The Daily Signal - Trump Cuts Bureaucrats—Now Congress Needs to Cut the Checks | E.J. Antoni, PhD

Starting point is 00:00:01 On game day, pain can hit hard and fast, like the headache you get when your favorite team and your fantasy team both lose. When pain comes to play, call an audible with Advil plus acetaminopin and get long-lasting dual-action pain relief for up to eight hours. Tackle your tough pain two ways with Advil plus acetaminephim. Advil, the official pain relief partner of the NFL. Ask your pharmacist at this product's rate for you. Always read and follow the label. We've heard a lot about the Trump administration's attempts to, right-size government and the good progress they've made over the last year.

Starting point is 00:00:37 But now they're bumping up against some harsh realities and are running out of options. In short, the administration needs Congress to start doing its job for a change and cut the spending now. Federal finance is not simply the work of the president and his team, although the executive branch is obviously a player in the game. But it's Congress that passes spending and tax legislation and its high time those legislators actually do something to fix the problem that they themselves helped cause. Hi, I'm E.J. Antony for The Daily Signal. We've heard a lot about the Trump administration's attempts to right-size government and the good progress they've made over the last year. But now they're bumping up against some harsh realities and are running out of options.

Starting point is 00:01:35 In short, the administration needs Congress to start doing its job for a change and cut the spending now. Federal finance is not simply the work of the president and his team, although the executive branch is obviously a player in the game. But it's Congress that passes spending and tax legislation, and it's high time those legislators actually do something to fix the problem that they themselves helped cause. For years, the big spenders in Congress and the Biden administration worked together to drive the nation deeper into debt as they wasted taxpayer money on their crazy ESG-DEI far-left agenda. Meanwhile, Biden hired countless bureaucrats throughout government, and they even forced many private sector companies to do the same if those businesses wanted to meet federal

Starting point is 00:02:28 regulations. That's why diversity officers and other useless roles popped up everywhere. Fortunately, The Trump administration has course corrected. They fired a record number of government bureaucrats last year and cut federal payrolls by more than a quarter million. You have to go all the way back to 2014 to find a time when there were fewer federal government employees than there are today. So it's a good start, as they say, although there are plenty of more cuts to be made to the bureaucracy. Likewise, the Trump administration cut a record amount of regulations last year and has made good progress rooting out abuse, corruption, fraud, and waste. Efforts like Doge, the Department of Government Efficiency, have literally saved taxpayers billions of dollars. Scott Besson, the Treasury Secretary and Russ Boat, the Office of Management and Budget Director, have both made outsized contributions to shrinking government and saving our tax dollars.

Starting point is 00:03:29 We can see evidence of this progress in the monthly statements from the Treasury Department. The cumulative deficit for the current fiscal year, which would include the months of October, November, and December, is down 15.3% compared to those same months from the prior fiscal year under Biden. But as I said earlier, the executive branch only has so many tools in the toolkit when it comes to cutting spending. At the end of the day, the major budget cuts and reforms are going to have to come from Congress. That presents an obvious difficulty given the uniparty's stranglehold on that institution. Between the Democrats who just want to see Trump fail and the big spender Republicans who want to see any budget cuts fail, Trump has an uphill battle when it comes to further progress in the spending fight. Nevertheless, it's a fight worth having because massive budget deficits.

Starting point is 00:04:23 are ultimately the source of most economic ills that began while Biden was president, like 40-year high inflation, the tremendous volatility with interest rates, and the cost of living crisis that pushed home ownership affordability to its lowest level on record. One of the natural consequences of the profligate spending under Biden was the sustained level of borrowing by the government. As the Treasury gobbled up more and more of what's called the loanable funds market, there was less money available for everyone else to borrow. Basically, everyone had to compete with Biden's government for loans, and that made borrowing much more expensive. Interest rates shot up on everything from mortgages to credit cards and from student loans to

Starting point is 00:05:07 auto loans. Consumers who were already burdened with tons of debt because of Biden's cost of living crisis now found themselves getting crushed by interest rates on their credit cards, which set new record highs. But it wasn't just the consumer that got wrecked by the dual evils of large debt volumes and high finance charges. The Treasury became a victim of its own voracious appetite for borrowing. In December, just last month, interest on the debt was a stratospheric $154 billion. That was the second largest line item in the entire monthly statement from the Treasury. only the Department of Health and Human Services spent more.

Starting point is 00:05:53 That means interest on the debt was more than all the money spent by the Department of War. It was also larger than all the spending by the Social Security Administration. It was larger than all the following combined, departments of agriculture, commerce, education, energy, homeland security, interior, justice, labor, state, transportation, and veterans affairs. I ran out of hands. It may be hard to believe, but the interest on the debt doubled during the Biden years from the deadly one-two punch of both the national debt and interest rates shooting up during that time, leaving the Trump administration with yet another mess to clean up. Without help from the legislature, the executive branch can only do so much to get the budget,

Starting point is 00:06:43 the deficit, the debt, and our interest payments back under control. The government constantly spending so much just on interest is now helping fuel the deficit and eating up loanable funds, which is pushing up interest rates for private borrowers and will fuel more inflation down the line. All these reasons and more are exactly why Congress needs to get its act together as soon as possible and put in place real reductions to government spending. Now is not the time for more virtue signaling on the budget. or another government program, or kicking the can down the road once again.

Starting point is 00:07:23 The American people are sick and tired of dealing with the fallout of Congress writing checks that the Treasury can't cash. If the clowns in Congress want to keep their seats in November, then I suggest they be able to present their constituents with a total of how much spending those elected representatives cut and what that equates to in terms of savings for each taxpayer. If they can't get that done, if they can't cut anything from this bloated federal budget, then maybe it's time the voters give someone else a shot. Someone who will put Americans first, do what needs to be done,

Starting point is 00:07:59 and cut the leviathan of government spending down to size. I'm E.J. Antony for The Daily Signal.

The Daily Signal - Trump Cuts Bureaucrats—Now Congress Needs to Cut the Checks | E.J. Antoni, PhD

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