Sunlight And Momentum

Some critics of DOGE assert that the effort amounts to a few raindrops in a deluge, that finding a few million here and there to snip out of nearly six trillion dollars in government spending is a waste of time, or a distraction, or a pretense to allow the big problems to continue.

My first retort to this is that every misused or abused tax dollar is an affront to the taxpayers, and dismissing some offensive outlay because it's "only a few million" or less is a similar insult to the people who have some of the fruit of their labor - and a chunk of their futures - confiscated by the government. We should be glad for every nickel rescued by DOGE.

The dismissiveness aside, it is nevertheless true that culling a bunch of bullshit out of the budget isn't going to balance it. Nor is curbing waste, nor is reducing improper payments, nor is quashing fraud, nor is using money more efficiently.

However, all those remain good things in and of themselves, and saying "this won't get it done" ignores both the inherent goodness and the notions that every step in the right direction and that every dollar saved are worthwhile.

There are also two big-picture benefits.

The first is the "sunlight" effect. Politicians and bureaucrats are cowards who do their dirty business in the proverbial dark and at the backs of metaphorical alleyways, and showing the public the crazy abuses of our tax dollars can put a different sort of fear into the hearts of those cowards. And give them a chance to grandstand as they bravely cut heads off the spending hydra.

That leads to the second: momentum. Get the efficiency and cost-cutting ball rolling, and we stand a chance of building public support for the big and difficult challenges like entitlement reform.

Of course, the entrenched interests, what Milton Friedman dubbed the Iron Triangle and referred to as the Tyranny Of The Status Quo, will fight tooth-and-nail to preserve their gravy trains. They will also lie through their teeth, as we are seeing with wild-eyed accusations that DOGE is looking to end Social Security and Medicare, and engage in countless other scare tactics to try and derail what to date has been a rather modest effort at doing what is long overdue and absolutely necessary.

And, then, of course, the grumpy naysayers who fixate more on DOGE’s failures than trying to prop up successes.

Will there be bumps? No doubt. The alternative, however, is a fiscal cliff. Herbert Stein told us that if something cannot go on forever, it won't. Sounds obvious, right? But many people would rather whistle past the graveyard than support anything less than a twin-impossibility: a perfect and painless fixing of our spending problems.

Political will is driven by emotion more than fact. Facts coupled with emotion are the only way forward that is both honest and potentially effective. Spotlighting the massive abuse and betrayal of the taxpayers' trust might give us the momentum needed to finally act on overspending in a meaningful fashion.

Meanwhile, until the public puts enough pressure on Congress, economics professor Patrick Newman presents a compelling case that the best hope for spending restraint lies with the Presidency rather than Congress or the Judiciary.