Your Tax Dollars at Work (or Not)
The list of dubious spending, and reducing same, as brought to the light of day by Elon Musk and his Department of Governmental Efficiency – DOGE – is lengthy. That’s just after a couple of months in operation.
In the case of one agency, Sec. of State Rubio has been named administrator of the U.S. Agency for International Development – USAID – and to shut the agency down. Here’s a list as to the reasons why:
- $50 million to fund condoms in Gaza, later corrected to Mozambique.
- $1.5 million to advance DEI in Serbia’s workplaces
- $70,000 to produce a DEI musical in Ireland
- $47,000 on a transgender opera in Colombia
- $32,000 for a transgender comic book in Peru
- $37 million to the World Health Organization
- $16 million in funding for institutional contractors in gender development offices
- $4 million of funding for the Center for Climate-Positive Development
- $12 million in support services to the Bureau for Resilience, Environment, and Food Security
- $6 million in non-emergency funding for redundant administrative support to the Center of Excellence
- $3 million in non-emergency funding to provide evaluation services for planning and learning programs
- $600,000 to fund technical assistance for family planning in Latin America
We’ve all heard about some of the items on the “You’ve Got to be Kidding” list. There’s more:
Add these: $56 million to boost tourism in Tunisia and Egypt; a $20 million grant to create an Iraqi version of ‘Sesame Street;’ $2.5 million to advance Diversity, Equity, and Integration (DEI) in Serbia’s workplaces; $2.5 million to build electric vehicle charging stations in Vietnam; $2 million for promoting sex changes in Guatemala; $500,000 for the expansion of (inter alia) atheism in Nepal; $70,000 to produce a DEI musical event in Ireland; $47,000 for a transgender opera in Colombia; $68,000 for dance classes in Wuhan, China; and $32,000 for a transgender comic book in Peru.
In the face of this stuff there are those who suggest that in the ‘big picture’ of the trillions spent by the federal government these items are small and not worth making a big deal out of.
Let’s just take a moment. You are earning an annual salary of $75,000 and taking home $1,250/week. You find out your employer is planning to withhold $11.25/week from your pay to help pay for the college tuition of a nephew. It’s less than 1% of your pay so it’s no big deal, right? Wrong!
What makes the examples listed and the full list of cuts and cancelations uncovered by DOGE worse than the deduction from your pay example is that in the boss’s nephew’s college expenses case at least you’re aware of what’s being planned for your money. With the federal government, 99% of the stuff which thus far adds up to well over $100B is you and I had no idea what was happening with our money.
And it’s not just the principles of ethics, disclosure and transparency, it’s what it’s being spent on. You don’t have a personal interest in college for your employer’s nephew – and we would object to personally paying for it. We’re also not interested in whether there is a transgender opera in Columbia and certainly not interested in paying for it. We do care about who, how and why our tax money is being spent on materials and/or activities – and we don’t like to be surprised to find out our tax money was going to be spent for developing an Iraqi version of Sesame Street. AND. we’re paying for the ‘somebodies’ to develop such plans and programs while racking up $36 trillion in debt.
Where does stuff like this come from? What’s lacking in bills that pass our Congress that allow money to be spent on this ‘off the wall’ stuff?
While there are those who pooh-pooh these unwanted/unneeded expenses, I don’t hear members of Congress expressing any outrage or even concern over them. Are we to accept that outlays like those exposed by DOGE as normal part of government doing business?
DOGE has delivered $150-160B in savings in its several months of operation, with virtually every department’s spending reduced.
This administration is also in the process of eliminating the Dept. of Education.
As an aside here, I note that about 40% of jobs added in the US during the last administration were government hirings. And, with the federal government employing 2+ million people, the $6.9T spent last year represented 24% of the country’s GDP.
There’s an economic rule of thumb that government spending should not exceed 20% of GDP in peacetime, with 15% being the ideal maximum.
We not only need closer looks at what and how Congress is setting up its spending, we need Congress to appropriate spending in ways that check frivolous outlays.
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Have a great and prosperous week.
Hug somebody.
References:
SPIDER Bytes
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