Only a short while ago, it was unimaginable that our nation would face a baby formula shortage facilitated by a bureaucratic delay, or witness the national massive embarrassment of flawed military and diplomatic action, such as the withdrawal from Afghanistan. Yet, our leaders and our federal agencies consistently fail the American people, despite the massive growth of these institutions.
When David Bernhardt became Secretary of the Interior in the Trump Administration, he witnessed the full dysfunction of our federal agencies and learned that America’s sprawling civil service was often unresponsive to the will of the nation’s chief executive. In fact, agency staff aligned with the ideology of one political party often worked to actively “resist” the other. Meanwhile, our elected officials in Congress happily punted significant questions of public policy to those unaccountable agencies.
In You Report to Me, Bernhardt provides a firsthand chronicle of how the bureaucratic swamp really works and reveals how unaccountable power has quietly concentrated in the administrative state over the last two decades. Drawing on his experiences working under two administrations, Bernhardt details how President Trump’s enabling leadership revealed a path for curtailing the administrative state in the future. You Report to Me calls on America’s leaders to turn off autopilot and retake control of this ever-multiplying, unaccountable federal bureaucracy before it completely destroys the Founders’ vision of a government based on the consent of the governed.
About the Author
DAVID BERNHARDT is the only person to ever be confirmed by the U.S. Senate to serve as secretary, deputy secretary, and solicitor of the Department of the Interior in its 173+-year history. The Department of the Interior is a cabinet department with an asset portfolio that exceeds $300 billion, a budget that exceeds $16 billion, and nearly 70,000 employees. Bernhardt served as the 53rd Secretary of the Interior under President Donald J. Trump. He also served for nearly eight years as a political appointee within the George W. Bush administration at Interior and as the Commissioner to the International Boundary, U.S. and Canada.
David grew up in the rural western Colorado community of Rifle and he is an avid hunter and angler. He is married to Gena Bernhardt, and they have a son, William, and a daughter, Katherine. He resides in Arlington Virginia, with his wife, daughter, a yellow Labrador retriever, and a cat.
