That's all true, and well said. But even without significant funding, a President and his appointees can still have enormous influence on the regulatory side of things. There is also the question of enforcement -- the Obama Administration has used the Justice Department as an affirmative tool to advance an agenda many of us oppose, and that has also happened with things like the NLRB, EPA, etc....
Even if Trump is not able to get funding for things like the wall, isn't it still far better to have the administrative agencies using the discretion they do have to push in the other direction? Because the alternative is going to be a Hillary Administration that is going to actively seek to accelerate all the things we find wrong on the regulatory side of things.
Actually, no. I don't really think it is to our benefit to continue to entrench agencies for which there is no Constitutional Authorization, to continue to fund them nor to grant them legitimacy by saying they are operating in spirit the way we want them to, even if they aren't getting anything done? What is the purpose of such Kabuke other than bamboozling the taxpayer and continuing to usurp the power over lands which should be the property of individuals and under the jurisdiction of the States?
When over half of the land west of the Mississippi is owned by the Federal Government to the detriment of the States, removing that land from productive use, the tax rolls, and preempting the industry which could exist thereby with labyrinthine regulations spread over a plethora of agencies (if even so much as a road is allowed), something is wrong. There is no Constitutional Authority for this. With the exception of military reservations and other specific instances, such as the Federal District, there is no need for land ownership on the Part of the Federal Government, and ABSOLUTELY NO authorization for any international agency to exert any pseudo-governmental authority over so much as one square inch of American Soil.
The continuing existence of the agencies which perpetrate this upon the American People, replete with funding and staffing and regulations imposed, simply should not happen.
It isn't a question of softening regulatory stances, it is a question of usurped power, period.
When each successive Administration appears to be competing with the previous one in locking away productive land as a "National Monument", not by the dozens of acres, but by the millions of acres of land, claimed to be henceforth off limits from productive development (IOW, an expense instead of an asset, and a handful more guaranteed Federal Jobs), something is grievously wrong.
When entire industries can be shut down over an owl that only differs from owls which live further south by home address, something is wrong. The only right direction for these sorts of programs is to the ash heap.
Conservation can be practiced by private individuals, especially those who farm/ranch/own the land. They have a vested interest in the continued viability of that land. My ancestors and relatives have owned and farmed the same land for 375 years, but the wise management of those resources, "good stewardship" if you will, is interfered with by governmental decree, with harsh penalties for not obeying the edicts of some agency whose representatives haven't set foot on land, land that the people who are currently managing have lived on and worked for over seventy five years. Even worse, the knowledge acquired by those who have lived and worked on that land is ignored because they don't have a 'degree', which any more is four years of questionable theory with the rubber stamp of the politically influenced mindsets of 'scientific' whim.
It was a government agency which killed the river I grew up on, destroyed the fisheries industry there, and to this day to treats a brackish water tidal estuary like a man made freshwater lake. The regulations imposed preclude the restoration of what was a thriving ecosystem that provided not only food, but a living for many locals, but go even farther to prevent the installation of structures which have traditionally prevented erosion of land, and sedimentation damage to the estuary itself and its fauna.
There is no right direction for such, with the exception of the elimination of such agencies and an end to their usurped authority.
When the fellow you refer to was in Iowa, he pledged to not only support a harmful mandate, but to increase it, and to use one of those agencies to the fullest extent of the law to enforce that mandate. I saw then he was not the person for the job. I have not changed my mind on that.
At the bottom of the current 'movement' masquerading as operating out of concern for the environment are two things: Money, and the elimination of private property and the rights which pertain thereto.
That selfsame agency (EPA) has asserted dominion over the rain that falls on land, the land it falls on, the water that runs off, the water that soaks in, and any low spots it collects in. It has asserted dominion over the plants which grow on that land, the animals which walk on or burrow in it, the birds which fly above it, and the air they fly in and we all breathe.
It has to go, and a host of other agencies along with it. For some things, their very existence is anathema. There is no 'right direction' for their continued existence.
