Despite the howls of outrage and already-launched lawsuits from the left, Team Trump’s pause on federal spending on most grants, loans and more is a wise, perhaps necessary, move to ensure Americans’ tax dollars are well spent and to keep up the battle against Bidenflation.
The freeze doesn’t impact affect programs that provide direct benefits to recipients; Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid and food stamps are all exempt.
Yet the outlays now frozen pour into almost every corner of society and accounted for up to $3 trillion of federal spending in 2024.
No way was every single dollar of that well-spent or properly overseen; how much if any was even necessary?
Federal programs and grants typically start because they seem like a good idea, but almost never end even if they flop; the endless proliferation guarantees significant waste and misuse.
And when the unfunded spending growth goes on steroids, as it did these last four years, Americans get hit by inflation.
The memo itself, from the Office of Management and Budget, makes clear why the freeze is happening: “The American people elected Donald J. Trump to be President of the United States and gave him a mandate to increase the impact of every federal taxpayer dollar.”
And while national Democrats like New York’s Chuck Schumer and Washington’s Sen. Patty Murray are letting out their usual apocalyptic cries, while New York Attorney General Letitia James and her peers in other states are suing (and indeed a federal judge temporarily blocked the freeze late Tuesday), this is a crucial opportunity to put certain government outflows under a microscope and find out which are really necessary.
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Just the thing to excise federal bloat and potentially save hundreds of billions (or even more) and so help drive inflation down.
Is this approach coming into the admin via Elon Musk and the techie philosophy that underlies DOGE?
Certainly, it resembles zero-based budgeting (a fiscal strategy popular in the startup world) for Uncle Sam.
Under ZBB, past spending isn’t automatically assumed to be justified during forward budgeting; instead, every dollar slated to be spent requires an actual reason.
I.e., just because the Antiracist Systemic Justice Center for Progress got $37 million last fiscal year doesn’t mean it gets $37 million this year, or even $1. (Agencies have until Feb. 10 to justify their spending.)
Regardless, the memo and the out-of-whack response are strong reminders: Those trillions do not belong by rights to nonprofits or defense contractors or research universities.
They belong to the American taxpayer.
And the government these taxpayers repose their trust in has not only the right but the duty to see that the money’s spent well, in a way that doesn’t end up hammering everyone’s pocketbook.