Chaffetz and Schweizer: ‘Government Runs on Auto-Pilot by Puppeteers’

Efforts by Democrats to wrest control of the government by hijacking the administrative state have been working for 15 years, according to former Congressman Jason Chaffetz.

On the latest episode of The Drill Down with Peter Schweizer, Chaffetz tells Schweizer and Eric Eggers on that most of the government is essentially on auto-pilot, where spending is untouchable and political priorities are immune to congressional oversight.

Many Americans still don’t realize that the “budget deal” between President Joe Biden and House Republicans under Speaker Kevin McCarthy, for example, only concerns about 10% of the annual spending by Washington. That is because three-fourths of government spending – a full 75% – is automated and programmatic, including all the government’s entitlement programs.

Chaffetz served as chairman of the House Oversight Committee until 2017 and is now a distinguished fellow of the Government Accountability Institute. He writes about the deep state, administrative government, and the puppet masters who make elected politicians dance on their string in his new book, Puppeteers: The People Who Control the People Who Control America, debuted #1 across all of Amazon this past week.

So, who is holding the strings? There are the people you’ve heard of, such as George Soros and his son Alex, who will be taking over his activist foundations. But you probably haven’t heard about people like BlackRock’s Brian Deese, who has been serving as Joe Biden’s top economic adviser until leaving in February. Before he worked in the Biden White House, Deese was the head of sustainable investing at BlackRock, the world’s largest asset manager. As Chaffetz tells Schweizer, [Deese] “is a climate activist, and he’s not bashful about it.”

Chaffetz, who left Congress in 2017, believes he knows more now about how people like Deese, the teachers’ unions, or unelected bureaucrats work than when he was a sitting congressman. He tells Peter he supports term limits not just for congressmen but for the administrative state as well.

He tells the story of a congressman who goes to meet with a cabinet secretary but is surprised the cabinet secretary is not there. Only the secretary’s senior staff. The congressman says, “I don’t to meet with the B-Team.”

The senior staffer says, “You’re right. You’re meeting with the B-Team. We B here before you. We B here after you. And we B the ones who make the real decisions. So, you’re meeting with the right people.”

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