In air combat over enemy territory, when the fighter plane encounters flak, the pilot knows that he is over the target. American people can be sure that the Department of Government Efficiency is over the target. And it should come as no surprise that many of the most vocal critics of Musk and DOGE have money and other benefits to hide that came from gaming political opportunities associated with direct and indirect access to taxpayer funds—amounting to control of huge sums of public money.
Democrat opposition to DOGE markedly increased after USAID was shuttered following investigations and audits that uncovered the records of USAID diverting taxpayer funds to countless programs in countries all over the world that supported unmistakable patterns of an ideological and political agenda totally out of step with the majority of Americans and the needs of the people of the countries receiving funding from USAID.
As Musk’s DOGE began moving swiftly to audit every federal agency, Democrat panic broke out, with some of the most vocal flak coming from those who have gained inordinate net worth of tens of millions of dollars while serving as U.S. representatives and senators whose annual salaries are generally between $174,000 and $210,000. Leading the charge in the U.S. Senate against DOGE is Chuck Schumer (net worth $75 million), and Elizabeth Warren (net worth $67 million). In the U.S. House of Representatives, the sharp critics of DOGE include Jamie Raskin (net worth $19 million), Maxine Watters (net worth $10 million), and Hakeem Jeffries (net worth $9 million)
The prospect of auditing all sitting U.S. Senators and Representatives has quite a few of them flipping out over the potential of having to prove how they made their money while serving in Congress on fixed salaries. Maxine Waters recently acknowledged on record: “We don’t know what all they have on us.”
The likely nexus between foreign aid and domestic corruption is called kickbacks. Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky recently admitted that he could not account for half of the $175 billion military and financial aid received from the United States. Some have alleged that there have been kickbacks to U.S. congressional facilitators. If true, this theft of taxpayer dollars is a grand larceny felony.
Economists and financial experts such as Dave Brat—Dean of the Liberty University Business School, Catherine Austin Fitts—former U.S. HUD Assistant Secretary and former managing director of Dillon, Read & Co., and Martin Armstong—founder of Armstrong Economics, agree that America’s current trajectory is alarmingly unsustainable.
Early DOGE findings suggest that crime and theft of taxpayer dollars in the U.S. today is the worst of any country in history. Steve Quayle—prolific author, historian, and forecaster—points out that the theft and the stealing of taxpayers’ funds revealed by DOGE are at “off the chart levels.” In a recent interview he said, “of all the pirates in history, nobody can match the level of theft that has happened [in the United States].”
That DOGE is routing out all this fraud and misallocation of resources is good and necessary, but like the withdrawal that the drug addict goes through to get healthy, the United States may have to pass through extraordinary pain and upheaval to regain stability and genuine economic health. And as DOGE digs up and uncovers more, and this truth comes out, investor confidence in the U.S. debt market may get rocked.
DOGE’s revelations of waste and fraud in U.S. government spending are necessary—forcing major reform of government spending, but it’s likely to cause some U.S bond buyers to withdraw from the market due to a loss of confidence in the near term—that is over the next four years when there is some $28 trillion in U.S. Treasury bonds and notes coming due and rolling over. Creative solutions are needed in the near term to bridge the confidence gap before the benefits of massive fiscal budgetary reform brings stability and confidence back to the market.
The U.S. debt markets cannot be allowed to grind to a halt because of illiquidity, which would trigger defaults in the far larger $200+ trillion derivative market. Defaults there could trigger implosion of the broad U.S. financial system.
Solving our fiscal crisis requires creative thinking and strong leadership, which Trump is demonstrating with decisive actions to downsize government and rely more on external sources of funding through tariffs than internal taxation.
Fortunately, the federal government is resource rich, being the largest landowner in the United States, owning some 640 million acres, or 28 percent of the country's landmass, located primarily in 12 western states, including Alaska.
It is time to think outside the box and consider selling federally owned public land with the mandate that mineral, oil and gas production be deregulated and accelerated, with a tax benefit-induced revenue share dedicated to paying down the U.S. federal debt. Offshore oil and gas permitting and leasing should also follow the same path of accelerated permitting and revenue sharing.
In the near term, a crisis can be avoided simply by changing current fiscal trajectories. Markets would respond favorably as soon as deficit spending declines—and that starts with U.S. government revenue increasing and spending decreasing.
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Scott S. Powell is senior fellow at Discovery Institute and a member of the Committee on the Present Danger-China. His timeless book, Rediscovering America, has been #1 Amazon New Release in the history genre for eight weeks. https://www.amazon.com/dp/1637581599. Reach him at scottp@discovery.org
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