BERLIN, NH — The man who served in the Oval Office with former President Donald Trump doesn’t think much of Trump’s announced intention to expand presidential power if returned to the White House.
Former Vice President Mike Pence, who is running against Trump for the GOP nomination for president in 2024, said he takes the opposite approach.
“I don’t want to consolidate power in Washington, DC,” Pence said Friday at a town hall in Berlin, NH. “I want to delegate power out of Washington, DC.”
A former Indiana governor, Pence said he would reduce the size of the federal government, including closing the Department of Education and sending resources and powers to states “where he can be accountable.”
“I believe in state-based federalism and reform,” he said near the end of a three-day campaign in New Hampshire.
Pence was responding to a recent New York Times report that Trump and his allies were planning a “radical expansion of presidential power over the machinery of government.”
“My former running mate wrote a plan, well-meaning I’m sure, about consolidating power in the executive branch,” Pence said.
He raised the report on his own, in response to a constituent who complained that there is too much corruption in Washington.
On the rare occasions that Pence criticizes Trump, he focuses primarily on what Trump might do if he becomes president again while praising what they have achieved under the Trump-Pence administration — a record he says he will be proud of “for the rest of my life.”
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Pence criticizes Trump’s announced plan to expand presidential power