There have been accusations and news reports that the Trump administration’s cuts to the Federal Workforce and Funding Programs are both devastating and inconsequential. I smell bullshit. Something isn’t adding up here.
Opponents say the departments, positions, grants and funding cuts will be catastrophic resulting in deaths, disease, starvation, poverty and more. Then they say, “And the dollar amounts saved are only xxx% of the total federal budget – usually pointing out the savings as less than 1% or less than .1%”.
Everyone who opposes some cut likes to use this argument.
However, these infinitesimal %s quoted as inconsequential are actually in the Millions, 100s of Millions or Billions of dollars.
These dollar amounts do matter – for the Federal government, for the programs impacted and for the US taxpayers.
Every dollar has to be paid for by US citizens.
Accosting to the latest data, DOGE has cut 280K federal jobs. Let’s assume that each employee’s total comp, including benefits/taxes/salary is $100K. That would result in $280 Million savings per year. In a little over 3 years, that’s a savings of $1 Billion.
That amount of money seems to me that it warrants consideration, regardless of how small a % of the total federal budget it represents.
The cuts, like many actions during the Trump reign, seem capricious, arbitrary and poorly executed. I’m sure if I studied them I’d find many areas where I disagreed with the selection criteria, the methods or the defunding.
On the other hand, my observations lead me to believe that reducing the size of anything in the government is highly unlikely and painstakingly slow. People in power hang onto their power. People whose income depends on a program will do anything to justify it. I understand these dynamics.
Sometimes, the only way to stop something is with an abrupt cut.
I don’t for a second believe these cuts will offset the tax breaks for the top 1% that Trump will get passed by Congress this year. I don’t think these cuts will results in improve efficiency, or a reduction in fraud or waste.
I do think they will inevitably result in some money not being spent. We’ll discover that we were spending money on some programs that no longer meet our needs. We’ll discover other programs were crucial and cutting them was a mistake.
I’m sure we’ll find out in time.