The federal government’s track record with grand initiatives offers a tale of two extremes—Medicaid’s swift and efficient rollout in the 1960s versus the bureaucratic gridlock of today’s rural broadband program. Medicaid transformed from legislation to reality in under five years. By contrast, the Build Back Better broadband push—three years old as of March 2025—is still stuck in a labyrinth of 14 cumbersome steps. The Biden-era leviathan is bloated and sluggish. But with Trump 2.0 on the horizon and a bold reform tool—DOGE, the Department of Government Efficiency—we have a blueprint to cut through red tape, revitalize Medicaid, and finally deliver rural broadband.
Back in 1965, under President Lyndon Johnson, Medicaid launched with remarkable speed. By January 1, 1966, states were enrolling, and by 1970, all but Arizona had live programs. This was pre-digital—no computers, just paper, fax machines, and grit. Most states implemented Medicaid in two to three years. In stark contrast, Build Back Better’s broadband initiative, launched in 2021, has produced little more than frustration. Just three of 56 jurisdictions have made it through the entire 14-step approval process. Planning grants, five-year strategies, and endless disputes over FCC maps have paralyzed progress. Medicaid trusted states to deliver. Broadband smothers them with oversight.
The results speak volumes: as of March 2025, despite more than three years of federal engagement, virtually no broadband infrastructure has been built through this program. The application process is so convoluted and opaque that many potential applicants—both states and private sector providers—have simply walked away. Faced with a mountain of paperwork, multiple map challenges, and years-long timelines, they’ve decided it’s not worth the time, cost, or uncertainty. The process has defeated the very people it was meant to help.
Even progressive commentators like Jon Stewart and Ezra Klein are exasperated. On a recent podcast, Klein read through the broadband process step-by-step, and the scene quickly descended into a comedic display of disbelief. Klein began with Step 1—the issuance of a funding opportunity notice—and proceeded through an exhausting maze: letters of intent, $5 million planning grant requests, NTIA reviews and approvals, five-year action plans, FCC maps, state-level challenges to those maps, multiple rounds of proposals, subgranting, and final approvals. Stewart, increasingly aghast, interrupted: “But then what was the five-year plan and what the [expletive] did they apply for?” By Step 12, he exploded— “Oh, my [expletive] God. At step 12. After all this has been done!?”—before falling into stunned silence. Their exchange underscored a rare bipartisan truth: the current process is so tangled, so dysfunctional, even the most ideologically sympathetic observers can’t defend it.
How did we get here? We’ve spent decades building up the Leviathan state complex, unaccountable web of federal agencies, regulations, and review panels that now chokes everything it touches. What once may have been intended as oversight has metastasized into paralysis. Each new mandate or program layer adds more friction, fewer results. The bureaucratic state no longer serves the citizen—it serves itself. Programs stall not for lack of funding or will, but because the system is structurally designed to delay, defer, and deflect.
The problem isn’t limited to broadband. The CHIPS Act, intended to rebuild America’s semiconductor manufacturing capacity, is already buckling under the weight of its own liberal wish list. Instead of fast-tracking critical chip production, it’s bogged down by mandates on childcare provisions, climate compliance reporting, diversity benchmarks, and labor guarantees. These add-ons, though politically fashionable, have all but guaranteed the Act’s failure to deliver on its core mission. While foreign competitors move swiftly and decisively, America’s own industrial policy is stalled by its obsession with ideological box-checking.
Enter Trump 2.0—armed with lessons from his first term and ready to wield DOGE. In round one, Trump streamlined Medicaid by waiving work requirements, accelerating reimbursements, and piloting block grants—all while maintaining coverage for over 70 million Americans. With DOGE in hand, a second Trump term could go further: AI-driven eligibility systems that cut approval times from weeks to days, blockchain-backed fraud detection that saves billions, and a new ethos of state-level flexibility. DOGE would be a scalpel to cut federal bloat and bring Medicaid into the 21st century.
Broadband, too, is ripe for disruption. Trump 2.0 could scrap the 14-step farce that Stewart and Klein derided and implement a simple, three-step process: states request funding, the feds approve it, and providers build. That’s it. Trump’s first term prioritized market-driven innovation, like leveraging SpaceX’s Starlink. A second term could double down—bypassing the NTIA’s bureaucratic morass and fast-tracking fiber and satellite deployment. Results, not process.
The Medicaid model worked because it moved quickly and gave states breathing room. The broadband model is failing because it chokes progress with bureaucracy. Trump 2.0 and DOGE offer a way forward: smarter government, less waste, and faster outcomes. LBJ showed government can work. Trump showed it can move. Now, with the right tools, it can do both—fast.
Imagine rural kids on Zoom, seniors accessing telehealth with ease, and Medicaid responding in days instead of months. That’s the vision. That’s the promise of Trump 2.0 and DOGE: not just to streamline, but to liberate the American people from the grip of the modern administrative state.