Presidential hopeful Gov. Doug Burgum (R-ND) supports pruning the federal bureaucracy and says his experience both as governor and in the private sector speaks to his ability to run things efficiently.
During an interview with the Washington Examiner, Burgum said he views the federal government like a business. The 67-year-old governor supports big spending cuts, in large part through trimming the federal government and finding efficiencies. He said that the bloated administrative state has hurt the government’s fiscal situation.
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“You’ve got to have a higher revenue than you have expenses. You at least got to get them in line with each other,” Burgum said.
Burgum estimated that from what he has seen while serving as governor of North Dakota, 10%-20% of every federal job is “some mind-numbing, soul-sucking work that adds no value to any citizen.”
“We just have to get rid of all that,” Burgum said, “and believe me, the federal government, if you take 20% out of every job, that’s the equivalent of 400,000 of the 2 million jobs at the federal government level. It’s not like, oh we’re just going to just get rid of the Department of Educatio, which I would support, but that’s only 4,000 people out of 2 million, that’s one-fifth of 1% of the federal employees.”
“Every job in the federal government has got a percentage of it which doesn’t need to be done anymore. It could be digitized,” Burgum said.
When Burgum discusses his plans to streamline the federal government and cut down on federal spending, he leans heavily on his experience, not only as governor but during his time in the private sector.
After earning a master’s degree in business administration from Stanford University, Burgum mortgaged $250,000 in farmland to buy a stake in Great Plains Software, then a fledgling company. He then bought out the founders in the mid-1980s, expanded the company, and took it public. Microsoft later acquired the company for more than $1 billion.
Burgum said that under his tenure as governor, North Dakota was able to cut 27% from the state’s general fund.
“That’s what I’ve spent my life doing, is taking costs out of businesses … when you’re in the software business, everything you sell has got to be better, faster, and cheaper tomorrow than it was yesterday,” Burgum said. “Technology has changed and improved every job, every company, every industry in the country, except it hasn’t changed government.”
Burgum said that he has worked to ensure government employees all have meaningful jobs that accomplish a purpose.
Paring back the administrative state has become an increasingly salient topic among Republicans in Congress.
In June, the House voted to pass the Regulations from the Executive In Need of Scrutiny, or REINS, Act. Introduced by Rep. Kat Cammack (R-FL), the legislation seeks to hand Congress more power over the rulemaking process, which proponents said has been used excessively to enact sweeping changes without the oversight of lawmakers.
The plan targets rulemaking by requiring that every new “major rule” proposed by agencies be approved by Congress before going into effect. The legislation describes a “major rule” as any federal rule or regulation that would cause an annual economic effect in excess of $100 million, a major increase in consumer prices, or adverse effects on competition, employment, and investment, among other criteria.
In addition to hobbling the administrative state and cutting spending, Burgum told the Washington Examiner that he wants to rein in federal regulations. Invoking his time as governor, Burgum said that North Dakota has passed dozens of “red-tape reduction bills” this year alone.
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He said that North Dakota had the highest gross domestic product per capita of any Republican-led state in the country and said that even despite historic inflation and other economic challenges, the Peace Garden State’s economy is “sprinting. It’s not crawling.”
“Innovation, not regulation, is what’s going to save the planet and what’s going to drive our economy. We’ve got to get our economy going because we’re in a cold war with China, and you don’t win a cold war unless you’ve got your economy sprinting instead of crawling,” Burgum said. “And it’s crawling right now under Biden.”
