(ThyBlackMan.com) President Trump and Elon Musk’s DOGE campaign is making haste to cut the waste in our federal government. Let’s hope they never stop. It’s about time! For the first time in 40 years, a Republican president with top-notch experts and intellectuals is making aggressive moves to stem to tide of financial profligacy in Washington to stop the spending, trim the fat, and cut the crap.
However, bigger problems are lingering in the United States due to the federal debt, deficit, and destructive financial overhauls. Misuse of funds, overspending, and unconstitutional appropriations have been the norm in Washington DC for too long. But other profligate norms need to be removed, too.
The Trump Administration needs to set its sights on higher heights of federal reduction.
Let’s just say that Trump does eliminate all of the waste, and DOGE restores some degree of government efficiency. The idea of making big government more efficient is kind of self-defeating, like shoveling sand at the tide. Big government can never be efficient. A large state inevitably encumbers too much debt and misuse of funds. We need to discuss getting rid of entire departments and ensuring they never return. So far, I have heard about shutting down departments and merging them with others. Are these efforts really cost-saving measures? Milton Friedman outlined extensive department reductions that should take place in Washington DC … and that was 2002! Why wait?!
The Framers of the Constitution predicted that government would inevitably grow. Such was the nature of prior republics. They should have furnished amendments or clauses to reduce the size and scope of the state from year to year, as well. Fast forward to today, we should celebrate Trump’s use of legislation to enact automatic regulation rollbacks. What about automatic spending cuts, too? It should be easier to repeal laws than to pass them too. In Federalist #73, Alexander Hamilton recognized that it was more important to stop bad legislation than to pass good legislation.
In Singapore, civil servants get a pay raise when the economy is strong. Hence, they have no incentive to create more rules frustrating commerce to grow bureaucratic largesse in government agencies. Why not a reform like this for the United States?
When stopping excessive spending, we also must talk about fixing Congress. We need a broader discussion about incentive structures within Congress. Thomas Sowell and Ben Shapiro have sounded it off on this fundamental problem. As long as there is a greater incentive for legislators to say “Yes!” to every interest group and lobbyist in Washington, and as long as they continue to get votes, even when they do next to nothing on the spending and the inflation issues, we will continue to see the same reckless spending.
Those challenges require a bigger change. A big part of the problem is staring at each of us in the mirror. Two-thirds of the politicians in Washington DC don’t want to cut the spending, because two-thirds of the electorate don’t want to really cut spending.
Too many Americans are getting a paycheck from the government. I will never forget the Time Magazine editorial of US Senator John Sununu (R-New Hampshire), lamenting that the United States has turned into one nation on the dole. Who isn’t getting a check from Uncle Sam these days? And who will pay for this? Americans are retiring at a record pace, and this nation is possibly facing the same demographic demise wreaking havoc in South Korea and Japan.
All the talk about cutting waste, fraud, excessive spending, graft, graft, and gruff will be spitting in the wind or shooting at the breeze if we don’t get a handle on the expensive and extensive entitlement, er … retirement payments.
Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid are devouring the vast majority of our federal budget. Yet even now, President Trump has pledged that he won’t do anything to them. If you’re taking away the biggest cost, the biggest source of spending in our federal budget, then you’re not tackling the debt problem.
Most of all, what is really complicating this issue is the new populist sentiment that is arisen within the Republican Party, doubling down on government provisions for working and lower-middle-class voters. This is nothing more than Marxism of another color. We don’t want Marxism in a cultural or a class … or a financial sense at all!
The American public re-elected Trump after 4 years of suffering under Joe Biden. They were wrestled to the ground with the realities of inflationary regressive leftism. Will the nation have to endure a spate of Argentinian inflation or Zimbabwean currency destruction for the voters to get serious about demanding entitlement reform and not just the removal of wasteful spending and fraud?
So, what is to be done? What are the most politically feasible forms that we can demand from Washington? We must discuss means-testing for Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid. If you are already wealthy by other means, why are you getting three times what you paid into the system in the first place?
We need to end the abuse of the Social Security disability and illness programs. All of that needs to go. Why is the federal government involved in the retirement business, to begin with? FDR’s New Deal has been an unconstitutional raw deal from Day One. It’s time to phase out the Retirement Regime established by Washington nearly a century ago.
How about turning all the programs into block grants and reverting their administration to the states and the people? Let’s make the Tenth Amendment Great Again.
Nations like Chile and Sweden have resolved their entitlement problems. Wisconsin enacted broad reforms within collective bargaining agreements. Congress—and the voters—should explore those reforms and get them passed in Washington, DC.
But Change starts with an attitude adjustment. Tired of inflation? Elimination, not efficiency, should be the watchword. Congress must stop spending, but the voters must stop voting for profligate politicians.
Written by Arthur Schaper
Official website; https://Twitter.com/ArthurCSchaper
