Why Congress Does not want DOGE to Succeed
SBINSIDER NEWS\ANALYSIS | November 23rd, 2024
Much ado has been made about the proposed Trump plan to put Vivek Ramaswamy and Elon Musk in charge of a commission (?) whose charter is to cut government waste and fraud and end programs that have lingered since their creation but are no longer useful.
Trump has stated many times that Social Security and Medicare are off the table for cuts or about 60% of automatic spending. Musk might be very smart but finding $2 trillion is not going to be easy or without much whining and moaning.
Before jumping into the specifics, this budget chart might help:
Even for Musk\Vivek this is a big challenge. We currently spend $2 Trillion more than we take in as income.
Many examples abound of fraud. Medicare\Medicaid auditors believe that 20% of the money spent goes to fraudulent claims. That amount alone represents about $60 billion dollars a year. But the auditors say there is nothing they can do unless Congress acts.
The Pentagon should not be exempt from accountability-the DOD is not accused of fraud but sloppy bookkeeping, which should not be acceptable to conservatives or progressives. For 7 years in a row the Pentagon cannot pass an audit. Why? Their budget is nearly $900 billion and the law says they must account for it-or else-or else what? Nothing…
Editors Note: Barack Obama created his own cost cutting commission, Simpson-Bowles and as soon as it was presented, Obama quickly ignored its findings. From the contemporary news reports: The report was released on December 1, 2010 recommending a combination of spending cuts (including an increase in the Social Security retirement age and cuts to military, benefit, and domestic spending) and tax increases (including restricting or eliminating certain tax credits and deductions and increasing the federal gasoline tax).
The Real Culprit, Congress
Member of Congress love to spend our money. The CHIPS act that Biden passed was a corporate give-away of massive amounts. The cover story was that the US needed to invest in the latest computer chip technology manufacturing and apparently the private sector companies conspired to have you and I underwrite this new plant and equipment. Private firms love to off-load capital expenditures as it makes their earnings surge and their stock valuations skyrocket. Arizona is the recipient of much of that largess with several new chip fabrication plants being built for TSMC and other companies. This whole rush to funding was a well orchestrated media campaign by the financial reporting community, about the risk to our future if Taiwan was invaded by the Chinese.
Then Biden passed the IRA (Inflation Reduction Act) which is a knee slapper. It’s price tag is $891 billion in new spending. No one can explain how new spending will actually reduce inflation but those are inconvenient details.
Eisenhower was prescient in his speech about the military industrial complex. It is thriving. No member of Congress wants to attend a Chamber of Commerce meeting and tell the audience that they blocked funding for-fill in the blank-of any kind. The want to play Santa Claus and why not-it’s not their money, it is yours.
When Obama passed Obamacare, creating a pseudo-single-payer system the Democrats lost 63 House seats in the 2010 election. Most of those who lost knew it was dangerous to their careers but they stuck with The President and now it is the law. Reducing federal spending or raising taxes is also very risky and so far, increasing the total has been the surest way to re-election.
Only Republican David Schweikert has been consistently sounding the alarm on this unsustainable course of spending and borrowing. Will any other Republican in Arizona, Biggs, Gosar, Ciscomani step up and state the hard truth? Not likely.
