Even after Elon Musk’s late May departure from the Department of Government Efficiency (an oxymoron that provides a key insight into one of the major drawbacks of government), DOGE has announced the termination of 312 federal contracts, yielding savings of $470 million.
The cancellations -- including a $286,000 Department of Defense contract and a $485,000 USAID contract -- could be hailed as victories against government waste. Yet, such fanfare masks a deeper, more troubling reality that can be seen in the current budget battle.
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Neither the programs cut by DOGE nor the sprawling expenditures in the so-called “Big, Beautiful Budget Bill” find any grounding in the U.S. Constitution—a document increasingly treated as a relic, rather than a restraint.
As MRCTV previously has reported, DOGE already has exposed a mountain of reprehensible, unconstitutional US spending, including widespread international welfarism via the US Agency for International Development (USAID) and other bureaucracies.
And now, as Alex Nitzberg writes for FoxNews, we see DOGE citing even more contracts, releasing a statement to offer key details
"’Over the last 7 days, agencies have terminated 312 wasteful contracts with a ceiling value of $2.8B and savings of $470M, including a DoD $286k professional and management development contract for an 'entrepreneurship course at Harvard University', and a $485k USAID contract for a ‘senior general development advisor at USAID Madagascar,’’ the post states.”
But the amount or the absurdity of the handout might cloud the deeper problem, which is reflected in the “Big” new US budget – that problem being the assumption that the federal government can engage in myriad activities that stand in utter contradistinction from the rules of the U.S. Constitution.
Examples like the Harvard course or the USAID advisor in Madagascar are easy to mock—low-hanging fruit in a forest of bureaucratic excess. But these savings, while not insignificant, are a drop in the bucket compared to the federal government’s $7 trillion annual budget. To put it in perspective, $470 million represents less than 0.007% of federal spending.
In other words, DOGE’s efforts, though well-intentioned, risk becoming a symbolic gesture if the leviathan of federal expenditure grows unchecked.
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