Between Elon Musk’s brief, disastrous tenure with the misnamed “Department of Government Efficiency” (DOGE) and the Republicans’ mad rush to gut healthcare and food assistance for millions of lower-income Americans, one would think they’d just discovered a massive cabal of diehard leftist criminals committing “fraud, waste and abuse” in the federal budget.
A quick look back, though, shows that there’s nothing new in the Republican charge that our government is awash in fraud, waste and abuse. That verbal triumvirate has been standard fodder with so-called conservatives since at least the 1980s and the Reagan administration.
In fact, the biggest fraud in this whole charade is the unproven accusation that fraud, waste and abuse are rampant within the government. How else can anyone justify throwing millions of people off Medicaid when its money goes not to patients but to healthcare providers?
As for waste, isn’t it curious that DOGE and the Republicans have done nothing to rein in spending at the Pentagon? As Republican Sen. Everett Dirksen reportedly said back in the day, “A billion here, a billion there—pretty soon you’re talking real money.” Republicans never seem to see a weapons system that they don’t like, and they like to throw money at it. Where’s the oversight?
Then there’s abuse. I’m not sure what the deficit hawks mean by this, but they sure seem to like paying for it. How else to explain the huge increase in funding for Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) as they continue their raids, detentions and deportations unchecked by any semblance of due process or common decency?
I’m all for going after fraud, waste and abuse in our government. But if we’re going to do that, let’s look at where those are actually happening and who is responsible. We probably won’t reduce waste as much as some would like, but then again we don’t need to give huge tax cuts to those who don’t need or deserve them.
Michael J. Dover is author of ‘To Feed the Earth: Agro-Ecology for Sustainable Development.’
