Commentary
The U.S. national debt is now $36.6 trillion. Interest is building rapidly due to the high rates offered by the Federal Reserve to bring down inflation during the previous administration.
Starting in 2022, the net interest outlays of the U.S. government started skyrocketing and are headed for $1.63 trillion annually by 2034. That is more than today’s annual defense and Medicaid budgets combined.
Even after some spending cuts instituted by President Donald Trump, new data indicate that federal spending was at an all-time high of $603 billion for the month of February.
Given that context, most voters reasonably support a smaller federal government. A Reuters poll on March 11–12, the outcome of which was not particularly friendly toward Trump, found that 59 percent of respondents still support the downsizing of the federal government, for which he is becoming known. That support is a massive 20 points higher than the 39 percent who do not support such downsizing. This lead is a strong mandate for change, which Trump has followed through with the establishment of the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), reportedly run by a certain chainsaw-wielding billionaire named Elon Musk.
Musk’s chainsaw could usefully be compared to the sword of Damocles. In the ancient Roman story, the statesman and philosopher Cicero describes a man named Damocles who lived large and reclined happily, until he realized that a sword hung over his head, suspended by a single horse-hair. Afterward, Damocles acted more reasonably.
This is the function of Musk’s chainsaw today. The federal government departments are living large and have been told by Trump to pare down their expenses. If they do not, then Musk’s chainsaw will descend upon their departments, come what may.
It already has, to some extent. Musk claimed on March 11 to be saving the taxpayer more than $4 billion a day, on track to save a total of $1 trillion by the end of the year. Even that would be far less than the $36.6 trillion national debt. And some say Musk has overstated his effect by as much as 80 percent so far.
As hard as cuts are, some will be needed if the U.S. government does not come up with new sources of revenue. Musk has proposed privatizing the entire United States Postal Service (USPS), for example. The USPS has expected losses of approximately $160 billion over the next decade.
One congressman predicted that DOGE would “undermine it [the USPS], privatize it, and then profit off Americans’ loss.” But there is talk of combining the USPS with the Commerce Department and giving postal service employees some of the tasks previously handled by the Social Security Administration. As email and Amazon take the place of snail mail and parcel posts around the world, cuts and privatizations are perforce taking place.
While most poll respondents support cutting government, there is also widespread dissatisfaction with how the DOGE is proceeding. According to a poll released on March 13, 60 percent disapprove of how Musk and DOGE “are dealing with workers employed by the federal government,” while 36 percent approve.
Not every DOGE rocket will escape the Earth’s atmosphere every single time. Mistakes have been made along the way, as Musk and Vice President JD Vance admit. Nuclear security experts were let go and then rehired. Other “mistakes” are in the eye of the beholder. Food for bomb-sniffing dogs was canceled. Musk has called the Social Security system “the biggest Ponzi scheme of all time,” infuriating workers of both parties who paid into it their entire lives.
Trump has said there are no plans to cut Social Security benefits. He said Musk’s DOGE team would use a “scalpel,” not a “hatchet.” And some improvements are being made to the initial approach. The president has now given cabinet secretaries the lead in cost-cutting at their departments. Secretary of State Marco Rubio seems to have been instrumental in this shift. The secretaries, not Musk, are, after all, the experts of their portfolios and should know better than others what fat can be cut without destroying the muscles, bones, and sinews necessary for good government.
The laws of bureaucracy and empire-building, however, lead to department heads who usually seek larger budgets. That is their nature. “Where you stand depends on where you sit,” according to political scientists. So the chainsaw must always loom overhead to force cabinet-level officials to make the tough decisions and spend more responsibly. Musk is always ready in the background in case the secretaries fail, and more drastic measures are needed.
Views expressed in this article are opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.
