Too Disgusting

by Errington C. Thompson, MD –

For reasons that are unclear, Elon Musk was present.

Musk explained that drastic cuts in government were necessary to prevent the government from going “bankrupt.”

In order to understand what this nonsense really means, we have to go back and look at the tax cuts that George Bush implemented in 2001 and again in 2003. We were told we had more than enough money for his tax cuts. That turned out to be untrue. The tax cuts did not generate any of the economic growth that would have been required to offset the cuts.

Now the time has passed, we can look back and see how much these tax cuts actually cost us. According to the Congressional Budget Office, the Bush Tax Cuts cost us $4 trillion.

We have learned from Ronald Reagan’s tax cuts that they rarely pay for themselves. Instead, Republican tax cuts work by cutting benefits for poor and middle-class families and giving those benefits—money—to the upper 10%. In fact, most of the benefits go only to the very wealthiest families, the obscenely wealthy upper 1%.

In 2017, Donald Trump and the Republicans passed another large tax cut. As usual, the benefits went disproportionately to the rich and superrich. According to the Congressional Budget Office, these tax cuts will cost Americans $1.9 trillion over a decade.

Now, you do not have to be a mathematician to be able to figure this out. It seems that if we stop giving away tax cuts, and reverse the huge money transfers we have made over the last 20 years, we will have fixed our budget shortfall. And therefore, we are not bankrupt, and we won’t be.

Musk and Trump are also telling the American people that the government is “too big.” We have to reduce its size. Really? The US Bureau of Labor Statistics created a graph of all federal employees since 1980. It shows that employment spikes every ten years as we conduct the census.

According to our data, the federal government has been approximately the same size since 1980. During this same time, our population grew by 46.7% from 227 million to over 333 million. Our government is smaller than ever now: over those 40 years, it has become much smaller as a percentage of our overall population.

Don’t tell me the government is too big. That’s nonsense.

DOGE

A good magician has an ability to keep your attention over here while he is doing something else over there. This seems to be the purpose of DOGE, the so-called “Department of Government Efficiency.” As far as I can tell, in the first five or six weeks of this administration, DOGE has not been efficient at anything. Basically, Elon Musk has been walking around with a hatchet trying to create as much chaos as possible.

(And remember, DOGE does not exist as an official department in the United States government. It is a fake agency, made up by Donald Trump without the legally required action by both houses of Congress. Under our Constitution, DOGE has no power, no existence, and no authority to do anything except advise the president and make “recommendations” to him.)

But I understand—we can all understand—Musk’s task. He was told to cut $1-$1.5 trillion from the budget so that Trump could pass another tax cut that would benefit Elon Musk and other billionaires.

The irony is that we have a blueprint for cutting government waste. President Bill Clinton did it during his term in office. He charged Al Gore with a National Performance Review. Agencies were consolidated or eliminated. They made specific recommendations on how to decrease bureaucracy. They worked with Congress to pass legislation needed to help improve efficiency. They cut over 380,000 employees from the workforce.

They did not cause widespread panic. They worked with the agencies to dive deep into the paperwork to determine how to improve things. There were no systemwide emails and firings. There was no nonsense.

The United States government already has a specific agency to examine government waste and efficiency. It is called the Government Accountability Office (GAO) and has existed since the 1920s. All Elon Musk and Donald Trump need to do is read their reports. The reports are filled with details on how the government is spending our money and how we can spend it more efficiently. In other words, DOGE is a waste of our time, money, and common sense.

Lies and More Lies

Musk’s lies keep on coming. He said that he was eliminating programs that were not actively helping citizens; he was just targeting “non-essential programs.”

For example, he gutted the USAID (US Agency for International Development) program. Well, USAID was paying MANA Nutrition, a Georgia-based company, to make a peanut paste that was high in nutrition. These paste packets were shipped to starving people in Africa. The program’s current contract was suddenly stopped. No shipments were going out. But the government refused to pay MANA the money it had promised under its contract. Lots of people there suddenly didn’t have jobs. And all the paste they had already prepared suddenly could no longer be delivered, so instead it was wasted.

Musk swore that no critical programs were being interrupted, but this was not true. The funding was restored after days of the media hounding Musk and DOGE. Again, let me reiterate that this is NOT how our government should work. If Congress wants to defund a program, it removes it from the budget.

That’s how our government works—according to our Constitution and laws. Both Houses of Congress pass the Budget, and the president signs the legislation. That is how we defund a program. I’m not sure that everything that Musk is doing is legal. Where in the Constitution does it say that the president has the power to eliminate any agency created by Congress?

Ambush at the White House

The Battle of Little Big Horn is one of the most famous battles in American history. The United States had reneged on yet another treaty with the Native Americans. (1868 Treaty of Fort Laramie). Lieutenant Colonel George Custer was sent to abolish the rebellion led by the Lakota, the Northern Cheyenne, and the Arapaho tribes.

Custer divided his forces. He was led into an ambush. The Native American warriors led by Sitting Bull and Crazy Horse annihilated the Seventh Cavalry. This was one of the most lopsided and total defeats in American history.

Vice President JD Vance and President Donald Trump tried to lead Volodymyr Zelensky into a similar ambush. He was invited to the Oval Office, where he was met by cameras and the media. They hoped to bully, cajole, and push President Zelensky into a “deal.” Donald Trump said he wanted the mineral rights to some regions of Ukraine, but it was never clear to me what Ukraine would get in return.

Additionally, it seems that Donald Trump wanted Ukraine to pay for weapons, material, and money that we had already given Ukraine. This would add up to somewhere around $150 billion. JD Vance wanted President Zelensky to thank President Trump for his generosity. President Zelensky turned the situation on its head and stated that he had already thanked the American people for their generosity and would be happy to thank them again.

Over the last three years, President Zelensky has shown us that he is Ukraine’s wise, proud, and thoughtful leader. He was not going to be pushed into a deal. He clearly was not going to be pushed into an agreement that would not benefit Ukraine. He needed security guarantees. He got none. He was a guest in the White House. He was being treated as if he was a prisoner at Gitmo.

As a democracy, we need to support democracies when we can. We need to stand up for good against evil. Russia has illegally invaded Ukraine twice in the last 15 years. Ukraine is a democracy. We need to push to get Ukraine into NATO, guaranteeing Ukrainian security.

But Donald Trump does not want this. Trump is not making Russia pay any price for starting this war. Trump is on the wrong side of this equation. The EU states have rallied around Ukraine with Britain and France leading the way. The European countries need to sign a security agreement with Ukraine. This agreement would be outside of NATO. Kicking Russia out of Ukraine is essential for European security.

Trump is awful at foreign policy and diplomacy. With Trump, it is not about the United States, Ukraine, or the European Union. It’s not about global diplomacy, and it’s not about foreign policy. It’s about what he can personally get out of it. It’s always about him.

State of the Union

Trump spent an hour and forty minutes reminding us of how great he is. He is doing a great job because he tells us he is doing a great job.

I would be impressed if he had passed tons of legislation and then signed those bills into law. He hasn’t. Instead, he is using executive orders. But, again, this is not how our democracy is supposed to work. I would have been impressed if he had gotten a bipartisan agreement on border security. Then he could have hired thousands of border patrol agents to secure and keep the border secure. Instead, he sent the military to the border.

I can’t watch or listen to Trump. I can not take him into my spirit. There are too many lies. There is too much hatred. There is too little thoughtfulness. There is too little trying to make life better for the average American.

When I was young, and when I really upset my mom, she would look at me and say, “You’re too disgusting.” Donald Trump is a bully. He is not the right person for the job. He is too disgusting.

NOTE: The views and opinions expressed here, as well as assertions of facts, are those of the author. They do not necessarily represent the views or opinions of The Urban News.