The Real Battles

”All who gain power are afraid to lose it.” Emperor Palpatine, Star Wars’ “Revenge of the Sith.”

We’re well past the mythical 100 days mark of Donald Trump’s second presidential term, and mercifully, the “May the Fourth Be With You” Star Wars shtick infecting so many social media posts and memes. Today, it’s Cinco de Mayo. What’s next, “May the Sith?”

Yet both trigger an opportunity to share a perspective on the public policy firestorms raging across the body politic. It remains of me of the time more than a couple of decades ago that neighborhood dads and I took our young boys nearby to northern Virginia’s Lake Fairfax for an overnight camping trip. My then-Cub Scout son, among the oldest in the group, took it upon himself to help teach younger boys how to successfully start a series of small camp fires all around us - about 10 in all, as I recall. Boys will be boys, but a couple of us nervous dads watched to ensure that the fires were small and under control.

I don’t recall if anyone brought a fire extinguisher. None were brandished or needed, but at least we had plenty of water and a few shovels.

Ultimately, hunger pains and the grilling of steak and hamburgers quickly distracted the boys from their small and soon extinguished mini-campfires. I told my son that he’d done enough “instructing” for the evening.

I’m not sure who is in control of policing today’s policy and political fires, big and small, enraging around us. And some people, especially in our Article I (Congress) and III (Judicial) branches, on whom we count on with shovels and fire extinguishers, have either forgotten them or decided to set a few fires of their own, while claiming to do the opposite, just like the “protect our democracy” crowd.

Polling is both interesting and worthless at this stage of an election cycle, with no meaningful elections on the immediate horizon. While many focus on the President’s approval rating, which has dipped slightly in many but not all polls, they’re ignoring other interesting data, including the relatively robust “right direction/wrong track” numbers that show historically (at least for recent times) high 40-42% “right track.”

That’s considerably higher than the numbers we saw last year. It suggests that while Trump’s unilateral action, made through over 140 Executive Orders (EOs) thus far, makes people nervous, a big chunk of America likes the direction in which we are now headed and is willing to put up with a little pain and uncertainty. They’re hopeful.

It amazes political pundits like Frank Luntz, who seem to think that a large segment American voters are too shallow, stupid, or selfish to decipher the bigger and longer term issues. “They’re willing to accept personal pain for them to get a readjustment of the relationship between the U.S. and China, a readjustment of the relationship between the U.S. and the rest of the world,” Luntz told CNBC recently. “They’ll take personal pain to get that readjustment. . . I’ve never seen this before because usually when you’re hurt economically, that changes your perspective and your politics. Not with these people. They’re staying firm.”

Social media, and many polls, are poor barometers. Luntz, an excellent communications consultant and author whom I know, is likely one of those who subscribes to the curmudgeon H. L. Mencken’s famous dictum that no one ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the average voter.

That may be true, but no one recommends it as an investment strategy, either.

The vast majority of Democrats, whose party suffers from worst-ever approval ratings, were going to oppose Trump no matter what. And they have, even demanding the return of an illegal immigrant, violent terrorist gang member, and wife beater mistakenly deported to the wrong country, where he’s a citizen. They really can’t see themselves, but regular Americans see right through them. He’s gotten more “due process” than some of the Tesla owners who’ve seen their cars torched and damaged, or the victims of violent crime from scores of violent criminals who entered the US illegally, including the Democratic prosecutor, Steve Descano, from Virginia’s most populous county freeing an violent illegal immigrant. Fortunately, ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement) arrested him where he will be prosecuted under federal law.

Many of the same people who nodded silently or applauded while democracy was under attack the past four years from a border opened to over one hundred thousands of criminal illegal immigrants - and millions more who weren’t - along with unconstitutional censorship and horrid and needlessly punitive pandemic regimes are now screaming “threat to our bureaucracy democracy!” We see through the hypocrisy.

Meanwhile, the barrage of attacks in - and by - members of the legacy media, Democratic politicians, and scores of interest groups and partisans have been relentless. The Trump Administration’s inability to keep up with their Commander in Chief’s unilateral actions with a solid, pre-planned communications rollout has prevented the kind of counter-narratives that can help minimize the damage, if not get ahead of it. Still, it is rather amazing to this observer that Trump’s support remains as strong as it is.

Mistakes, which are inevitable, have been magnified while success stories - and there are many - have been muted or ignored. Fair minded observers (both of you) are finding it hard to discern balance in the force (sorry). Elon Musk has been Alinskied, and many of his dealerships and customers’ cars violently set ablaze or damaged. At least one Minnesota Democratic prosecutor let one perpetrator - a state employee - go free. So much for justice.

Musk’s DOGE (Department of Government Efficiency) clearly did not plan well, despite a well-meaning and surprisingly successful identification of about $160 billion in questionable spending and numerous examples of atrocious financial management across the government. Musk would have been wise to have taken more time, assembled an advisory group of former GOP agency experts from prior administrations who know the turf and support efforts to cut wasteful and dubious spending. For example, Musk should have enlisted my friend Charles Blahous, a former Social Security and Medicare Trustee, and ex-US Senate aide, who recently wrote how DOGE could help the agency operate more cost effectively and efficiently, and provide context and counsel to DOGE’s finding. “Shock and awe” has its drawbacks.

That $160 billion or so in dubious spending is but a drop in the bucket compared to the $5-7 trillion in new spending during the Biden Administration, including the Orwellian named “Inflation Reduction Act” and American Rescue Plan. The combination of those and other spending bills pumped the money supply by 40 percent without a corresponding increase in productivity, creating the inflation that seems, finally, to be wrung out of the economy. A lot of that money was thrown at favored political causes and groups of the left, including charging stations for electric vehicles that still haven’t been built. I’d like to know where all that money has gone.

Still, much of what’s being reported about DOGE’s efforts by the legacy media is more hysterical than factual, fed by special interest beneficiaries of federal largesse. Claims that Social Security benefits, proscribed by law, being cut are not just false, they’re blatant lies.

“I voted for this,” is a constant refrain on social media comments on many of Trump’s actions, especially on the immigration-border control front. I didn’t vote for it all, including reopening Alcatraz or trying to impose electoral reforms on states and localities, or even tariffs on international movies (a “national security threat?” Really?) but I get the sentiment.

I’m largely alone here, but I’m terribly worried about a runaway federal debt of nearly $37 trillion and growing, including $1 trillion just to service that debt, now the third largest federal expenditure, ahead of our national defense. I’m even more concerned that no one, not President Trump nor either party in Congress is interested in tackling overdue reforms at Social Security and Medicare. And don’t get me started in Medicaid. These three programs are the main drivers of our growing debt crisis.

And the budget reconciliation bill being negotiated among Republicans in Congress is unlikely to put much of a dent in that spending. If we didn’t have to spend so much money to service the debt this year, we would be tantalizingly closer to a balanced budget. Without the federal government sucking so much credit, it might actually help lower interest rates for first-time and other homebuyers.

Of equal interest is the reaction to the elimination, consolidation, and trimming of federal spending programs that have addicted many special interest groups to the federal teat. They are screaming the loudest at cuts to places such as the Department of Education, the US Agency for International Development (USAID), Housing and Urban Development (HUD), and Discrimination Diversity, Exclusion Equity, and Indoctrination Inclusion programs throughout the federal government, including the Department of Defense.

A lot of special interests, most well-meaning, have become very, very good at lobbying Members of Congress and grant-making agencies for money to do well-meaning things. I know, I’ve seen them operate over the past 40 years.

Politicians also hate saying no and offending constituents.

The examples are endless. Start with our farm programs that ensure a stable and abundant food supply (and lower prices for consumers). Add Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Programs (SNAP, formerly called “food stamps”), which provides cash assistance to help struggling families buy groceries. Republicans and a few Democrats recognize the need to reform those programs, but there are hunger groups and powerful farm and food lobbying groups already at work to keep their slice of the taxpayers’ pie, including keeping sugary sodas available for SNAP recipients.

The big political battle in Congress now is over Medicaid reforms, one of the most rapidly expanding entitlement programs, thanks in large part to “Obamacare” from nearly 15 years ago. Back then, in 2010, there were nearly 40 million uninsured Americans. A Democratic President and Congress sought a federal solution. They successfully reduced that uninsured number to about 12 million today, but mostly by dramatically expanding Medicaid, the government welfare health care program for lower-income Americans. It was dangled in front of states to win their support for other reforms, since states also subsidize Medicaid. The chickens are coming home to roost.

Subsidies to buy Obamacare were also provided. Many of the mandates to buy health insurance under Obamacare have been repealed or outlawed. Still, for self-employed Americans who didn’t qualify for subsidies or Medicaid, they were forced to ditch doctors and plans they liked for one-size-fits-all Obamacare programs that didn’t pay the first dollar of coverage until they forked over as much as $33,000 in premiums and deductibles.

Expiring provisions of the Tax Cut and Jobs Act from 2017 - the so-called “Trump tax cuts,” are perhaps the major factor. By most measures, the law dramatically simplified the onerous filing of tax returns by doubling the standard deduction and cutting rates across the board. Federal revenue dipped briefly, but the law generated increased federal revenues. The number of Americans who itemized their returns was cut dramatically.

Then, there are the federal programs and grants that subsidize things like transgender puppet shows in Guatemala or “Pride Month” and “Transgender Awareness Day” celebrations. The National Science Foundation, whose investments in basic science enjoy bipartisan support, started prioritizing investment in “social justice.” You can be for those things, but are they an appropriate use of taxpayers dollars? A two-earner blue-collar family in rural America struggling to put food on the table is unlikely to think so, but they’re not top of mind for today’s Democratic party.

The constituencies who are seeing their taxpayer-subsidized programs reduced or - pearl clutch! - eliminated are squealing loudest. Ask them how much of their personal income comes from those appropriations, directly or indirectly. Maybe they’re one of the legion federal government contractors with just the right political affiliations and contacts to conduct “studies” or research for federal agencies, including those transgender puppet shows in Guatemala. Or, perhaps ask them how well these programs are doing to eliminate the problems they are designed to solve.

The best government programs are the ones they go out of business because they fixed the problems they were designed to solve. Sadly, you can count them on one hand with plenty of fingers left over. Often, they just perpetuate and institutionalize them, with constant refrains for more money and/or power.

And then there are the programs, like the Prescription Drug User Fee Act (PDUFA) where pharmaceutical companies subsidize the Food and Drug Administration to expedite approval of those drugs whose ads dominate the advertising on your favorite programs. It is the classic definition of a conflict of interest, no matter the gobbledegook the FDA and Big Pharma spew about “firewalls” and the like.

And get this: the FDA has proposed having food companies pay for food safety inspections at factories. I bet that makes you feel better about the safety of the food you eat. Fortunately, that proposal has gone nowhere.

Give Big Pharma credit - they have amazingly powerful and effective lobbyists. I’ve seen them work. I can’t wait until Secretary of Health and Human Services, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., eliminates such advertising. The same for ambulance-chasing trial lawyers. These ads need to go.

What you’re seeing is the throes of junkies in the early stages of withdrawal. It resembles the five stages of grief.

As Emperor Palpatine said in “Revenge of the Sith,” “All who gain power are afraid to lose it.” Money is power. Government programs, contracts, and funding are all forms of power, and the animosity directed at Elon Musk and DOGE is directly related to those terrified of losing it.

Literally millions of Americans, in the form of government contractors, grant recipients, and scores of others have an addition problem, to taxpayer spending. Why, as a non-profit, go to corporations or Americans for contributions when you can get Congress and the Administration to send you a nice cache of taxpayers’ money? People have sadly discovered how to appropriate themselves money out of the federal treasury. Perhaps worse, politicians have figured out how to bribe us with our own - and our children’s and grandchildren’s - money.

The real Constitutional crisis of our era isn’t Trump’s Executive Orders, which can be overturned by the next election if not the Supreme Court (eventually), just as Joe Biden overturned Trump’s previous EOs, and instituted a few of his own that were subsequently overturned (that a case for going to Congress, not the EO route). It’s the over-reliance, the addiction, of too many Americans and causes to federal spending. It’s long past time for Congress and the President to do the hard thing and say “no.” Maybe teach us to fish instead of giving them to us.

It’s not in their DNA, but their legacies will be tarnished forever if we turn into another Zimbabwe with 3,000+ percent inflation, where people carted around wheelbarrows of million-dollar notes printed on one-side to procure necessities.

Go ahead and ask me: what, Kelly, are you willing to give up, as someone who is on Medicare and qualifies for a nice Social Security retirement check when you turn 70? I’ve already raised the need to trim the retirement benefits of “high earners” who, today, stand to make up to $5,000 monthly in retirement benefits for a program that was supposed to be a poverty-prevention program.

Most “high earners” also did pretty well with stock options and grants, not mention pensions that no longer exist for younger workers and investments that provide the bulk of our nest eggs.

Sign me up to reduce my Social Security retirement benefits as part of a reform program.

How’s that for starters?

I bet you’d be surprised how many Social Security recipients like me would be willing to cough that up to not only save the program, but patriotically reduce future government spending. After all, if we do nothing, we’ll see an immediate 25 percent cut in our benefits in less than decade.

The benefit formulas should be revised so high earners like me collect less. That alone may not solve the problem, but it’s a start, along with indexing future benefits to genuine inflation, not a “wage index.” Those two things alone might be enough to save the program and reduce future obligations. I don’t have a solution for Medicare yet, since its premiums are already means-tested, but I’m thinking about it. Medicare works well for me now, but it’s going broke. If I had my way, I’d give everyone over 65 a means-tested voucher to go find federally-regulated private insurance that fits their individual needs, with high-risk insurance pools able to step in for those with major health issues. Maybe that’s naive, but I’d love to be able to shop for medical insurance the way we shop for car insurance - buy only what you need.

What are we waiting for?

Our federal debt and insatiable appetite for federal spending is the biggest threat to our democracy. Of course, there are great needs to be addressed, and a government that can print money is an alluring source of resources to address them. The poor, Jesus Christ said, we will always have with us. But failing to address our growing debt crisis will make us all poor and suffer in unimaginable and unforgivable ways.

It’s time to pay attention to the campfires that are about to rage out of control. And that means a lot of people need to lose power, deal with their addictions, and get off the dole.