Spending

Congress is responsible for oversight but they have lost control. The results can be seen in the many unexplained expenditures by different agencies now being exposed by DOGE. A likely reason for this is that the government has gotten so large that congress cannot keep track of what is happening. The president does not have control over how agencies spend the funds allocated to them by congress but he can expose waste and fraud and then ask congress to act. By doing this the president has opened Pandora’s Box and the people are seeing the many odd expenditures, things like $365,000 spent by the National Endowment for the Arts to promote circuses in city parks. There are many such projects which might be acceptable if the country had a surplus but not when there is a $36 trillion deficit. While what Trump is doing will eventually be shot down by the Supreme Court, the hope is that it will force congress to carry out their responsibility by appointing a DOGE like group to help them dig into these odd programs. This will be difficult because the establishment wants to maintain the status quo. The Gramm Rudman Hollings Act of 1985 tried this but in a few years, congress passed new laws to negate the Act. Trump is trying a different approach by having the cabinet heads appoint agency managers who will cut the fat. Even getting rid of the old managers is an uphill battle so real changes are not likely. The chances are that after this initial blowup, everything will go back to the old ways and the excess spending will continue.