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This was ominous from the first tweet. While everyone was breathlessly awaiting the CBO numbers on the Republican tax-cut plan, the one that was so well-camouflaged beneath gauze and surgical gloves, the president* announced that he would be signing an executive order through which he planned to "reorganize" the executive branch of government. On Monday, not long after the CBO numbers lit the entire healthcare debate aflame again, he made good on his threat. He signed the "Comprehensive Plan For Reorganizing The Executive Branch." I didn't like the sound of this at the time, and it sounds even worse now that it's here.

Quite simply, this empowers the president* and his advisers simply to eviscerate the federal agencies that might inconvenience them by actually acting like they're part of the government or something. Not long ago, the president*'s plans for drastic budgetary cuts in discretionary spending leaked. People howled. (The Coast Guard? Really?). This latest move impresses me most as a backup plan in case those cuts don't fly in Congress. And considering that the White House really is being run by Steve Bannon, last heir to House Harkonnen and destroyer of the administrative state, it seems likely that this is the fundamental purpose behind the order.

In theory, the job has been handed to Mick Mulvaney, the new head of the Office and Management and Budget, most recently seen throwing shade at the CBO, and one of the original Tea Party fanatics elected in response to the Obama Presidency. (Mulvaney was one of the chief architects of the 2013 government shutdown.) But the fine print of the measure shows that it is likely more a creature of Bannon's professed love for vandalism for its own sake. From the order itself:

The proposed plan shall include, as appropriate, recommendations to eliminate unnecessary agencies, components of agencies, and agency programs, and to merge functions. The proposed plan shall include recommendations for any legislation or administrative measures necessary to achieve the proposed reorganization.

This "reorganization" of the executive departments sounds very much like how a polar bear "reorganizes" your innards prior to making a meal of you. That the job has been handed officially to a guy who doesn't believe in what many of those agencies do—and, unofficially, to a guy who wants to blow them up simply to see how pretty the shrapnel is—gives something of a lie to the public face of the initiative as a good-government effort to root out the unholy trinity of waste, fraud, and abuse.

This isn't a cost-cutting measure. It's a function-cutting measure. It's not about what the agencies are. It's about what they do. This is like handing a group of drunk teenagers a flamethrower and pointing them toward a lumber yard.

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Charles P. Pierce Charles P Pierce is the author of four books, most recently Idiot America, and has been a working journalist since 1976.

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