DOGE: Democrats Officially Getting Exposed

In recent weeks, senior Democrats like Elizabeth Warren, Richard Blumenthal, and Chuck Schumer have joined thousands of supporters in the streets of Washington, D.C., to protest Elon Musk’s growing influence in government—specifically his role in the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), a Trump-backed initiative to slash wasteful spending. Musk’s mission seems bipartisan on its face: saving taxpayer money by cutting profligate programs. So why are Democrats so fiercely opposed?

Well, it’s obvious that the Democratic party hates the idea of the world’s richest man assuming an unelected position inside the government and clearly, they aren’t protesting the very existence of un-elected officials themselves. More so, it’s the fact that the richest man in the world has control of the world’s most influential media platform, has assumed an un-elected, yet key position from inside the government, and that their own party is being exposed day-in day-out, for dishing out millions of dollars of fraudulent foreign aid and it being exposed by Musk himself.

To rub salt in the wound, the official website of the White House has published some of the ludicrous and preposterous examples of misuse of taxpayer money that the Democratic party has been responsible for. For example, under the Biden Administration the USA gave $1.5 million to “advance diversity equity and inclusion in Serbia’s workplaces and business communities”; $6 million dollars to fund tourism in Egypt and $47M for "improving learning outcomes in Asia". Just three examples of a total muck-up that will have the average American tearing their hair out at, and rightly so.

Despite this, many Democrats push for the existence of USAID as it “is a critical tool for advancing U.S. foreign policy interests and promoting global development” as put by Senator Chris Coons. Even Barack Obama said that, “USAID plays a vital role in providing humanitarian assistance and disaster relief around the world.” But now that so much of its fraudulent activity has come to light, shouldn’t there at least be a conversation inside the Democratic party about its genuine cause for ‘good’? 

What’s strange about the Democrat opposition to the slashing though, isn’t the fact that they aren’t coming forward to support it; more so, it seems like they actually want the fraud to stay. On Tuesday, the 11th, a group of Democratic U.S. lawmakers introduced a bill that would prevent the Trump administration from eliminating USAID. But why? It’s bleedingly obvious that USAID is prone to misuse, so opposing its elimination, you could say, is to support fraud.

But it’s not only foreign aid that Musk and his DOGE team are ripping up, it’s the domestic bureaucracy too. According to the Office of Personnel Management, about 75,000 federal employees have accepted the ‘deferred resignation’ scheme proposed by Trump, giving them paid leave for quitting their government jobs, and have subsequently been laid-off. Furthermore, thousands of DEI contracts have been slashed; DOGE’s total savings so far is estimated to be around $55 billion dollars. Some pretty impressive stuff. 

Although the blame, at least Musk likes to show, may seem to sit heavily with the Democrats, Republicans are guilty of similar things. In fact, if we want to talk about fraud, how about we talk about the $7.8 trillion dollars of national debt that was added under Trump’s first term? Moreover, the Debt-to-GDP ratio hit a post-WWII high of 129% by January 2021, up from 104% when he took office.There was very little discourse of removing wasteful government spending then, or at least to nowhere the level that is happening currently. 

Unfortunately for the Democrats, the spotlight is on them, and not in a positive way, many would say justifiably. But if they continue to advocate for the existence of egregious government spending programmes, by the time the next election rolls around, they shouldn’t be surprised to be on the losing side.