WHO IS AGAINST CUTTING WASTE?
Seems to me that this should not be a partisan issue. I have long suspected that there was rampant waste in government. Turns out I was right (I wasn’t alone). We can’t afford it. The interest on National Debt is eating us alive.
Sure! In the process of finding and ending waste some eggs will get broken. We should expect that. We should be also be patient. It has taken 200 years to get to this point, who thinks that much waste and abuse can be dismantled in just a few months. However, as I understand it, the sooner the disgusting excrement is flushed the sooner the stink leaves. That only makes sense. Yet some, it appears, love the smell of entitled bureaucracy.
So, some agencies, students, homeowners, farmers, even some foreign governments may have a short delay in essential funding…but it is only a delay. And if some departments are in disarray for a while, with over a million government workers it shouldn’t take long to restore order. Some are already working on that.
We should all be grateful. President Obama said it should be done (back in the day) as did many others. Rand Paul has reported long lists of wasteful programs every year (but none had been stopped as a result).
I think in the process they will find some other things which have slipped through the cracks. I think they will find hundreds (maybe thousands) of long-dead still receiving Social Security distributions. I think they will find scores of “government workers” still being paid even though they retired or moved on to other jobs. I think they will find bank accounts which the “responsible” agency did not know existed. They may even find funds thought unaccounted for, hidden somewhere with no code for how it was to be spent (or was it?).
People who were responsible for finding and ending waste before… failed to do it. So, why is anyone upset that someone else is finding and ending it? Like I said, this is not a partisan issue at its core.
There are some aspects which may be partisan, but we should be VERY CLEAR about what is being tossed and not oppose the ENTIRE efficiency program in order to save a few items. Congress is still in charge of the budget. Congress is still in charge of writing law. Therefore Congress should be in charge of pumping the brakes if there is undue excess or exuberance.
Moving gold bars into a new bank account to hide money? Whoever made that decision should be prosecuted. Housing illegal immigrants with FEMA resources? Whoever made that decision should be prosecuted. People in North Carolina were left to fend for themselves in winter, for goodness sake!
Like I said, no matter our political positions … we all should be thankful. Potentially trillions wasted. Trillions misused. Trillions in excesses. Come on! It is time to rejoice (and be aghast at the misuses!). I’m not upset in the least WHO is doing it. I’m glad it is being done.
The National Debt has been skyrocketing for several years (when it didn’t need to). Debt is one of the things which pushes inflationary pressures (we all hated that). Debt is what pushes non-government unemployment (scores of chain stores and restaurants have closed in the past year). We have been zooming into deeper national debt for no good reason at all. Time to reduce the speed of that.
I expect short-term discomfort. Short-term inflation is possible. A rise in unemployment is almost guaranteed (with a 100,000+ government workers being dismissed over the next year). Plus, worthwhile programs may have funding hiccups. Rightfully those who deserve and are helped by Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security may be imagining the worst. I doubt that will happen. No one in charge of this reduction is dumb enough to mess with those who DESERVE those programs. Yet all who deserve the help probably wouldn’t mind if some misuse of funds was stopped (some criminal caught with his hand in the cookie jar, for example).
We should be patient. Allow the process to work. We all benefit from a leaner government. The number of Federal employees grew by ~50,000 during the first 3 years of Biden’s term (twice the rate it grew under Trump’s first term while he was dealing with COVID issues) at a cost of more than $2.5-3.5 billion per year. So, eliminating 65,000 jobs merely takes us back 4 years.
The mainstream press gave President Biden 3 ½ years before they decided he was toast even though it was clear to me from day 1 that he wasn’t up to the job (not being political here, just eyes-open honest), they should be willing to give Trump 1 year of grace, right?
Like so many other things, in order to empty the pool you first have to turn off the fire hose pumping water into it. I imagine it is the same with student loans (if it is bad for students to have loans, stop giving loans to students??). Do SOMETHING different this time. Why does the rest of the world need US money to perform plays and fund TV programs? I can see feeding the starving in a country hit by a flood or war, but plays? Coloring books? DEI funding? (Aren’t they already DEI, since they aren’t privileged white Americans? How can a country that is 99% single race and culture be made “diverse?” That makes it 99% about sexual preference. No shock there, but none of OUR business.)
The people whose lives WILL be changed (some for the better) are those who are fired or take the buyout. 100,000 will be gone soon (~7%). That’s going to hurt some of them. Every time a company downsizes it happens … people get the boot. Another 5-10% will be gone by the end of the year.
Finally, it is clear to me (and others who have given it thought) that not everything being done to reduce spending will be permanent. Many expenditures, on their face, are crazy abuses of Federal bureaucracy. Others may be found to have sound underpinnings and valid reasons, but may just have over-expenditures. Again, wait and see! I, for one, am glad something will be done to get rid of a retirement accounting system started in the 1950’s which takes 700 people several months to process IN A CAVE. Yikes!! It will clearly take more man-hours to rectify that in the short-run. In the long-run it will save $multi-millions every year forward.
Government money is our money. I have always picked up pennies (soon only nickels and up) and still write shopping lists on paper scraps. A famous person once said, “A penny saved is a penny earned.” I agree wholeheartedly and without worrying whether the famous person was liberal or conservative (nor whether he could speak another language). We NEED this. We needed it long ago, but I’ll not fight it because it is NOW. I find it humorous that mainstream broadcast “journalists” who earn millions a year oppose this. They can afford to oppose it and inflation is almost meaningless to them.
I doubt most of us can afford to oppose it and a future of continued inflation can break our piggy banks.
Copyright 2025 Donald Whelpley
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FACT: President Bill Clinton fired more government employees than Trump has plans to fire. He fired 377,000 employees at a time when the number of government employees was far fewer than we had at the end of Biden’s term. The press said nothing.
Here we are less than 2 months out and the media is printing negative stories about these cuts 10-1. They have no patience. I predict that even when there are good results the mainstream media will only print negative stories.
The truth is that the underground government of last year was more a liability than what we now have. This will get better in a few months, but that hidden government would have gotten worse. Better to have the truth out in the light and do poorly than to have the truth hidden and do well (however, I think it will be a better result now).