DOGE

Congress is responsible for the purse strings but their job doesn’t end there. They are also responsible for oversight which means they must follow up. It is not enough to just pass a bill giving money to an agency, they must assure the voters that the money is spent as intended in an efficient way. This puts them in an awkward position. One of the top priorities of any elected official is getting reelected. A congressman prefers to hand off the oversight to the bureaucracy and not be faced with investigating waste and fraud. If they were to uncover waste, they might have to cut some program and this would offend some voters and risk getting reelected. In order to avoid this, they just allow the agency to spend as they wish and this has led to the excesses that are now being exposed. This is why the debt keeps rising as congress is afraid to cut. In 1950 government spending was 15% of GDP and today it is 37%. The congressmen will not change as they are winning with 95% of incumbents being reelected. This time Trump is using a different approach asking Elon Musk to step in and find the waste and fraud. This is not the proper way to do this, as it should be done by congress but past experience has shown they cannot do the job. If DOGE is shut down, everything will go back to the old ways which means increasing debt and just kick the can down the road.