of 250,000 for EB-5 visas currently. Less than 10,000 EB-5 visas have been typically issued in recent years.
I doubt that all of the 250,000 on the waiting list have $5 million for a Gold Card. However, even if it was only 50,000 initially that would still bring in $250 billion per year.
Trump threw out the idea that 1,000,000 Gold Card recipients could generate $5 trillion.
That is far-fetched considering the limited number of eight-figure millionaires in the world. (I figure you would have to have at least $10+ million to consider spending half of that on a Gold Card)
Current estimates by Grok suggest there are no more than 500,000 8-figure millionaires in the world outside of the United States.
However, I like where Trump is going with this.
In my view, this approach should be married with the Talent Tariff idea (credit to Scott McNealy) I wrote about in January that would create an auction method to replace the H-1B and other employment based visas. This might then be called a Silver Card that also could potentially provide a pathway to a Green Card to complement the Gold Card at a lower cost for needed skills and occupations.
We also need a guest worker program similar to my Red Card proposal that would provide work visas but would not provide any pathway to citizenship.
I have already heard some Democrats decry the idea of allowing wealthy individuals the opportunity to enter the country by stating that it was "unfair" to allow them to cut into the line ahead of those who have been waiting patiently to come into the country.
Isn't it interesting that they did not have similar concerns as millions and millions of illegal immigrants poured across our border the last four years?
Elon Musk and DOGE
I continue to be amazed at the anger and animus directed at Elon Musk engendered by his small DOGE team pulling back the covers and looking at various aspects of the federal government's systems and spending.
Why are so many concerned about a little transparency that has been sorely lacking for years when it comes to these issues?
Of course, this week you would have thought that Musk asked each federal employee to write a PhD dissertation when he simply asked each employee to provide five bullet points on what they did last week.
The request was primarily intended just to verify if there was living, breathing employee behind the government email address who was even checking their email.
It is reported that only 1 million government employees out of a reported 2+ million (not including unformed military personnel) on the federal payroll completed the task.
Some Department and Agency heads (Department of Defense, Homeland Security, FBI, CIA etc) told their employees they did not have to comply because they have rigorous chain of command structures in place already.
That is understandable. However, what is the excuse in departments like Education, EPA, HHS and the like?
What is really absurd is the amount of time being spent by those resisting a request for 5 minutes of time to document their existence and work.
Senate Minority Leader does not think any good business operator would manage their operations this way.
However, this is exactly what Elon Musk did when he acquired Twitter.
When he made a similar request at Twitter he found that about 80% of Twitter employees spent most of their time writing rules on what content could not be posted on the platform and then censoring the content that did not conform.
Most of it did not add any value to Twitter. In fact, it was the direct antithesis of what a platform that was originally formed to foster communication, the exchange of ideas and free speech was supposed to be about.
Musk let go of 80% of the Twitter staff in his first months of ownership and the platform did not miss a beat. In fact, X is better than ever as a result.
What was going on at Twitter is very much similar to what is going on in a number of federal agencies such as the Department of Education and the EPA.
Thousands of employees are primarily involved in writing rules and regulations that Americans are supposed to follow. Thousands of employees are also involving in policing all of those rules and regulations that they have promulgated. Most of those also have no direct legislative authorization.
The Department of Education employs 4,400 people. The EPA has over 16,000 full time positions.
Is all of what they do really, really necessary?
Who says we could not get the same results in education and the environment with 80% less employees?
I don't know. However, I do know that if the question is never asked, and the agency heads are not challenged, we will never know.
It also bears keeping in mind that Kamala Harris spent $1.5 billion and had a campaign staff of 1,200 compared to Trump's staff of 300 and about $350 million in spending in the 2024 election.
Did all those extra staff and spending make Kamala a winner?
President Trump and Elon Musk come from a different world than those who populate D.C.
A final point in all of this is the differential in pay between federal employees and other working Americans.
Generally speaking, federal employees make, on average, 60%-80% more than Americans overall.
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| Source: Grok3 |
Federal worker pay is skewed higher, in part, because there are more white collar jobs and more college-educated workers working for the government.
However, it should not go unnoticed that the people paying the bills are making less than the people overseeing the bureaucracy that is making the rules.
I am not sure that it makes a whole lot of sense to be protesting very much about anything that DOGE is doing when you consider the imbalance the bigger picture reveals here.
It might be time for some people to accept a different reality than they are used to.
For now, the American people are strongly supportive of what DOGE is doing.
A Harvard/ Harris poll this week.
It is naive to believe that many federal employees are going to get on the Trump Train.
After all, Kamala Harris got 91% of the vote in the District of Columbia and in the adjoining suburban counties, which are heavily populated with federal workers, saw Trump only garnering an average of 29% of the vote.
However, it might prove to be a poor career choice to stand directly in front of it..
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