https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2018/dec/2/why-donald-trump-must-declare-war-on-government-wa/
Republicans need to regain the offensive on the fiscal issues. The GOP has somehow allowed big spending Democrats to get to the right of them on the issue of financial responsibility and balanced budgets.
Polls show that Democrats are now more trusted on balancing the budget than Republicans. That’s like losing an arm wrestling contest with Nancy Pelosi.
The big first step for Republicans to regain American trust on fiscal responsibility is for President Trump to deliver a nationally televised prime-time speech from the Oval Office to announce an all-hands-on-deck War on Washington Waste.
Declare a debt spending emergency. If Americans believed Mr. Trump was seriously committed to this initiative, he would be regarded as a fiscal superhero. His approval ratings would sky-rocket. Who better than a businessman president to scrub out the hundreds of billions of useless expenditures that have made Americans so contemptuous of the Washington swamp.
The issue is teed up right now because the spending trends have been so alarming. The Congressional Budget Office just announced that the government is now spending $2 billion more than it takes in every day. Don’t even think about blaming the tax cuts. In 2018, the estimated $3.4 trillion raised in federal revenues was the highest level ever in American history — even with the tax cut. The problem is a spending avalanche that now exceeds $4 trillion of outlays a year.
Several weeks ago a taxpayer watchdog group called OpenTheBooks.com published an open letter signed by former Sen. Tom Coburn, Tom Smith and Adam Andrzejewski and sent to the president urging a waste war and it listed hundreds of examples of taxpayer dollars being flushed down the drain. The nearby table lists many of these little piggies. OpentheBrooks estimates $125 billion in waste at the Pentagon alone.
When Mr. Trump was shown these lists of white elephants he responded: “I thought we already took care of this.” Unfortunately, no. The bureaucratic blob made sure it wouldn’t happen.
Fighting this war on waste won’t be easy. Back in 1981, President Ronald Reagan appointed the famous Grace Commission to ferret out waste, duplication and inefficiency in the federal government. That landmark commission of private sector businessmen and women examined every nook and cranny of the cavernous government agencies in and around Washington and uncovered some $420 billion in bureaucratic overspending.