The Department of Education buildings in DC and some other regions will be closed for security reasons 3/12. They will re-open on Thursday. The security reasons are mass layoff notices are going out tonight, as much as 50% of the department will be cut. This marks a sharp departure from the earliest cuts at DOGE which focused on USAID.
Things are now going to get extremely real.
USAID was the low hanging fruit to be cut. USAID traces back to around 1961 but I think it has roots even before that. USAID exists mostly to be a conduit to bribe other countries. We do this to police the world and have our way around the globe. You may have noticed when we bombed Iraq and Afghanistan that most other countries looked the other way. We bombed Doctors without Borders, Hospitals, even families but that was ok because we paid off the neighboring countries. Notice how when Israel attacks Gaza, or I guess “Palestine” for those who are living impaired that may be reading; Jordan and Egypt are silent? Bribery. Also, Trump in his executive order exempted those countries from the ban mind you. To be clear I had/have no issue cutting all USAID money… and I never want to hear about us paying to build a Sesame Street replica anywhere again.
The cuts he wants to do at Social Security and Medicare are a more difficult sell. He talks about fraud and I’m willing to give some credit here… some. In the Medicare part, yes, I believe it’s rampant, but mostly on the “billing side.” I remember watching an American Greed episode years ago that focused on this. Shell corporations existing only as a PO Box billing for services never rendered. The government pays since unless you can prove its fraudulent it’s hard to argue against paying a medical bill in court. Maybe changing billing laws helps here? I have never liked the idea of not being able to tell who owns a corporation, and some of these cheaters create layers and layers of LLCs to mask the entire identity of the entity.
On Social Security, he needs to be careful here. I like the idea of identifying fraud, but I do not think they will actually find much. I for one do not think people who are “345 years old” on paper are receiving a check each month…. trust me, if there were, folks like Senator Rand Paul, would be all over that. Hell, even Lyin’ Ted may have weighed in by now. Cutting the Social Security check to someone who is actually alive is not only a terrible look, but the political ads write themselves. Social Security is not like voter fraud… it’s all some people have got and quite a few older American’s aren’t getting 4 figure checks. Trust but verify, and use caution here.
In conclusion, I know I only touched on a couple of points here, but we as a society, have needed this to happen for a while. When we have the national debt at 36 trillion, we do not need any more Blue Ribbon Committees, or deficit committees. We do not need commissions, meeting groups or bi-partisan congressional groups… it’s too late. These groups, while putting together a valiant effort, have never produced anything deliverable at all. Kind of like a central committee meeting, we go to war with each other…. go in peace to serve the world, and reconvene next month for the next edition of the circular firing squad. I’ll give it to Musk, he is trying, and he is being attacked by everyone, which is good… there should be no sacred cows.
The United States must realize, we run our government the same way we run our lives, we may flip out the credit card, and as long as we make the minimum payment, we are good for one more month. I noticed each household’s share of the debt is about $105,000, could you write a check for your share? See us for who we really are, we are the morbidly obese patient about to go into cardiac arrest pleading with our doctor to approve us for a weight loss drug… we do not need a diet, we need a lifestyle change. Musk isn’t perfect…. he is trying.