Protecting institutional autonomy in the future requires a realignment of the power and incentive structures that produce policy outcomes. What we have, today, is largely the product of roughly 80 years of power concentration in the executive branch, which is governed by the White House and its components. In recent decades, this power has been focused primarily in the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) by both statute and executive order and the National Security Council (NSC) by presidential memorandum. In this administration, greater power also exists within the Domestic Policy Council (DPC), given the reported heavy involvement of White House Deputy Chief of Staff for Policy Stephen Miller and the large degree of flexibility afforded to the individual by the president. Reigning in the power of White House components that exercise significant control over the government must be a priority for any future U.S. government.

The degree to which these institutions impact the autonomy of knowledge producers is largely determined by the preferences of the staff and its leadership. For NSC and DPC, the source of their power is the extent to which they are able to initiate policy unquestioned by the president, organize the executive branch around them, and ultimately push paper in front of the president for a decision. For OMB, the opportunity to set administration policy is far greater. Not only does OMB control budget submissions to Congress and dole money out to the agencies, it also determines which regulations may move forward, controls what information may be collected from the public, coordinates the points made by agencies which are presented to Congress, writes the rules governing procurement, and more.

In the current administration, this power manifests in OMB’s ability to define what money agencies may spend and the rules which govern who may receive money from the government. In previous administrations, OMB’s power over institutions of higher education also involved defining how agencies should regulate universities through updates to the Code of Federal Regulations (especially 2 CFR 200) and information collections related to things like research security. In fact, just a day after this paper’s initial submission, OMB Director Russell Vought released a sweeping update, transforming the guidance into a regulation, in one of the most egregious executive threats to institutional autonomy in this country’s history.

To offer an example from the previous administration, when designing research security requirements for universities, it was understood that it would be impossible for agencies to create a single set of uniform requirements across all government agencies without placing significant additional burden on academic institutions. The requirement was implemented through an information collection, requiring that an academic institution attest that they have a research security program with a defined set of characteristics. While in practice, OMB’s involvement was to limit divergence between agencies, agencies still had latitude to determine their own requirements. These rules can have dramatic impact on the operations of universities and knowledge centers as they contort themselves to comply in order to receive federal funds.

When the current administration arrived, the deference afforded to agencies completely evaporated. OMB started to use their control of both budgets and process coordination to bully agencies (and even individual offices within them) into submission. In my previous office, this included withdrawing money from the agency’s account with no notice overnight. For universities and academic institutions, the impact is being felt with respect to OMB’s control over agency apportionments, defining which “notices of funding opportunities” may be posted by agencies, and the dramatic assertion of regulatory authority over all federal financial assistance, twisting both empirical reality and established law in the process.

Much of the power concentration in OMB is relatively new, emerging over the course of the last 40 years. The justification for placing that much power in a single nerve center in the federal government was to reign in sprawling requirements placed on the public across the U.S. government and to try to get the expanding government to speak with one voice. In practice, that power has been easily exploited, allowing OMB to exercise substantial power over government activities, including with respect to defining which projects get to be funded and which do not.

It is understandable why the U.S. government, with our national debt and ballooning deficit, should have a body that attempts to get a handle on agency spending and reign it in. But given OMB’s institutional weaponization, particularly with the targeting of research institutions like the National Center for Atmospheric Research (over which it has no actual authority), it’s worth considering whether OMB should continue to exist in its current form. To offer an even more extreme example, a young political OMB examiner with zero relevant experience probably shouldn’t be able to veto congressional intent, the collective urging of the interagency, feedback from entire industries, and U.S. treaty obligations with respect to whether space should be a safe operating environment. In theory, such decisions should be the responsibility of Senate-confirmed principal officers assigned to lead their respective organizations. Russell Vought should not have a say over whether the National Academies of Science, Engineering, and Medicine should continue to exist as an institution.

The concentration of power in OMB has always been suboptimal. Agencies have long been unable to request the resources they need, treating things like basic safety standards in laboratories as subordinate to flashy announcements while operating under a false pretense of fiscal responsibility. For reasons like this, the president’s budget request has long been viewed as a “dead on arrival" political document, leaving one to wonder what meaningful role OMB’s involvement actually serves. It would be far better for agencies to communicate their needs directly to Congress, have appropriators reckon with the actual cost to run the U.S. government, and in doing so increase public accountability and oversight over executive branch functions.

Most frightening: I have already heard former colleagues contemplate similar exercises of power in future administrations, including one verbatim “a lot of companies and Dems might like the idea of a trillion-dollar slush fund.” I would urge them to reconsider and urge for the dismantling of the tools that might allow them to do so. “Sulla could do it, shall I not?” must not be the undoing of another great republic.

Any attempt to regain some semblance of institutional autonomy over knowledge production in the United States will require dismantling the coercive power structures undermining fundamental freedoms. This will inherently require dismantling some of the more centralized executive functions, transferring them back to the legislature (who are more direct representatives of the people), and granting agencies the autonomy they need to effectively carry out their respective missions. Decentralizing power in the federal government may inherently carry the burden of greater governmental reorganization and internal realignment, but it is a worthy price to pay for the preservation of our democracy.