Defending the Indefensible

President Donald Trump's creation of a Department of Government Efficiency on Day One of his second presidency, and delegation of responsibility for its oversight to Elon Musk, has resulted in revelations of extraordinary waste and fiscal irresponsibility not only within aid agencies but within government departments. Among the more astonishing (and infuriating revelations) are the following:

-- The United States Agency for International Development reportedly funded the college education of Anwar al-Awlaki, who later had ties to the 9/11 terrorists.

-- USAID sent $15 million to the Taliban for condoms -- a bizarre decision, since the Taliban has outlawed all contraception. Then again, perhaps it wasn't the Taliban; we're also hearing that the condoms were actually for Palestinians in Gaza instead. But that, too, is problematic, given Hamas' past use of condoms to make improvised explosive devices.

-- Millions of dollars were sent by USAID and the State Department to countries around the world to promote atheism in Nepal, drag shows in Ecuador, transgender opera in Colombia, and LGBTQ+ activities in Peru, Slovakia, Albania, Cyprus, Serbia, Western and Central African nations and throughout the Caribbean. How is any of this the concern of Americans?

-- In what sounds like a perverse version of Gringotts from the "Harry Potter" universe, the processing of federal employee retirement applications is still being done by several hundred individuals underground, in an old Pennsylvania mine, using paper records and manila envelopes. (The only things missing are the mine carts -- and the goblins.) The process hasn't been updated since the 1950s.

-- The Environmental Protection Agency gave $2 billion (that's "billion," with a "b") to a little organization called "Power Forward Communities," founded by Georgia Democrat (and election denier) Stacey Abrams. The organization had reported just $100 in income the year before the massive grant. Why does Abrams need $2 billion?

-- Indeed, the EPA was discovered to have wasted tens of billions of dollars in the last months of the Biden administration -- which one EPA employee compared in an undercover video to "tossing gold bars off the Titanic" -- in an effort to dispose of funds willy-nilly before Trump's inauguration.

Americans (including Trump) had long suspected that our tax dollars were being misspent, and Trump promised that he would investigate it, expose it and stop it if elected in 2024. Trump's reelection demonstrates -- among other things -- that the 77 million Americans who voted for him took that promise seriously.

Indeed, polls being taken now indicate that support for Trump's and DOGE's efforts is rising as more information about the dissipation of America's wealth is revealed to the public. The U.S. Debt Clock has even added a "DOGE Clock," which is tallying up the wasteful spending that Musk and his DOGE crew have discovered.

But many Democrats and other left-leaners are outraged at the exposure of these unnecessary expenditures rather than at the waste itself. Commentators defend them, arguing that they're not wasteful or fraudulent since they were all "approved." (Um -- that's the problem.) Organizations have brought lawsuits in friendly federal courts, asking for -- and getting, in some cases -- injunctions preventing Trump from cutting certain spending or mandating that he reinstate it.

Americans have been taken aback by these reactions.

First, it's frankly shocking that anyone wouldn't care about billions of dollars frittered away without accountability. And the Trump administration isn't just targeting initiatives loved by the Left; Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has announced that he wants an 8% spending cut for the Department of Defense annually for the next five years and promised that the department will pass an audit within the next four. Why wouldn't Democrats be pleased to see the military budget reduced and its spending transparent?

It's also counterintuitive that millions (billions?) of dollars would be given to illegal aliens here, while citizens who have lost their homes in calamities like the Maui and California fires or the hurricanes that hit the southeast last fall were told that the Federal Emergency Management Agency had run out of money. Don't Americans matter at least as much as people from other countries? No one is falling for the excuse that "X dollars" aren't in the same pile as "Y dollars." Money is fungible.

Some Democrats are warning that the party has learned nothing from the shellacking it received in the 2024 elections.

Earlier this week, former Democrat adviser Dan Turrentine appeared on the Fox New show "Jesse Watters Primetime" and said that the decision to criticize Musk's efforts was "terrible" and failed the "common sense test." Turrentine warned that the Democratic Party risks further alienating wider swaths of the American public.

Former Obama speechwriter Jon Favreau recently admitted on the "Pod Save America" podcast that "government is slow" and "bureaucracy can be bloated." Favreau's comments sounded almost like grudging respect for Musk and DOGE: "We (the Obama administration) tried to reorganize the government." Favreau said. "We tried to find efficiency. It's hard to do."

Actually, it isn't hard if you're more interested in reining in spending and in balancing the budget than in lining the pockets of your cronies and floating the boats of your fave foundations and pet causes.

It isn't just the recipients of out-of-control spending and causes of appalling waste that Americans are seeing clearly for the first time; it is also the extent to which our government -- Democrats and Republicans alike -- does not care about us or our well-being or that of the nation. The deep state and everyone feeding at the trough can be as indignant as they like about the "lack of process" in Musk's activities or Trump's brash way of handling the problems he has inherited. It's clear that outsiders -- and only outsiders -- can clean up this mess.

Everyone on the inside is too busy defending the indefensible.

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To find out more about Laura Hollis and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate website at www.creators.com.

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