I & I Editorial BoardYesterday, we came across a Wall Street Journal article titled: “Tariffs Are Way Up. Interest on Debt Tops $1 Trillion. And DOGE Didn’t Do Much.”
The Journal based its report on a Congressional Budget Office report released earlier in the week.
But I&I readers knew all this months ago.
Because while Democrats and the mainstream press were freaking out about how the Department of Government Efficiency was slashing government, we were reporting the facts.
Back in February, we debunked the claim that Elon Musk was taking a chainsaw to the federal government (see “Musk Is ‘Shredding’ Government? Not Even Close”), lies spread by the mainstream media that fueled terrorist attacks on Tesla owners and dealers. We noted that the job cuts were minuscule compared to the mammoth size of the federal workforce, and that the spending cuts announced by that point were almost imperceptible next to a nearly $2 trillion annual deficit.
In March, we explained that the media conveniently left out one key fact from all their DOGE freakout stories – namely, that the national debt was exploding (“One Fact Missing From Every DOGE Story.”)
“Democrats and the press don’t want the public to know just how dire the nation’s fiscal situation is,” we said, because if people “knew just how bad things were, support for deep spending cuts would only increase.”
In June, while the mainstream press was filling pages and airwaves with horror stories about spending cuts in the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, we told readers the truth (“Let’s Be Honest, The ‘One Big, Beautiful Bill’ Doesn’t Cut Spending At All”) and in July we debunked claims of “historic” cuts to Medicaid (“One Chart To Kill The Medicaid Lies For Good.”)
In August, we dug into the Treasury Department’s monthly spending and revenue report and showed that spending in July was $55.5 billion higher than the year before.
What’s more, there were jumps for outlays for agencies such as Veterans Affairs (up $3 billion year-over-year), Medicaid (up $15 billion), the EPA (up $195 million), the National Science Foundation (up $14 million) – all of which were supposedly being slashed and burned.
In fact, just five of the 15 Cabinet-level agencies spent less this July than they did last year.
These data were easily available to reporters all along, but most decided instead to parrot Democratic talking points. They were actively misleading their readers.
Now these same news outlets are acting surprised that spending hasn’t been cut while the national debt continues to grow at unsustainable rates.
For the rest of us, it’s one more reason to distrust anything the mainstream press reports these days.
–Written by the I&I Editorial Board
Is it because DOGE was simply a campaign promise, or because the swamp; the usual suspects, refused to permit the passage of cuts to massive waste, grift, and corruption that DOGE uncovered?
I am inclined to believe the latter.
And anything out of Government.
The article failed to mention that Trump is an equal part of this problem. Not just the liberal media. He is spending us into oblivion. The only reason he wants cuts is to spend the money elsewhere. How have any of these cuts benefited the American people. They haven’t. Not one of them. It hasn’t put one penny more into my pocket. I still can’t afford healthcare. The real issue here isn’t that we shouldn’t trust the media the problem is that our entire government should not be trusted, and that includes Trump at this point. One sided articles like this don’t give a real perspective to the actual problem.
What could DOGE do about cuts without Congress?
I don’t know which misery is worst.
DOGE didn’t cut as much as I had thought or the national debt has bounded to nearly $38 Trillion. (At the end of Biden’s Administration it was around $36 trillion)
Doge wasn’t cutting as much as they were evidence gathering.
I personally know six people who lost their jobs because of DOGE cuts and their ripple effects. The hardship these families are facing is heartbreaking. So saying the cuts “didn’t do much” feels callous and detached from reality.
“Hardships” come to everyone when government is bloated. Cuts, unfortunately, are seldom surgical. Some employees need to be culled and some are actually contributors but caught up in the reductions. It’s part of work-life, felt more frequently in the private sector – or used to be. The key issue for DOGE was not to replace Congress but to uncloak the trillions of hidden, wasted dollars that were being stolen from the American taxpayers or misused. They did/do a great job for us by showing us where the insanities are. This nation will suffer greatly without your friends’ sacrifices and DOGE-like work, done everyday. I cheer both of them for doing their part as we all do ours. Voting for representatives that stop spending on frivolous things and taking kick-backs is the first and most necessary step. Then, getting government out of the free market is the very next. Right near the top of the list is “peace” so we can conduct the business of life, globally.
The waste in all levels of government is clear to anyone who works in private businesses and professions.
In my city, Philadelphia, we have 124 city departments, committees, agencies and commissions all paid for by taxpayers. Half of them are way past their shelf life, redundant, duplicative or no one has any idea what they are supposed to do, but taxes are raised every year to pay for them. Probably $1 or 2 billion squandered every year. Makes no sense at all!
It seems simple to DOGE them, except that the majority of our very own voters re-elect the same politicians who so gleefully raise taxes on those same voters every year!
And Mayor Parker here just guaranteed, by her own executive order, that her administration will hire only expensive, non-competitive union workers for all taxpayer paid work, illegally and unfairly discriminating against 85% of our own excellent workers who do not want to be in any union.
Probably the same in all levels of government all across the USA?
Why such irresponsible insanity?
DOGE didn’t have the power to end the spending. What they were doing was making all of the corruption visible so the Congress would cut the redundancy. However, the Congress did “lip-service” and kept most of the spending-it is the house who actually was to do the cuts. VOTE THE CRITTERS OUT AND PUT IN REAL CONSERVATIVES!
Doge can find it all, congress has to cut. And we all know they never cut govt.