Patty Satalia

State College

Who doesn’t support increasing government efficiency? Efficiency makes sense, but wholesale dismantling of government won’t make it more efficient, and it certainly won’t make it more effective.

When it comes to managing our home budget, we don’t haphazardly slash expenses (we can’t eliminate rent or mortgage, or stiff the babysitter), we collect what’s owed us and don’t spend frivolously.

Trump’s war on government is anything but efficient.

The chainsaw approach to cutting the federal workforce is already impacting the economy with private sector layoffs, price hikes and supply issues–and all with NO discernable taxpayer savings. Consider, for example, that the federal health workforce makes up less than 1% of HHS’s budget. Add lawsuits to defend unlawful actions, unemployment compensation and cost increases that will result when those services are sold off to private, for-profit contractors and Trump’s “savings” are an illusion!

Massive cuts to the understaffed IRS mean that half a trillion dollars that’s owed to the federal government–primarily by ultra-rich tax cheats–go uncollected!

In the first two months of Trump’s second term, he’s spent 25% of his days playing golf (at his own clubs) at a cost of $26 million! His multimillion-dollar trips to the Super Bowl, the Daytona 500 and the NCAA Wrestling Championship are the definition of frivolous.

As Thomas Jefferson wrote, “[t]he care of human life and happiness and not their destruction is the first and only legitimate object of good government.” Trump’s cost-cutting is the antithesis of good government.