I & I Editorial BoardAs you’ve probably figured out, the headline above is a trick, a rhetorical question. Because we know going in that our government has spent so much since the COVID-era began that there’s no question it can be cut sharply. And, in answer to the question above, $2 trillion is just a start.
But that’s just a base number set by Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy, tagged by President-elect Donald Trump to head the new Department of Government Efficiency, or “DOGE” for short.
“As President Trump said, what we need is common sense,” Musk said. “This won’t be business as usual. This is going to be a revolution.”
And by that, he means a root-and-branch restructuring of the U.S. government and its sprawling, wasteful mega-bureaucracy, with co-leader Ramaswamy set to “dismantle Government Bureaucracy, slash excess regulations, cut wasteful expenditures, and restructure Federal Agencies.”
Ambitious indeed.
We’re ecstatic to hear a presidential administration entering with genuine talk of sharply reducing the actual size of government. With $36 trillion in debt (and rising fast), we as a nation will soon be functionally bankrupt, unable to pay our bills or raise more money in debt markets to continue our spending.
The fiscal situation is grave, affecting everything from defense to Social Security and Medicare and everything in between.
As such, the plan by the DOGE-duo of Musk and Ramaswamy can actually be seen not as a radical attack on government, but rather as an effort to restore some balance after four years of the Democrats’ insane spending and debt accumulation to pay for its COVID schemes.
First, a quick look at the damage done: Total spending for fiscal 2024, which ended in September, was $6.752 trillion, a 52% gain from 2019’s pre-COVID $4.447 trillion. Do the math: It’s a 52% gain, for an average of just over 10% a year.
Meanwhile, thanks to our trillion-dollar annual deficits, federal debt has exploded from “just” $22.7 trillion in 2019 to $36 trillion currently, a 59% rise in just five years.
See also: “One Month In, And The Gov’t Is Already $257 Billion In The Red – DOGE Has A Lot Of Work To Do“
None of this is sustainable. Period. And Democrats’ refusal to cut anything or to recognize the dysfunction and waste in our sprawling bureaucracy and its millions of employees has become dangerous, an internal threat to America’s stability and its future viability.
Trump will have just four years to wrestle with all this in his final term in office. Depending on what happens politically between now and 2028, this may be our nation’s last chance to kill the Leviathan before it kills us.
But how can it be done?
As hinted above, it starts with cutting things. A lot.
“We expect mass reductions,” Ramaswamy recently told Fox’s Maria Bartiromo. “We expect certain agencies to be deleted outright. We expect mass reductions in force in areas of the federal government that are bloated. We expect massive cuts of all federal contractors and others who are overbilling the federal government. So, yes, we expect all of the above.”
This won’t be done willy-nilly. Nor will there be exceptions, including defense, which recently admitted it “can’t account for what its $842B budget is spent on.”
As John F. DiLeo recently described in American Thinker:
They intend an 18-month project, hopefully to conclude by our nation’s 250th anniversary, in which they will apply standard American manufacturing cost-cutting techniques such as LEAN and Six Sigma tools, to find out how much fat is in every federal department, bureau and agency, and cut it out as fast as possible.
Such fat might be identified in surplus personnel, surplus office costs, unnecessary perks, redundant systems, and more. It is assumed they can cut 10% of the federal workforce without it even being noticed; with such diligent chiefs as these at the helm, there’s no telling how much more money they will be able to save the taxpayer.
But, of course, even all that won’t balance the budget. Critics rightly note that entitlements — mainly Social Security and Medicare and other health programs — now make up roughly two-thirds of all spending. Both are popular.
Discretionary spending is only about a quarter of the total, while debt service is now roughly 18% — for a total of just over $2 trillion.
So is $2 trillion even possible?
Yes, but it won’t be easy.
In addition to closing departments and agencies, whose budgets were permanently swollen during the COVID lockdown, Musk and Ramaswamy will have to get creative.
Start with Social Security and Medicare, which need reform, if only to keep them from financial disaster. Also, kill the costly, unnecessary, and growth-killing “Net-Zero” program, which, according to one estimate, will total more than $4.5 trillion a year in total costs, public and private.
James Pinkerton, who served in the Reagan administration and for years has critiqued America’s budget mistakes, notes that the U.S. has hundreds of trillions of dollars worth of rare earths, oil, gas, and other useful things underground.
Pinkerton asks: Why not take entitlement spending entirely out of the federal budget, and pay for it with royalties from energy on federal properties, just as Texas now pays for its first-rate University of Texas system with state oil royalties?
That’s just one idea. There are plenty of others out there, and no doubt Musk and Ramaswamy are sifting through them all. The point is, creativity is badly needed.
As the 2024 election shows, Americans are tired of the status quo. The vast expansion of the wasteful spending of the bureaucratic and administrative state, the power of government to censor constitutionally free speech, along with Dems’ lawfare against their ideological enemies, have soured people on the progressive vision of an ever-expanding federal government.
Our republic was built for strong, independent citizens with rule of law, free markets, and limited government. The Democrats in recent years have flipped all that on its head, adding divisive “woke” politics to the mix. By taking a whack at our out-of-control administrative state and bureaucracy, Musk and Ramaswamy will be taking a badly needed first step toward restoring that original vision.
— Written by the I&I Editorial Board
Day one: Security clearance must be removed from all Biden’s appointees plus all prior people with top clearance and prospctive fires should have clearance frozen or suspended to prevent leaks and policy sabotage. It’s not a swamp rather it’s a sewer that sucked Trump in before. Don’t let i happen again!!!
The work is all done for them. They need to get the latest Pig Book from cagw.org and follow the suggestions.
Social Security is not an entitlement! People who get SS earned it by paying for it. Welfare is an entitlement. Food Stamps are an entitlement. Corporate welfare is an entitlement. There are plenty of areas in government that can be cut and even completely eliminated, but if SS benefits get cut the excrement will hit the fan! There is plenty of useless government that can be cut without touching SS benefits. Eliminate the Dept. of Ed, EPA, DEA, TSA and Homeland Security. Reign in or eliminate the multiple police forces and most especially the FBI, BAT, CIA, NSA and Incompetent SS. The same for the criminal DOJ! Our military is also way too fat. Even a 50% cut in the federal government is not enough. 75% is probably completely useless. Send all those useless bureaucrats to the private sector and make them work for a living.
The $2 trillion in cuts might get us to a balanced budget. Maybe. To truly succeed Messrs. Musk and Ramaswamy must take a meat axe to the Federal government, not a scalpel. A good place to start would include:
1. Total hiring freeze. No exceptions.
2. Immediate 5% reduction in real spending with no reductions in services rendered.. Not “baseline budgeting” where cuts are to the rate of growth. Any Directors, Supervisors, etc. who claim they can’t deliver will be fired and replaced with someone who can.
3. Annual budgets to begin at $0.00 and every dollar justified.
4. Whole departments or agencies are reduced eliminate duplication of functions and/or uselessness of functions.
5. Relocate agencies out of DC as much as possible. Emptied buildings can be converted into housing for department officials and staff who need to come to DC for occasional meetings.
We can do this. We MUST do this. And remember that $2 trillion is basically just the annual deficit.
One area where a huge amount of money is likely wasted or “stolen” is through fraud in the defence budget.
Are excessive amounts being charged when the same equipment can be produced at a much lower cost? How much is produced that is good value for money? Why so many top ranking officers receiving more than generous salaries when a far larger US military had far fewer top officers at the end of WW2?
Why not keep the number of ordinary soldiers the same but cull the top ranks and reduce the defence buget by half with a promise of more if they show they are using the funds efficiently?
Cut the budget of every Federal department, agency and commission by 20-25% and tell those in charge to figure it out.
Then, eliminate several of the counterproductive and nonsense departments.
Put sunshine requirements on any new commission and agency.
Even the military could be sharper, more lethal and ready by using their billions more effectively, especially in bidding and procurement.
Then, next year cut another 10% until the size and effectiveness of our colossal Fed Gov., is where it should be to serve us all effectively.
This an exceedingly pro government stance!
We need most of these departments, but we do not need fat, bloated, supercilious and inefficiently managed departments with meandering leadership.
Don’t show me the sausage, show me the slices instead.
While “entitlements” are popular, they have a lot of non-core spending. For example, Social Security should be for old retired workers’ pension payments, but significant amounts are spent outside of that core mission. I wish we had a clearer analysis that focused on core spending vs. extra add-ons for all these entitlement programs rather than just one lump sum figure.
Cut “bonuses” for all management levels in the federal gov. Why should they get a “bonus” for doing what we already pay them for?
Given that probably 90% or more of everything DC does doesn’t find any source in the Constitution, I’d say $2T would be a good start.
How about a fiscal application of the broken windows policing theory – the small dollars do matter, and we should paying attention to wasted money, even when it’s “only a few billion dollars.” We have built a culture of disregard for effectiveness around all of government spending, which is why the bloat continues to grow. Start with a bottoms up approach and require demonstration of effectiveness for every program. If an agency can’t demonstrate that its spending is producing a result that directly impacts the agencies core mission, the money is being wasted, and that program, division, or agency can be eliminated without being missed.