Op-Ed: The Immutable Truths of Government Waste and Fraud
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In life, there are only a few immutable truths, things that we accept without requiring evidence or investigation. Such as God loves us, humans are good, children are a blessing, and OJ was guilty.
Add to the list of commonly understood truths that our government is rife with waste, inefficiency, and fraud. We all know it. In fact, so certain is our belief in the effluvium in our government that it hasn’t merited a single claim to the contrary in my lifetime (and I am quite old).
We know our tax money is being spent wantonly. We know this when we are confronted with the revelation of $800 toilet seats, bridges to nowhere, a Sesame Street knockoff in Iraq and a transgender comic book in Peru, all funded with your taxes.
Can you think of a single politician, journalist, or government bureaucrat who argued strenuously to the contrary? I can’t. Not one has ever uttered the words, “I can unequivocally state there is no waste or fraud in government spending.”
The question is, why haven’t we demanded that it be exposed and removed? Is it because we wanted to believe in the myth of honest government and virtuous public servants?
While there may be a virtuous politician or federal bureaucrat somewhere, they are something akin to Bigfoot. Without a shred of evidence, we continue to believe they exist.
Now DOGE arrives to shine the light of truth in the darkest corners of the labyrinthine leviathan that is our government. What have these modern argonauts found? What we already know, the government is both wasteful and corrupt.
Wasteful in innumerable ways such as mentioned above, and corrupt because no one who works therein has ever cared enough to stop it.
To date, DOGE has identified $55 billion in waste/fraud and expectations are that their efforts will reveal at least a trillion dollars of dreck before they’re done.
Democrats and the legacy press don’t complain about the reckless spending or ongoing swindle that’s been identified. Instead, they wheeze and prattle that “no one elected Elon Musk.”
No one elected Dr. Anthony Fauci, Alejandro Mayorkas or Janet Yellen and look at what a mess they made. Unlike those unholy three, DOGE is exposing the rotten roots of waste while President Trump is wielding the ax.
This is constitutional.
Many, if not all, presidents have had advisors who are neither cabinet-level appointments nor agency heads. These advisors always wield profound influence with the Chief Executive who selects them precisely because he trusts them. The recommendations of these “unelected” advisors can be implemented by those officers possessed of the constitutional authority to do so, such as the president.