Depending on where you get your news, you will have seen Elon Musk’s work reducing government spending as either the best or worst thing going on in government these days. If you primarily listen to left-wing sources, you will be bombarded with instances where the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) axed vital government programs and heartlessly fired thousands of government employees.
Case in point, the New York Times ran a story where they interviewed dozens of now-former government employees and how they found out they no longer had jobs. ABC News discussed all of the important work ended by the elimination of USAID such as scientific research into and prevention of malaria and AIDS, as well as the ceding of influence to China in the developing world.
However, if you get your news from primarily right-wing sources, you will undoubtedly have heard of the massive amounts of money that some of these departments have spent on complete nonsense. For instance, the Daily Wire reported on a list of waste including $1.5 million to advance DEI in Serbia, $70K for a musical in Ireland, and $47K for a “transgender opera” in Colombia, while Fox News reported on “at least $122 million going to groups aligned with designated terrorists and their supporters.”
The point about DOGE is, as always, the way you view it depends entirely on how the news around it has been curated and fed to you, and almost always it will confirm your priors – either Trump good, or Trump bad. And neither side will ever report the news that the other side is reporting, lest their message be undermined in any way at all.
However, it is necessary to analyze the major reason why government spending by its various bureaucratic departments actually happens, and not just because these expenses are actually programs that these officials agree with on an ideological basis – it is how government funding works. Anyone who has ever worked with grants knows the golden rule of “use it or lose it.” If you receive a government grant for a certain amount of money that needs to be used by a specific date, you had better use that money or else you will never see it again. Not only that, but if you qualify for the same grant again the next time it is available, you will only receive the same amount you spent the last time, and not the full sum of the available funds. It’s like a punishment for not spending everything.
Government funding works exactly the opposite of how you would want a business to run. If you own a business and allocated money for a project to be completed, if the project manager comes back to you and tells you that the project was completed under budget, as long as it is done well, that employee will be rewarded for saving the company money. The next time that project manager asks for certain funds to complete a project, ownership may be more willing to give the asking amount, since it was so well-managed the last time. Government operates the opposite way: They punish those who don’t spend.
And this mentality is why you see so much waste coming from so many areas of government. If a department is allocated $500 million for a year, they will look for every way possible to spend that money so that their budget is not reduced next year. That is why they are able to spend outrageous sums of money on nonsense, like $32,000 for a transgender comic book in Peru. The decision makers at USAID are scared to not spend their budget, lest it be cut the following year, when they may really need the money. If DOGE really wanted to make a difference, it should work on changing the mentality of federal spending to a reward system for coming in under budget, instead of punishing those who leave money on the table.
In fact, money management is the primary difference between the private and public sectors. One would think that a man like Elon Musk, who has spent so much time and energy paring down companies to what they need on a minimal scale, would recognize this, and move to reward those who come in under-budget. One idea would be to provide incentives such as future consideration when more money is needed for bigger projects. Another would be to simply allow government agencies to keep the money they didn’t spend and use it on future projects, without it impacting future budgets.
Either way, the mentality behind why government agencies overspend must be changed. Otherwise, we will continue to get line items like $20 million for an Iraqi Sesame Street television show.
Izzo Zwiren works in healthcare administration, constantly concerning himself with the state of healthcare politics. The topic of healthcare has led Izzo to become passionate about a variety of political issues affecting our country today. Aside from politics, Izzo is a fan of trivia, stand-up comedy, and the New York Giants. Izzo lives on Long Island with his wife and two adorable, hilarious daughters.
