Washington’s Capitol Hill fight: Government is not the enemy

THE two billionaires, Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy, were on Capitol Hill at the start of December, to discuss their newly announced advisory team that they say would cut regulations, spending and headcount within the federal government.

“The taxpayers deserve better,” House Speaker Mike Johnson said. “They deserve a more responsive government, a more efficient government.”

The Department of Government Efficiency, or Doge, was first announced by Donald Trump in November. “It will become, potentially, “the ‘Manhattan Project’ of our time”, the president-elect wrote on his social media platform, referring to a top-secret World War II programme to develop nuclear weapons.

Most taxpayers, according to opinion polls, do indeed share Trump’s enthusiasm about the idea of cutting the federal government spending and making it more user-friendly.

But then, most Americans also want to keep in place many of the social-economic programmes, such as the national pension programme (Social Security) and the healthcare insurance programme (Medicare) managed by the federal government that benefit them and their families.

Indeed, Americans have an ambivalent love-hate relationship with their government. They resent having to spend so much money on funding so many government bureaucrats who make their lives miserable when they come in contact with them.

For me personally, spending several precious hours of my time every year on renewing my driver’s licence is an experience that is just a bit more bearable than visiting my dentist.

Standing in line at the local Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV) can be excruciating, especially if you have to deal with discourteous and incompetent bureaucrats who seem to be doing everything possible to make your life miserable.

Failing to bring with me a required document during my recent visit to the DMV, I was forced to go home and fetch it, and then return to the office and stand in line again.

But then last year, I had to have a surgery to help keep my shoulder functional. The operation is very expensive and could have proved to be a major financial burden for me if it was not for the government agreeing to pay for most of it.

Ironically, many of those who blast the federal government and seek to cut its budget and fire so many in its personnel ranks are conservative Republicans, who are more likely than not to demand that Congress increase spending on the military.

These critics of the government had also led the attacks against liberal Democrats who were calling for defunding the police. When it comes to funding the police, that is actually the kind of government spending that Republicans would welcome.

And all Americans are grateful when those same government bureaucrats they hate show up with relief to help their community affected by an earthquake or a hurricane. And that includes those Republican governors who on a regular day would be expressing their hostility to Big Government.

So, do not be surprised if the same Republican members of Congress who are now hailing Musk and Ramaswamy and their Doge, end up placing major obstacles in the two billionaires’ way to making major cuts in government spending.

Expect the response from your average congressman or senator to be something like this: “Yes, you need to get rid of all those wasteful government programmes. But, no, don’t you dare touch those programmes that my constituencies love.”