They Found the Waste, Fraud, and Abuse: It’s Them
Trump, Musk, and Congressional Republicans declare daily that federal government programs authorized and budgeted for agencies established by Congress and signed into law by US president are riddled with “waste, fraud, and abuse (of power).” Trump and Musk created a fake “Department of Government Efficiency,” (DOGE) to root it out. A real department must be authorized by law; DOGE is essentially an advisory council.
If they were really interested in reducing the inevitable waste, fraud, and abuse that exists in systems involving millions of employees, contractors, and billions in grants, loans, and contracts administered and sometimes scammed by human beings, they would beef up the systems that were created by law to search out, end, and punish it. Democrats would work with them to do this, and it would be the lawful and efficient way of doing the job.
Instead, on Day 1 of his administration, Trump fired the Inspectors General of 18 agencies whose job it is to find and end that waste, who in previous years have indeed found and ended billions of dollars of wasteful and fraudulent spending, clawed much of it back, and referred investigations to the Justice Department. Trump’s actions seem more like a move designed to allow his appointees actually to commit the waste, fraud, and abuse of his choosing.
With encouragement from Musk, who is making X (formerly Twitter) into a banking service and Republicans who love to protect their rich banking friends, Trump’s new Treasury Secretary has shuttered the Consumer Fraud and Protection Department (CFPD). CFPD protects American consumers from predatory lenders, abusive credit card policies, and oversees banks to prevent them from cheating Americans. It’s saved Americans billions since being created in response to the 2008 financial crisis.
Trump (falsely) declared a national emergency at the southern border and sent thousands of troops who the NY Times reports are standing around doing not much since illegal border crossings had been slowing over the last year or so and migrant shelters are closing because they’re not needed.
He is trying to shut down USAID and all its activities were halted. Hundreds of millions if not billions of dollars of authorized, purchased, and shipped life saving food and medicines headed to the poorest countries in the world are sitting in ships and warehouses, expiring or rotting. If the next plague reaches our shores, we’ll know who to blame. Meanwhile tens of thousands will sicken and die in countries that will turn to Russia and China or terrorist groups like ISIS for the help we are refusing to offer.
To reinforce his false claims that undocumented migrants are violent criminals, he decided to fly many of them to Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, probably the most wasteful and expensive prison in the world where all supplies need to be shipped or flown in and it costs $13 million per year per inmate to imprison a few accused terrorists detained in the early 2000s.
He uses military aircraft to deport migrants because it looks tougher than sending them via charter or commercial airliners as Biden and previous administrations did. It’s estimated to cost at least 4 times as much using this method.
dThese are only a few of many egregious examples of the fraudulent claims, wasteful spending, and abuse of power Trump, Musk, and his Republican supporters in Congress are authorizing or allowing. Trump and Musk are, contrary to lawful methods, capriciously and maliciously laying off, placing on leave, and firing thousands of dedicated and hardworking public employees claiming waste, fraud and abuse without evidence. Many of these employees are still being being paid, but not allowed to continue their work researching cures for cancer, prosecuting dangerous criminals, protecting America’s interests around the world, and more.
If Trump, Musk, and Republicans actually want to see waste, fraud and abuse in government, they can look in the mirror.
Published in the Charleston Gazette-Mail 2/18/25
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