What can we do when the government is losing our money

To the Editor:

I was going to Louie’s for a few laughs the other day, but I heard something on the news that put that plan aside for a while. It was a shock, not the kind of uncomprehending shock you might feel with an unexpected death in the family, but more like a vague earthquake, the sense that something had revealed a different view of the world. The news was that the DOGE people had uncovered evidence that the government has spent 4.7 trillion (yes, trillion, with a T) dollars without any idea where the money went; in other words, in their checkbook, if you will, there’s no record of who got those checks.

The Democrats have been crowing that, after claiming that he would find 2 trillion in savings, Musk has only found 160 million so far; they were decrying DOGE as yet another unsuccessful attempt to “fix Washington.” But now we know that the DOGE boys have found financial wrongdoing of an unprecedented scale in Washington. It could be embezzlement; it could be simply careless bookkeeping, but in either case, it shows that our money is in the hands of criminals or incompetents, and, since it must have been going on for a long time, it’s clearly a bipartisan screw-up. (I wonder if anything has been done about this since.)

What is just as bad is the reaction to it. After one news cycle, the story disappeared, leaving not a ripple in the water, and the media went on to worry about the lowlife stuck in Ecuador’s prison and why Musk had a black eye. Astonishingly, Senator Warren declared that we should do away with the debt limit, presumably because we simply keep raising it every year. This asinine suggestion is like saying, we have a 60 mph speed limit, but everybody does 70, so let’s get rid of the speed limit.

What should we do when we find out that the government is simply losing our money? We could stage a tax revolt and simply stop paying. That would bring a depression that would probably be worldwide. Some people who no longer have money would commit suicide; there would be deaths from starvation. There would be widespread violence, and the short term would be horrendous. However, in the long term, there would be a long-term recovery and a chance to rewrite the rules of government. So that we don’t repeat our mistake, we could legislate that the government is not allowed to make any grants to private people or companies for any reason. Furthermore, every member of Congress would have to sign powers-of-attorney giving control of his or her financial affairs to a group of local citizens empowered to see that the congressman did not unduly benefit from favors resulting from their time in office.

The bankruptcy that would result from a tax revolt would mean that we no longer would be burdened with 34 trillion of debt, but that there would be no longer any government handouts (which is why we are sinking) for anyone. No Social Security, no Medicare, no Medicaid. The loss of Medicaid would probably be the most terrifying for a lot of people, because it would mean that we could no longer put old Uncle Earl in a nursing home that the government pays for; we would have to take care of him at home.

Let’s talk about healthcare for a minute. That paragon of virtue, Senator Bernie Sanders, has declared that “healthcare is a human right”, which is nonsense. If that were so, then presumably housing, food and clothing would also be human rights, which is to say that money would be a human right. But let’s take Bernie at his word, in which he really means that someone has a right to healthcare that somebody else will pay for. Now, if we are to start cleaning up the financial mess by stopping further borrowing, that means that I will have to pay for Bernie’s healthcare, and, conversely, Bernie will have to pay for mine. Thus, my taxes will flow through an army of well-paid bureaucrats in Washington to get sent by more bureaucrats to Bernie, and so on. Now, one day, a friend of mine who will be paying my healthcare and I are having a couple of drinks. And we realize that it would be simpler if I simply pay him the money, instead of sending it through Washington, and, likewise, he will pay me. And, after another round, we realize that it is even simpler if we each just pay our own. Thus, if healthcare is a human right, we don’t need Medicare or Medicaid.

Now, all the catastrophes that I discussed above need not take place if the government could wean us off government support, with something like reducing all of our entitlements by 20% a year for the next five years, thus giving people time to adjust to new realities. Would the government legislate something so clear-cut and simple, after decades of robbery, sloth, and regulation in their huge anthill on the Potomac? Not a chance.

Which means that our current slide to insolvency will just continue until the whole creaky government structure sinks into the mud, and each of us, with no further government support, will be left in one of three categories: Green: doing well without the Feds, thank you very much; Yellow: having to give up some toys and vacations; Red: in a bind, struggling to keep afloat.

What happens then? Well, everyone, now totally disconnected from the government, will look around to see how their town is doing. And then, and I will put $5 down on this, the Greens will figure out a way to help the Reds to a degree that was never thought possible, through charity or loans or other deals, after getting together and reviewing where people stand.

What do we learn from these guesses as to the future: nothing new. Congress has a choice: cut some of our entitlements now, so that the government can limp along for a while; or hold tight to them, to see them all vanish some day (which would happen in the foreseeable future). Whatever other questions are being debated in Trump’s bill are irrelevant concerning that decision.

John Brittain

Lewistown