Here are some of the untruths told about Elon Musk and DOGE.
“Musk has no right to cut USAID.”
Elon Musk and his team are not cutting any federal programs.
They are auditors. They were given legal authority under a presidential executive order creating the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE).
Its mandate is to identify waste, abuse, fraud, and irrelevance in the federal budget at a time when the U.S. is $37 trillion in debt.
The agency will expire on July 4, 2026.
Ultimately, Musk can propose program cuts, but Trump holds the authority to approve or reject them. He may or may not act on all, some, or none of the DOGE recommendations.
“No one elected Musk.”
Like hundreds of government officials, Musk was appointed by an elected president to run an agency that does not require Senate confirmation.
Musk is as legally legitimate as the national security advisor and his National Security Council, none of whom require Senate confirmation.
Does the left believe former national security advisor Jake Sullivan, who made decisions far more pivotal than Musk, had no authority to do so because he too was neither elected nor confirmed by the Senate?
“It is a dangerous precedent to give a private citizen billionaire like Musk so much power.”
In fact, Musk has far more legal authority than did FDR’s best friend Harry Hopkins. He moved into the White House and de facto set U.S. foreign assistance policies toward Stalin’s Russia.
Musk’s position is more akin to past captains of industry like Henry Ford, Henry Kaiser, and William Knudson appointed by FDR to run the wartime economy.
None of them were either elected or confirmed by the Senate. All of them helped to save a poorly armed US after the debacle of Pearl Harbor.
“Foreign aid is ending.”
Hardly.
Foreign aid, which in all its manifestations in various cabinets and agencies is reaching nearly $80 billion per year, is not ending.
One of its distribution centers, USAID, may be vastly curtailed or bundled into the State Department. But the important bulk grants to allies like Israel or friends like Egypt or aid in times of famine relief and natural disasters to the needy abroad will remain. And these programs will be strengthened and saved precisely because they will be trimmed of skimmers and scammers.
“It is illegal to end USAID.”
USAID was created by an executive order in 1961 by then President John F. Kennedy in response to congressional legislation codifying foreign aid and allowing the president to execute the statute at his discretion.
Nearly four decades later, in 1998, Congress passed another law reifying Kennedy’s USAID as a formal agency but still within the executive branch.
But neither law mandates that Trump bundle all or even most foreign aid in USAID. He can disperse money as he sees fit throughout the cabinets. And he can keep whatever funds or programs he chooses under the aegis of USAID should he wish.
“Trump cannot impound any USAID money legislated by Congress.”
That legal question apparently depends on whose ox is gored.
Neither Congress nor the courts have ever, in blanket fashion, either approved and sustained a line-item presidential veto or outright banned any form of presential impoundment.
But recently Joe Biden, as both vice president in 2016 and president in 2021, set a precedent that an administration most certainly can impound or delay congressionally passed funding as it pleases.
Infamously, Biden publicly bragged that on a trip to Ukraine, he had threatened that government by withholding $1 billion in approved US foreign aid unless it immediately fired Biden enemy prosecutor Viktor Shokin.
That condition was never discussed in any congressional aid authorization (and was the sort of act the left would impeach Trump for in 2020).
More flagrantly in 2021, Biden abruptly and permanently stopped all construction on the border wall. And he impounded those congressionally approved construction funds through a variety of gimmicks.
Biden, remember, without Congressional approval, gratuitously canceled student loan obligations, issued blanket loan amnesties, and promised to ignore or work around court prohibitions of his illegal acts.
“China will be delighted by USAID cuts.”
False. China will be likely upset by the Trump cuts.
Beijing finds its own concrete development projects far more effective than USAID imposing American cultural agendas abroad. Beijing likes self-destructive American aid like LGBTQ activism, transgender chauvinism, and anti-conservative American media.
Does anyone believe China was angry that the USAID created a vast gender studies program at the University of Kabul or had the U.S. embassy there advertise its pride activism, or itself snagged $40 million to engineer deadly viruses?
So, China will be quite unhappy that organs like the New York Times and the BBC are having their USAID subsidies ended. After all, they, along with China, so often vilified their shared existential nemesis—Donald J. Trump.
VDH is, of course, correct on the recissions and impoundments made by the Biden Administration that occurred without fanfare and angst by the media or Congress. A small part of his ability to get away with them was public ignorance of exactly what was being done, but that also depended in a very large part that the Democrat led Congress agreed and chose to not stand in the way.
Almost all of the hand current wringing revolves around a law passed in 1974 to stymie President Nixon’s attempt to move federal monies around in his Administrative Branch. The Act was passed during the height of the Watergate debacle and was a calculated move by Congress to stop Nixon’s so-called Imperial Presidency. To find out specifics about the Act, use the search string Impoundment and Control Act of 1974. In essence, the wording of the Act is such that it is a blocking law, not an enabling law—though there are procedures within the law that would allow certain budgetary moves by the president, the Act is worded such that the effort required is exceeded by any benefit that would be received. Another way of looking at the Act, the Congress says that if we voted for it (programs and expenditures) there is nothing you can do about it-----even if the aim is to accomplish the goal set by Congress in a more efficient manner. To put it bluntly, the Act says that the president is not allowed to save the country money.
An example that has been used before is this-------Congress approves a certain infrastructure item, in this case let’s say it is a bridge to be constructed. Let’s make it the Francis Scott Key Bridge in Baltimore. Congress budgets $1 billion dollars for the project. The President finds a way to re-construct the bridge to the exact specifications laid out by Congress for $500 million----saving half the cost. Under the Act, the president would not be allowed to do this. All $1 billion MUST be spent-----no savings, no efficiencies allowed. If this has you scratching your head, well, welcome to the club.
Speaker of the House Mike Johnson has the power to enable all of Trump’s efficiencies to be made legal but EACH one must be voted upon separately as the Act is written. OR President Trump can present a complete package to the House and a Bill crafted that would require an up or down vote—a sort of Omnibus Budget Bill. (And doing this would get DEEP into the weeds of other legislation on the Budgetary process requiring the approval of both the House and Senate.
Good luck with that because each Congress Critter knows that would have an adverse effect on their personal pork projects. Everyone should remember that vast chunks of money fall off the back of the government’s wagon into the hands of cronies at every bump and turn. It isn’t just about Agencies in Washington, it is also about what trickles down to the state level.
OR Mike Johnson’s House could pass legislation ending the ICA of 1974 once and for all. New legislation could be passed placing the Office of President and that of Congress into a partnership to make all of government more efficient and answerable to taxpayers. I’ve been told that a sudden snowfall in Death Valley is more likely.
I’m certain that much of this has already been discussed with the Congressional leadership in the series of meetings held by Trump both before and after his inauguration as Trump shared his plans—but not a peep has been leaked by either party so far----so it may just be one of my pipe dreams.
There is a way to get all of this done if only the herd of Republican cats in both the House and Senate develop the stones necessary. And though Washington DC is a city made of stone, stones among Republican members of Congress are exceedingly rare and exceedingly small.
For years I listened to Paul Ryan, a huge Swamp Creature, imply that the Act required Congress to fulfill any spending authorized by a prior Congress which was something I immediately recognized as unconstitutional. Based upon such a premise any Congress would have its authority to create law hamstrung by a prior Congress that wished to make its ideological mistakes permanent. The only thing that inhibits law making is the Constitution and is why the Judiciary gave itself the power to declare law unconstitutional with the Marbury v Madison Decision which itself makes no Constitutional Sense.
What Trump is doing using DOGE is legal in every way — he is not trying to abrogate the law. He is not exactly trying to save money but, instead, is redirecting money to what it is supposed to be used for. It is not supposed to be used to pay for hotel accommodations for people who should be deported for violating immigration law. It is not supposed to pay Palestinians in Gaza to buy cement to construct tunnels.
America may be a Constitutional Republic that tends to be immune to the tyranny of a simple democracy, an oligarchy or an outright dictatorship but it clearly is not. The 4th Branch of Government is the neural center of the Swamp, the Leviathan Administrative State that is profoundly criminal and unconstitutional. How did that seed grow and prosper to make a Sequoia look like a weed by comparison? John Adams warned the new Republic when he said “Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other”.
It should be clear that when all three branches of government become infested with the likes of Joe Biden, the Squad and Ketanji Jackson there is no way for this Republic to operate the way it was designed at the time it was ratified by people far more intelligent than what has now poluted all three branches of government.
As George Carlin once said, “It’s a club, and we ain’t in it.”
We are a tribal species. After decades of pondering as to why secular Jews voted for insane leftist policies I came to the conclusion that when they immigrated from Europe the stately and fashionable clubs and social amenities were closed to them. The Republican WASP membership were not about to dilute their membership for various reasons. Hence these intelligent, hardworking entrepreneurs formed their own clubs and also voted and supported those that voted against the status quo. I really think it’s not much more complicated. And Carlin said it best with far less words.
Very interesting and informative comment. You should turn that into an article.