Conservative: The Scourge of Dems’ DC Domination
The misuse of taxpayer money that the Department of Government Efficiency is uncovering is the “the inevitable by-product of” unelected bureaucrats making “decisions about spending without proper review or oversight,” but “the deeper problem” is that “nearly all of these bureaucrats are Democrats,” argues James Piereson at The New Criterion.
DC is “overwhelmingly populated” by “the most partisan and far-left Democrats,” who “(quite logically) use their powers to advance Democratic Party causes.”
When Republicans “win national elections, they soon discover that they must steer a gigantic administrative operation controlled by the opposition party — a nearly impossible task.”
If Team Trump wants “to fix the bureaucracy,” it’ll “have to get rid of a lot of Democrats.”
DOGE watch: Every Penny Counts
Some claim DOGE is “revolutionizing the government”; others argue its savings amount to “a rounding error”; in fact, Liberty Vittert explains at The Hill, “both can be true at the same time.”
Even a “drop in the bucket” adds up. “Start with the $65 billion” DOGE claims to have cut from federal spending; that’s “enough to cut a $450 check to every taxpayer every year.”
Sure, “if we really want to tackle America’s debt, DOGE’s current mandates are clearly insufficient. In the end, the only way to attack America’s $36 trillion debt is to cut Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security — all things that Trump has repeatedly promised not to do.”
But “what DOGE is doing is important, even if it is having a negligible effect on the national debt” because “it goes to the ethos of America,” that “our hard-earned tax dollars” should not be wasted.
Eye on NY: NY’s 911 Bait-and-Switch
“Since 2009, almost half the surcharges paid by customers for public safety communications — more than $1 billion — have been redirected to New York’s general fund,” notes Empire Center’s Cam Macdonald.
In 2008, Congress authorized states to collect a mobile-phone tax “with the aim of improving the technology used for local 911 services,” but the Legislature has diverted much of the tax take to other purposes from the start, and its spending on public safety communications is “far less than what it collects from the surcharge.”
This “example of the many ways New York nickels-and-dimes families” also risks failing “to deliver the promised services in an emergency.”
From the right: Trump’s Medicaid Mandate
Texas Rep. Al Green “is dead wrong. Trump does have a mandate” to cut Medicaid, “and it comes from none other than Joe Biden,” argues the Issues & Insights editorial board.
A “tax scam” under which “states can bill the federal government for half of the spending increase” for Medicaid providers to pay a state tax imposed purely for this scam is costing Uncle Sam north of $600 billion, “which is almost exactly what Republicans are eyeing in savings from Medicaid. Provider taxes are now the second largest source of funds for Medicaid.”
And per Bob Woodward’s reporting, even Biden agreed in 2011 it should end.
“Someone needs to ask Green — and by extension the rest of today’s corrupt Democratic party — why he’s willing to face congressional censure to defend a $600 billion tax scam that even Joe Biden has decried.”
Schools beat: Scrapping Ed. Dept. Is Just a Start
The Wall Street Journal’s Kimberley A. Strassel hopes President Trump’s move to scrap the Department of Education is both “a game-changer” that halts “decades of education decline” and “an overdue Trump embrace of one of the boldest conservative movements already under way”: school choice.
The $1 trillion DoE has sent to schools since 1979 inversely correlates with “plummeting education scores.”
And choice is now “exploding across the states,” which are “innovating on scholarships, vouchers, savings accounts, charters.”
It’s a potent issue for parents. “Congressional action is needed to abolish the department,” but presidential leadership is key to making educational reform a “movement-wide objective.”
— Compiled by The Post Editorial Board
This story originally appeared on NYPost
