President Trump hosted Elon Musk for a farewell press conference on Friday. Musk and his Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) team savvily exposed federal follies and spurred over $100 billion in canceled federal contracts and cutbacks. It remains to be seen whether Congress will codify the DOGE spending cuts. Even if that happens, the “savings” will practically vanish in the tsunami of new deficit spending championed by Trump—up to $4 trillion in the next decade.
Musk lamented that Trump’s “big, beautiful bill” “undermines the work that the DOGE team is doing.” When it comes to budget cuts, Musk’s frustration is reminiscent of the lament of the old-time US trade negotiator: “We traded horses for rabbits and we didn’t even get the rabbits.”
I am not surprised that DOGE thus far failed to slay the DC Boondoggle Dragon because I’ve seen this script several times before. In November 1994, Republicans captured control of Congress. Conservatives had mobilized Americans’ outrage against federal boondoggles and promised to force Uncle Sam to repent his wasteful ways.
I had been writing about federal follies for the Wall Street Journal and other venues for more than a decade. I was invited to testify at a hearing before the Subcommittee on Human Resources and Intergovernmental Relations of the House Committee on Government Reform and Oversight. The hearing had a barnburner of a title: “Waste in human services programs: other perspectives.”
The hearing was chaired by Rep. Christopher Shays, a Republican from Connecticut whose portrait could be listed under dictionary definitions of “unctuous.” The purpose of the hearing wasn’t to expose federal abuses: it was to showcase members of Congress claiming to give a damn about government waste. Committee staffers asked me to target some of the most brazen federal abuses, so I focused on federal job training fiascos and Section 8 rental voucher scandals.
Federal training programs were notorious for corroding the characters of and lowering the subsequent earnings for young trainees. In the District of Columbia, the federal Department of Labor bankrolled the Marion Barry Youth Leadership Institute, even though Mayor Barry was perennially involved in jaw-dropping corruption scandals. I visited that program and saw kids being paid to play basketball and to argue about girls’ enjoyment of sex. A few months later, Mayor Barry was nailed using crack cocaine in a federal sting operation. In my written testimony that day, I noted, “There is no truth to the rumor that the Marion Barry Institute offered a special class to teach kids how to plead entrapment if they were caught with drugs.” Maybe the legacy of that leadership institute helped Barry get re-elected as mayor after he was released from prison.
In my opening statement, I futilely sought to make congressmen recognize their personal responsibility for the failed programs they bankrolled: “There are few things sadder than the government making a false promise to help a young person, promising that person that that person will have a job skill after the training program and then… he is worse off before than he was without the training.” There was a flicker of interest in the eyes of Rep. Edolphus Towns—a black Democratic congressman from New York—but otherwise I could have been speaking Greek to the panel.
Federal job training programs continued to be a pox on enrollees. Almost 20 years later, President Barack Obama admitted that federal programs rely on a “‘train and pray’ approach. We train them, and we pray that they can get a job.” A federal audit that year revealed that the US Labor Department didn’t even bother tracking whether trainees completed training—much less if they ever got a job. A few years ago, the Labor Department confessed that federal programs still fail to boost trainees’ earnings.
Shays was the epitome of a wishy-washy New England Republican who dreaded nothing so much as being labeled anti-government. He was not pleased to hear me thrashing Section 8 housing vouchers that effectively entitled lucky recipients to live rent-free, thereby subverting work ethics and individual responsibility. Shays caviled about my testimony: “As Republicans… we would like to see the private sector be in housing… We intuitively like the Section 8 concept.” Shays asked if I was “suggesting that we just abolish our housing programs or tell me how we can make it work?”
“If someone could show me a way that HUD would become efficient and responsible, I would love to see it,” I replied. He again pushed me for a solution; I said that Section 8 was dispersing public housing residents who had a violent crime rate up to 20 times the national average.
“You’ve got to listen to my question,” Shays remonstrated.
“Yes, I’m listening,” I replied.
Shays declared that there were two options for housing the poor—public housing or Section 8 vouchers.
“Well, the third option is to get rid of housing programs,” I responded.
Shays groused: “You have pointed out the abuses and I’m wrestling with this. What is the solution to it?”
I shrugged: “It is probably very unpopular to realize on Capitol Hill, but it is better to have nothing than a program that drags down neighborhoods and helps ruin people’s lives.”
And thus ended my visit to Capitol Hill that day.
In the following years, Section 8 became notorious for boosting homicide rates in neighborhoods where subsidy recipients resettled. In the first half of 2016, at least 30 people were killed at Section 8 residences in Chicago—along with 7,000 other reported crimes. In Houston, male Section 8 recipients are twice as likely to commit violent crimes as similar people who didn’t receive housing vouchers. Some of the most outspoken critics of Section 8 are black residents who see their middle- and working-class neighborhoods disrupted by freeloading new residents.
The attitude towards government waste from congressmen at that 1995 hearing was akin to someone visiting a remote city and happening to see a massive warehouse fire on Main Street. The person shrugs, “Ain’t that a shame,” and continues on their trip. Or maybe a better analogy is a grisly auto crash scene aftermath where the driver is so intoxicated that he has no comprehension of the carnage he inflicted.
Shays managed to cling to his congressional seat for over 20 years until voters booted him out in 2008. As if to settle any doubts about his intellectual depravity, he then became a resident fellow at Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government. Harvard’s Institute of Politics sainted Shays as a “moderate Republican, who is socially progressive and fiscally conservative… consistently recognized for his bipartisan leadership.” If there were any doubts about Shays being an unreconstructed enemy of all taxpayers, Harvard reminded people that Shays helped create AmeriCorps.
There are a handful of members of Congress who are valiantly seeking to yank in the reins to prevent reckless spending from dooming America’s financial future. H.L. Mencken noted that the main concern of elected politicians’ souls “is to keep a place at the public trough.” Most politicians don’t give a damn about any government waste that buys them applause, votes, or campaign contributions. Most Democrats are avidly pro-government spending, and most Republicans are satisfied to lie about opposing such spending or lying about vast triumphs in spending cuts. In 2011, Republican congressmen exaggerated by a hundredfold the amount of federal spending cuts contained in a compromise deal with President Obama.
Any federal program that perpetuates political power will be considered a success in Washington, regardless of collateral damage beyond the Beltway. There is no reason to presume that Congress is less incorrigible than HUD or any other flaming federal boondoggle.
