America is now drowning in $36 trillion in federal debt.
While past efforts to reform our nation’s finances have failed, Washington, D.C. will have a new sheriff in town after Jan. 20, leading a posse with plans to take the bold steps necessary to clean up our fiscal mess. To achieve different results compared to past efforts will require Republican unity.
Thankfully, President-elect Donald Trump’s plan to restore America’s economic stability has close allies in Congress. In an interview with the Daily Caller News Foundation, Republican Kentucky Rep. James Comer, chairman of the House Oversight Committee, outlined his new Subcommittee on Delivering on Government Efficiency (DOGE), led by Republican Georgia Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene.
“I don’t think there’s going to be any shortage of waste, fraud and abuse for that subcommittee to investigate,” Comer said.
Comer said DOGE will find healthcare savings, through reducing Medicare fraud and reforming areas like pharmaceutical patents and pharmacy benefit managers.
“One of the things I would encourage those to do — in this administration and Pam Bondi — we need to encourage our U.S. attorneys to focus more on Medicare and Medicaid fraud,” Comer said. “It’s not a priority for a lot of jurisdictions, and that’s something that needs to be a priority.”
Comer said Congress will adopt DOGE cuts through a legislative process known as “reconciliation” that doesn’t require a 60-vote threshold in the Senate.
“You’ve got to do it on reconciliation, because you’ll never get 60 votes,” Comer said. “Democrats don’t want to cut anything, right? Nothing.”
Comer’s DOGE bears a similar name to Trump’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), which will be run by Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy.
Trump’s DOGE has set its own deadline at July 4, 2026 (America’s 150th birthday). Comer said he plans to keep his DOGE subcommittee throughout the entire 119th Congress, which ends in January 2027.
Ramaswamy told Fox News’ Maria Bartiromo that DOGE is “the greatest effort to downsize government in our lifetime” and that, “We expect certain agencies to be deleted outright.”
Comer said the Department of Education is a prime example of a duplicative federal bureaucracy that has outlived its usefulness.
He said it is duplicative because each state has its own Education Department. Comer said it’s better to cut out the middleman and send federal education funding directly to the states in the form of block grants. Federal student loans can be administered by the Treasury Department.
Comer said he would love to bring Democrats on board, but he is no Pollyanna.
“I have yet to meet a Democrat in Congress that’s concerned about $36 trillion debt, that’s concerned about Social Security running out of money,” Comer said. “There may be one, but I haven’t met them or they’re very secretive on their opinions.”
This can’t wait any longer.
Our debt-to-GDP ratio, e.g. the size of our debt compared to our productive economy, was less than 31 percent in 1980, growing to nearly 57 percent by 2000 and mushrooming to 120 percent today, according to the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis. This is unsustainable and will bankrupt America’s future.
Conservatives have a golden opportunity to create a generational shift in America’s fiscal future. The only way these massive spending reforms will take place is if Republicans remain unified.
During Trump’s “off-season,” he garnered a fairly successful track record in primarying squishier Republicans who would be far less likely to use the political muscle we need to stop our fiscal drift. Comer is confident that Trump’s cost-saving agenda will pass, thanks to GOP unity.
“Obviously, I can only speak for the House,” Comer said. “We can get, I think, just about everything they want, passed out of the House.”
We’ve become awash in feckless spending, unmoored by excessive COVID-19 stimulus packages (riddled with fraud), followed by more in Green New Deal scams and pet project giveaways.
Trump and congressional Republicans earned a powerful mandate to rein in government spending, which will also lower inflation. It’s what the American people desire and deserve.
Carrie Sheffield is a senior policy analyst at Independent Women’s Voice.
The views and opinions expressed in this commentary are those of the author and do not reflect the official position of the Daily Caller News Foundation.
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