If You’re Not Angry, Something’s Wrong With You

Part I

Before taking office last month, President Donald Trump persuaded the genius rocket man Elon Musk to enlist tech nerds to audit government programs for waste, fraud, and abuse. I discussed the program, known as DOGE in a previous post, so I won’t go into details again here.

Suffice it to say, DOGE has exceeded all expectations. In less than four weeks, the young computer coders working for DOGE have identified tens of billions of dollars that have been spent on utter nonsense, or funneled to powerful people who are getting rich off the backs of the taxpayers. We are not talking about mistakes that anyone could easily make. This is not about failing to save money by forgetting to use a coupon to buy toilet paper for the restrooms in public buildings. We are talking about shoveling billions and billions of dollars out the door that should never have been spent.

Allow me to digress:

As you know, the point of my blog is to share opinions and persuade. I am not a journalist or reporter. However, getting the facts right is of utmost importance to me. We have many people on the right that spout “facts” on the Internet without doing any research to confirm whether they are accurate. This makes us all look bad. I suspect this will be a significant issue when it comes to reporting DOGE findings. It is tempting to believe information that validates our existing worldview or one’s opinion on a specific issue.

Therefore, I am not going to spout a laundry list of wasteful or fraudulent government spending, some of which might be inaccurate or fabricated. Instead, I’m going to mention just a few things that seem to be credibly reported. Trust me, you can make government spending look very bad without making things up.

Okay, back to the matter at hand:

This quote is from the General Accounting Office (GAO). “In fiscal year 2022, federal agencies made an estimated $247 billion in payment errors—either payments that should not have been made or that were made in the incorrect amount. Overpayments accounted for about $200 billion of the total. But the total doesn't yet include estimates for certain risky programs, like the Pandemic Unemployment Assistance Program and the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program.” The GAO report goes on to state, “Since fiscal year 2003, cumulative executive agency improper payment estimates have totaled almost $2.4 trillion.”

That’s $2.4 trillion with a “T”. If that number is accurate, it constitutes approximately 6.7% of the entire national debt. So, approximately one out of every 15 dollars we have borrowed is the result of improper payments or overpayments.

Would you like to know what our federal government considers to be foreign aid, much of which is driven by the government agency known as USAID? Take a look here for a list that should make your blood boil. Keep in mind that USAID’s 2024 fiscal year budget is “only” $21.7 billion, which constitutes approximately 0.3% of overall federal spending. Just imagine what DOGE’s audit of the big-ticket agencies is going to uncover.

Allow me to make this personal. I have been working and paying federal income tax all of my adult life. But if you add up all the federal taxes I have paid, it will not cover the cost of USAID’s program for “sex changes and ‘LGBT activism’” in Guatemala.” There! That is my contribution to federal spending during my entire life. I partially funded last year’s sex changes and LGBT propaganda in Guatemala. I couldn’t be prouder.

Perhaps your contribution was to the publication of a “transgender comic book” in Peru, or a “transgender opera” in Columbia. If you are a big money earner, perhaps you have financed the $6 million that was spent to help fund tourism in Egypt. We all know how badly those Middle East oil and natural gas producing countries need U.S. foreign aid.

In Part II, I’ll explore the reaction coming from those responsible for this profligate spending. I’m sure there is a lot of contrition out there.