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President Trump, who was convicted of 34 felonies, and Elon Musk with Republicans acceding, are looting the government to line their own pockets with massive tax cuts and steering federal contracts their way. Mr. Musk and his companies were under investigation by the Securities and Exchange Commission, the Department of Justice, the Federal Aviation Administration, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, the Environmental Protection Agency, the National Labor Relations Board, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, the Department of Transportation, the Federal Trade Commission and USAID prior to President Trump’s illegal dismissal of 18 Inspector Generals. The job of the Inspector Generals is to root out waste, fraud and abuse and they are accountable to Congress and the American people. Mr. Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency, (DOGE), is not responsible to Congress or to the American people. They are not vetted; they could be foreign terrorist for all anyone knows. Mr. Trump fired the Inspector Generals because they were accountable to the American people.
The budget proposed by the Republicans entails $4.5 trillion tax cut mostly for the wealthy and large corporations with $2 trillion in spending cuts that will jeopardize the health care and food programs for poor and middle-class Americans. It is important to remember that during President Biden’s administration, the Democrats dramatically reduced the deficits and the ratio of debt to gross domestic product while creating the fastest recovery in decades and strengthening the social safety net, according to the Congressional Budget Office. The Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget estimates that the Republican budget proposal would increase the debt by “nearly $4 trillion.” Also, they write that the Republican’s budget “economic assumptions are overly aggressive,” meaning that they expect the budget proposals would do more damage to the middle class and increase the debt by a lot more.
Cutting jobs and government agencies randomly with no purpose or plan is wasteful. Furthermore, Mr. Musk’s DOGE group is rifling through Americans personal information through the IRS, the SSI and the Treasury Department. They do not have any clearance or Congressional authority. I want readers to know that Congresswoman Claudia Tenney not only accepts this invasion of your privacy, the loss of government safety net and jobs and the looting of your tax dollars but she praises this behavior.
William Fine
Brockport
The Beacon welcomes comments and letters from readers who adhere to our comment policy including use of their full, real name. See “Leave a Reply” below to discuss on this post. Comments of a general nature may be submitted to the Letters page by emailing [email protected].
The real looting of government is $36+ trillion of national debt and growing dramatically. Keep up the investigation DOGE! The “deep corrupt state” is getting nervous along with their allies. Are they afraid of getting caught?
Wiping out the funding and mission of any agency by firing thousands of employees and stopping the activity is the power of the purse and legislation. Many have reduced federal jobs within lawful parameters, and while honoring due process and collective bargaining agreements. The current Supreme Court precedent due to Nixon is very originalist to me. In the approx. 4500 words in the Constitution there are no words such as Unitary Executive, capitalism, God, Christian, or the right to be rich, but the preamble states a purpose ” to promote the General welfare. ” Congress is listed first for all laws and funds. The President is second and cannot even appoint a Cabinet or Judges without Senate approval of his choices. There is no ideology test for a DOJ prosecutor or FBI agent in the Constitution where one has to believe in the Big Lie, that January 6th was not an insurrection, and that beautiful aspirational words like Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion are evil. If Doge was looking for deficit reduction, they would not have passed this very week a bill that will add $4.5 in tax cuts to the deficit for the richest 5%, with tax increases for everyone else beginning with under $30,000 per year income. Conservatives once believed in a limited Federal government. The current GOP is in our face, our bedrooms, and threatening private sector businesses and institutions on how they can run their business. Trump posted his Marvel superhero picture on his Truth Social this week with the words,” Long Live the King”. When someone tells you who they are, believe them.
In the real world, everybody has a boss, which means anybody can be fired….
everybody in the federal government has a boss and chain of command too
“Looting”? Well Sir, I’m glad the Beacon is here for you to give you a opportunity to vent your misperceptions. (we don’t want anyone blowing a gasket) . The hoopla (much of it media generated) over this subject is amazing. Mr Musk is a aide to the President. He has a security clearance. If you’ve tried to enter a Federal building in DC lately, I can assure you there is vetting going on. The irony here is over the last decade plus there have been dozens of Chinese hacks into Federal data bases. By some estimates >22M people have had their personal information stolen as a result. (I recall one during the BHO Admin where the Fed HR database was hacked, which included most Fed employees and their SS numbers). We’ve even had the FBI Director testify before Congress that there are daily attempts by foreign actors to breech Fed data (many successful) . These seem to have been mostly 1 day stories (and these are just the hacks they have told us about) . When you mention them to most people they yawn and start talking about the weather. The President sends one of our guys to look at where the tax $$ are going in the light of day, and media would give you the impression that civilization is breaking down. I’ve always said , for local government, your school district, Albany , or the Feds, if you could put every line item on a spread sheet (similar to what DOGE is doing) so citizens could review it, we’d all agree there is a lot of junk we shouldn’t be spending tax $$ on. As far as Musk goes, it was revealed that during the Obama Administration , Erick Schmidt (then CEO of Google and one of the worlds rich guys, AND a govt contractor) frequented the White House dozens of times. Nobody ever asked what he was doing there and who he was talking to. Musk makes a visible presence in the light of day and everyone has a cow. I’m glad somebody is shining the disinfectant of sunlight on the corrupt /frivolous budget practices of our Federal Govt.
Well, in reality what we see are appropriations being cut or stopped, the funding for federal employees that administer those appropriations being fired, and as such the courts are slowing or stopping this. Congress has the power of the purse. Earmarks have made a big comeback. Almost no fraud found, just things MAGA disagrees with. The President has the power of the Veto, at that time. The President does not have the power years later using executive orders as a veto and to write new laws. Maybe we should be sending some different people to Congress. Regardless, to rescind future spending on an agency or its funded mission requires a bill in Congress. Trump/Musk have The House and the Senate.
This is not about fraud; it is about autocracy and a power grab. Trump posted on Truth Social his Marvel comics picture with the caption, ” Long Live the King “. There is no attempt at subtlety here.
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Actually the law is murky at best here. There is precedent to not spend appropriations (after Japan surrendered in WWII for example, President Truman stopped spending appropriations on various Military expenditures w/o a act of Congress). The Nixon Admin (following Truman/Eisenhower’s lead) withheld appropriations (contributing to the balanced Budget in 1969). Congress took that to SCOTUS , they ruled that the President had to spend Appropriations. The Court has changed since then from a legislating from the bench mode to a “Originalist” mode (in otherwards, what was the Constitutional intent of the Framers), which would make it seem to be a good time to get this issue before SCOTUS again. Following your theory of the case, no Federal worker could ever be fired. POTUS does run the executive branch, and those Department employees work for him at the end of the day. Certainly, a Fed employee who elects to voluntarily accept a buy-out package can be terminated. A employee that refuses to come into the office to work can be terminated etc (and it sounds like there are a lot or those employees) . Some of the Courts have been as unhinged as the media. One Court ruled (and was overruled) that a Cabinet officer couldn’t access data from their own department. Having worked on Govt contracts, I would conclude there is plenty of fertile ground for DOGE to look at. Congress is their own dysfunctional mess. Earmarks are simply a way of buying votes . They were done away with once. In any event there is NO Looting. We’ll see what the outcome is. (I would think $2T of deficit is enough)
Exactly. Could not agree more.
Trump, Musk, Tenney, all the J6 and election deniers should never be anywhere near government!
As the list of ” I didn’t think the Leopard would eat my face “gets longer, wait for the Medicaid cuts. These champions of the working classes are about to take health care away from millions of children. However, there will be surprises. There are more than 70 million Americans on Medicaid. The majority of Medicaid dollars go to white people, including middle-class and upper middle-class Americans. It is for assisted living and nursing home care for those with spinal cord injuries, MS and other crippling diseases, as well as long term end of life care like Alzheimer’s. Even the upper middle class cannot afford a full-time earner to quit their job and provide 24/7 care for all functions such as cleansing, dressing, eating, and bathroom needs.
Generally, we are talking anywhere from $4,000 plus a month to $10,000 a month.
About 80% of the deficit has happened under Republican Presidents beginning with Reagan and here come more tax cuts for the one percent.
It is amazing to me that are working people think a billionaire, and seven more he has appointed, with most of the rest multi-millionaires, will reform a system that made them filthy rich to the benefit of working people. Many of my parent’s generation where high school dropouts due to the Great Depression and I know of none that could be that ignorant. The Dems in the Senate amended the GOP tax bill three times. First for no tax cut for those with incomes above $10 million, then $25 million, and then $50 million. All three amendments, even no tax cut for those with annual incomes over $50 million, were voted down by Republicans by 53 to 0. Unanimous.