Over the last several decades you could count on your fingers and maybe a few toes the number of government programs that have been cancelled, no matter how obsolete, inefficient, wasteful, or (in some rare cases) mission accomplished.
Even Ronald Reagan, who called for the cancellation of scores of programs, couldn’t get Congress to end the life support system. After watching Congress fund even the most inefficient agencies, he famously groused that “the closest thing to immortality on this earth is a government program.”
But to quote the back-in-vogue poet of the people, Bob Dylan, the times they are a-changing in Washington.
Last week the seemingly impossible happened. Congress terminated at least a half-dozen major programs, many that fiscal hawks have been trying to terminate for nearly half a century.
The Trump rescission bill made it through the House and Senate and mothballs federal funding for National Public Radio, Public TV and the U.S. Agency for International Development. Sorry Elmo, billionaires don’t qualify for taxpayer subsidies anymore. Meanwhile, the House Appropriations Committee pulled the plug on funding the corrupt World Bank — the multi-billion-dollar piggy bank for globalists.
Nearly 100 parasitic “public interest groups” signed a joint letter howling in unison that this move to defund corrupt foreign aid giveaways would surely kill thousands — even millions — of people. Most of these groups are major recipients of the government largesse that is going away.
They are the epitome of the swamp.
Bravo the Republicans for not caving in to them.
There’re more examples of agencies, bureaus and grant programs that are being put to rest.
The Big Beautiful tax bill cancels many of the Green New Deal taxpayer handouts and the mandate that Americans and the government must buy EVs. Trump has pulled the U.S. out of the World Health Organization that pulled all the wrong levels during COVID and then covered up their lethal errors and lies.
Then there is the Department of Education. This cabinet department was started in 1979 by President Jimmy Carter, as a favor to the teacher unions. The more money the feds have thrown at this blob, the more test scores across the country have fallen. That agency is starting to be dismantled.
Critics dismiss these cutbacks as fiscal small ball — the equivalent of someone who is $10,000 in debt cutting their spending habit by $5.
But Trump is ushering in a much-needed cultural shift in the way Washington operates.
He is proving that Washington really CAN get rid of programs that don’t work. Does an enterprise that is losing $2 trillion a year need to be spending tax dollars on such supposed necessities as: promoting veganism in Zambia, funding pride parades in Lesotho, wind farms in Ukraine, DEIA contractors in Belarus, gender diversity in Eastern Europe and reproductive health climate policies in Central America?
Thanks to North Dakota Senator Kevin Cramer for supplying this list of absurdities that are finally going away.
Stephen Moore is a co-founder of Unleash Prosperity. He is co-author of the book “The Trump Economic Miracle.”
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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