Realistically, the cuts to spending and personnel that the Trump administration has imposed so far are drops in the bucket. The budget is almost $7 trillion. The “work”force is around 2.4 million. Getting rid of some has driven Democrats mad
The U.S. government is attempting to dismantle itself.
President Donald Trump has directed the executive branch to “significantly reduce the size of government.” That includes deep cuts in federal funding of scientific and medical research and freezing federal grants and loans for businesses. He has ordered the reversal or removal of regulations on medical insurance companies and other businesses and sought to fire thousands of federal employees. Those are just a few of dozens of executive orders that seek to deconstruct the government. (snip)
Our recent book, “How Government Built America,” shows why the administration’s aim to eliminate government could result in an America that the country’s people have never experienced – one in which free-market economic forces operate without any accountability to the public.
Where’s the accountability for government? How often do we actually see it? If a company is doing Bad Things what happens when they get caught? They get in big trouble. Maybe they get fined. People get fired. Maybe someone goes to jail.
What happens when government employees do bad things? Quite often, nothing. If they’re taking allocated money and giving it to an NGO which takes a big cut to pass it on to another entity which takes their cut and then on to more entities which all take their cut so that a pittance of the allocation makes it doing what it’s supposed to do? Who gets fired? Who goes to jail for defrauding the government? How much ends up back in the pocket of the government workers? How much gets used for totally unrelated activities?
How about government workers who do not actually work? Who are faking it? Who are out protesting instead of doing their jobs? Agencies which have too many redundant employees? Who think that it is their job to implement their own personal beliefs on Americans, who act as little dictators?
Government funding and regulation have yielded countless economic benefits for the public, including the launch of many efforts later capitalized on by the private sector. Government funding delivered a COVID-19 vaccine in record time, many of the technologies – GPS, touchscreens and the internet – that are key to the functioning of the cellphone in your pocket, and the highway system that enables travel throughout the country.
Might not want to mention the Bat Soup Flu “vaccine”, which, also, if memory serves, Democrats said would not happen for years or decades. How about government telling citizens that they will only be able to drive an EV soon? Passing extra, unnecessary regulations that make housing overly expensive? Jumping in to tell people what they are allowed to do with the little pond in their backyard? Arresting people for paddleboarding on the ocean with no one within hundreds of yards during COVID? Treating agencies as their own little fiefdom and going after people they accuse of Wrongthink?
Admittedly, there is wasteful spending – as much as $150 billion a year in erroneous payments. That is a lot of money, but it’s a tiny sliver – just 2.2% – of the $6.75 trillion the federal government spent in the 2024 fiscal year. And government has not always been a positive force in society, either.
Do you want to die on the 2.2% figure? $150 billion is real money to Americans. And that’s just erroneous payments. Anyhow, it’s a long, long piece, which misses that government has grown too big and too powerful. It has forgotten who it works for. It is unaccountable. If bureaucrats do bad things against citizens, what can the citizen do? Virtually nothing. And, a thing I find funny is that there are often more unnecessary employees in unnecessary positions while others (say, the FDA) are underfunded and have too few employees. Investigating sub-prime mortgages.
Whenever I think of government, I think of this: “a light touch” (around 1:35)
Democrats would prefer control like China….well, at least as it pertains to Other People. They want government to take a light touch in their own lives.
Read: Saturday Funny: Trump Trying To End Meaningful Government »
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