President Trump and his DOGE co-leaders of Musk and Ramaswamy the GOP Freedom Caucus are committed to eliminate as much as $2 trillion of waste, inefficiency, stupidity, duplication, corruption etc. from the federal budget and do that without cutting essential/necessary services. That won't happen on Day 1 or likely by day 300 as it will require a great deal of research, investigation, and consideration to get it done. But they are committed to do it.
Maybe they won't make the goal. But ANYTHING they can do to rein in an unfathomable, unmanageable monstrosity of federal government and turn it back into an entity that serve the people instead of demanding more and more resources to feed itself will help a great deal.
Does it really make the average American's life better for the federal government to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars in a grant for somebody to study whether pigeons follow the same economic principles as people? Millions for transgender studies is Pakistan?
$518,000 to study how cocaine affects the sexual behavior of Japanese quails?
$3 million to study how various substances affect hamster fights?
$1.7 billion to maintain unused and underused federal buildings?
$1 million to print a paper copy of the Federal Register furnished daily to members of Congress every one of which could read it on line?
Over $600,000 to Stanford University to digitize its collection of tickets, photos, T-shirts, and other memorabilia donated by the band, scholars, and fans?
Almost $900,000 spent by the IRS for unused warehouse space?
$500,000 to build an IHOPs in Washington DC to provide jobs for people there.
$2.5 million for the US Census Bureau to run a Super Bowl ad?
$6 million to The National Comedy Center in Jamestown NY?
These are the kinds of 'small potatoes' things that gets tucked into other appropriations bills including the CR bill they are now trying to get passed. That is on top of the many billions of unrelated pork that Congress forces into all legislation these days.
So we have a debt ceiling. And every three to six months we hit that debt ceiling, have this huge fight in Congress that usually results in some kind of compromise but invariably includes billions and billions of unnecessary, unneeded things that have nothing to do with keeping the government going.
And the debt ceiling is ALWAYS raised!!! The debt is real but the debt ceiling is essentially an artificial thing that means nothing.
So is President Trump that much out of line by saying eliminate the debt ceiling entirely to avoid these CR fights in Congress that invariably include additional billions in pork? All he asked is for is to do away with the essentially worthless debt ceiling and thereby eliminate the opportunity for unscrupulous congress persons to stick all that non essential spending into those CR bills that have become necessary every few months.
His request in no way does away with his intention to try to cut $2 trillion of unnecessary and/or inefficient and/or ineffective and/or wasteful and sometimes corrupt spending from the federal budget.
Did you know the government wasted $28 million on a bad wardrobe choice? You'll be blown away by these bizarre uses for government money.
www.rd.com
