This is no way to run a country. DOGE’s reckless actions aren’t the solution | Opinion

I’m angry. In Citizens Climate Lobby (an organization that I volunteer with), we play by the rules. We work with the public and with our members of Congress to find common ground so that Congress will pass laws that make our country a better place to live.

Polluters pay for impacts of their pollution on others, and those impacted by the pollution are compensated with payments ultimately coming from polluters.

The rules don’t seem to matter anymore. The Trump administration is proceeding with its dismantling of the federal government regardless of the laws appropriating funds and directing the executive branch to implement them.

They are proceeding at a pace so rapid that the courts cannot keep up with them. By the time the courts have ruled (almost always against them), the damage has been done and won’t easily be repaired, even if the Trump administration complies with court rulings. So far, the record of compliance has not been encouraging.

Yes, there is massive fraud in government. People cheat on taxes to the tune of hundreds of billions of dollars a year. There was at least $9 billion in fraud when 4 trillion dollars was rapidly dispersed during the Covid pandemic.

Yes, there is waste. The waste by the U.S. military is so great that no one knows how much it is.

The solution is not to gut the government. Identifying fraud and waste is hard work. It takes skilled investigators care and time to set up processes that catch fraud and waste.

Gutting government just makes it less risky to cheat on taxes, less likely to identify waste, and harder to distribute government funds to the people who need it or will deliver the services we expect.

If someone claiming to be serious about fraud and waste fires the people who are skilled at identifying it, they are lying. They are inviting more fraud and waste.

Moreover, federal employment is only 6.6% of federal spending. Most federal spending is on payments to those who’ve either paid into social security and medicare or have the unfortunate inability to support themselves, on payments for vital services such as national defense and domestic security, or on payments on the federal debt.

If we automate every government function and fire every worker, government spending would decline by only 6.6%. That’s not nothing, but we can’t automate every government function.

Further reductions in spending would require painful reductions in payments for social security, medicare, medicaid, defense, and foreign aid. Congress makes those decisions, not the Executive branch.

If we are truly serious about reducing government waste and fraud and making it more efficient, let’s apply the skill of a surgeon to government, investing in teams to automate processes that distribute funds and identify waste and fraud (ironically, one of the teams doing that was terminated by DOGE). But we must recognize that many of those government functions cannot be fully automated.

We do have a federal deficit problem. Democrats love to spend. Republicans hate taxes. If someone claiming to be serious about the deficit focuses only on restraining spending or only on increasing taxes, they are lying. Any serious attempt to address the deficit will both reduce spending and increase taxes. Extending the 2017 tax cuts is unsustainable without very painful cuts in foreign and domestic federal spending. How much must people suffer so that we can have our beloved tax cuts?

I’m angry. Our government is being dismantled, not because that is what most people voted for, not because it’s reducing fraud and waste, not because it’s going to reduce the federal deficit. It’s being dismantled so most of us can pay 1-2% less in federal taxes and are free to pollute without paying for its impacts. Is that what you want? Tell your representatives in Congress what you want.

This story was originally published March 15, 2025 at 5:00 AM.