America is now drowning in $36 trillion in federal debt.
While past efforts to reform our nation’s finances have failed, Washington, D.C. will have a new sheriff in town after Jan. 20, leading a posse with plans to take the bold steps necessary to clean up our fiscal mess. To achieve different results compared to past efforts will require Republican unity.
Thankfully, President-elect Donald Trump’s plan to restore America’s economic stability has close allies in Congress. In an interview with the Daily Caller News Foundation, Republican Kentucky Rep. James Comer, chairman of the House Oversight Committee, outlined his new Subcommittee on Delivering on Government Efficiency (DOGE), led by Republican Georgia Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene.
“I don’t think there’s going to be any shortage of waste, fraud and abuse for that subcommittee to investigate,” Comer said.
Comer said DOGE will find healthcare savings, through reducing Medicare fraud and reforming areas like pharmaceutical patents and pharmacy benefit managers.
“One of the things I would encourage those to do — in this administration and Pam Bondi — we need to encourage our U.S. attorneys to focus more on Medicare and Medicaid fraud,” Comer said. “It’s not a priority for a lot of jurisdictions, and that’s something that needs to be a priority.”
Comer said Congress will adopt DOGE cuts through a legislative process known as “reconciliation” that doesn’t require a 60-vote threshold in the Senate.
“You’ve got to do it on reconciliation, because you’ll never get 60 votes,” Comer said. “Democrats don’t want to cut anything, right? Nothing.”
Comer’s DOGE bears a similar name to Trump’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), which will be run by Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy.
Trump’s DOGE has set its own deadline at July 4, 2026 (America’s 150th birthday). Comer said he plans to keep his DOGE subcommittee throughout the entire 119th Congress, which ends in January 2027.
Ramaswamy told Fox News’ Maria Bartiromo that DOGE is “the greatest effort to downsize government in our lifetime” and that, “We expect certain agencies to be deleted outright.”
Comer said the Department of Education is a prime example of a duplicative federal bureaucracy that has outlived its usefulness.
He said it is duplicative because each state has its own Education Department. Comer said it’s better to cut out the middleman and send federal education funding directly to the states in the form of block grants. Federal student loans can be administered by the Treasury Department.
Comer said he would love to bring Democrats on board, but he is no Pollyanna.
“I have yet to meet a Democrat in Congress that’s concerned about $36 trillion debt, that’s concerned about Social Security running out of money,” Comer said. “There may be one, but I haven’t met them or they’re very secretive on their opinions.”
This can’t wait any longer.
Our debt-to-GDP ratio, e.g. the size of our debt compared to our productive economy, was less than 31 percent in 1980, growing to nearly 57 percent by 2000 and mushrooming to 120 percent today, according to the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis. This is unsustainable and will bankrupt America’s future.
Conservatives have a golden opportunity to create a generational shift in America’s fiscal future. The only way these massive spending reforms will take place is if Republicans remain unified.
During Trump’s “off-season,” he garnered a fairly successful track record in primarying squishier Republicans who would be far less likely to use the political muscle we need to stop our fiscal drift. Comer is confident that Trump’s cost-saving agenda will pass, thanks to GOP unity.
“Obviously, I can only speak for the House,” Comer said. “We can get, I think, just about everything they want, passed out of the House.”
We’ve become awash in feckless spending, unmoored by excessive COVID-19 stimulus packages (riddled with fraud), followed by more in Green New Deal scams and pet project giveaways.
Trump and congressional Republicans earned a powerful mandate to rein in government spending, which will also lower inflation. It’s what the American people desire and deserve.
The inauguration of President Donald Trump as the 47th President of the United States was the most prominent over-arching news story of the day on Monday. The reactions of Arizona’s elected leaders ranged from joy, excitement, and relief to cautious rapprochement, vehement rejection, petulant accusations, and denial.
Support for Trump by Republican members of Congress and other prominent figures has been consistent in Arizona, while unexpectedly some Democrats have taken a moderate, even conciliatory stance toward the President.
Tucson-area Republican Congressman Juan Ciscomani posted from within the Rotunda writing, “Honored to attend the inauguration of our 47th President — Donald J. Trump! And I look forward to working together and delivering for the American people[.] Congratulations, President Trump!”
Honored to attend the inauguration of our 47th President — Donald J. Trump! And I look forward to working together and delivering for the American people 🇺🇸
In a subsequent ‘selfie’ with Trump, Ciscomani quoted the President’s inaugural address writing, “’In America, the impossible is what we do best.’ —President Donald J. Trump [.] Now we get to work fighting for the American Dream!”
“In America, the impossible is what we do best.” —President Donald J. Trump
Rep. Paul Gosar (R-AZ-09) posted to the social network writing, “It’s a new day in America. Our long nightmare is soon over. 4 yrs of divisiveness, failures, corruption, weakness will be replaced w/ hope, strength, prosperity & American greatness. I look forward to working w/Pres Trump 2 make the future of this great country great, once again.”
Congressman Greg Stanton (D-AZ-04) told AZCentral, “As President Trump retakes office, here’s my promise: I’ll work to find common ground when it’s in Arizona’s best interest.” Stanton emphasized that he would remain loyal to the “fundamental freedoms,” of Arizonans.
District 5 Republican Andy Biggs, who announced his exploration of a gubernatorial run on Tuesday, posted “Hail to the Chief,” and told Trump, “Welcome back, Mr. President.”
Freshman Republican Rep. Abe Hamadeh appeared with Trump’s Voice of America Director Designee Kari Lake in a Newsmax spot during the President’s arrival at St. John’s Episcopal Church. He shared video to X writing, “We will pass President Trump’s America First Agenda as quickly as possible.”
Congressman Abe Hamadeh: “We will pass President Trump’s America First Agenda as quickly as possible.” pic.twitter.com/8ZBM3DgUjF
During the inaugural festivities, District 4 Rep. Eli Crane wrote, “We made it. Today is January 20th, and Donald J. Trump will be sworn in as President of the United States. The greatest political comeback of all time. Now the real work begins. Let’s go!”
He added a short panoramic video of the Capital Rotunda’s interior in the lead up to the ceremony adding, “So thankful to all of the Arizonans that put in the work to get to this moment.”
Took a quick selfie video of the rotunda ahead of President Trump's arrival.
So thankful to all of the Arizonans that put in the work to get to this moment. pic.twitter.com/fIOTT8hqHN
Meanwhile Freshman Democrat Rep. Yassamin Ansari ,who took the seat of now-Senator Ruben Gallego, blew off the inauguration, eschewing it for a Martin Luther King, Jr. Day event in Phoenix. Posting to X, Ansari derisively noted the attendance of big tech figures such as Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg, Amazon’s Jeff Bezos, X’s Elon Musk, and Google’s Sundar Pichai: “Nothing to see here… just Donald Trump’s inauguration… front row featuring the richest men on Earth excited to get even richer at the expense of working people.”
Nothing to see here… just Donald Trump's inauguration… front row featuring the richest men on Earth excited to get even richer at the expense of working people.
Follow Democrat Rep. Raúl Grijalva issued a call for his fellow radical leftists to resist Trump writing, “Democrats must stand up to Trump’s worst impulses and grifting tendencies if we are to come away from this a stronger, more prosperous nation.” He also criticized Trump for his recent successful meme-coin launch, calling it a “brazen and unethical money grab.”
President Trump has begun his four years with a grift on the American people by launching a cryptocurrency the night before his inauguration. This is a brazen and unethical money grab that will leave his unsuspecting supporters to pay the tab.
Pointedly, the Arizona Democratic Party (ADP) opted not to mark the inauguration at all with neither a post to social media nor a press release on its website. Rather, the ADP chose to publish a post honoring Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. almost as if in denial that the inauguration of Donald J. Trump as the 47th President of the United States happened.
Shortly before his death in 2006, I had the privilege of interviewing Milton Friedman over dinner in San Francisco. The last question I asked him was: What are the three things we had to do to make America more prosperous?
His answer I have never forgotten: “First, allow universal school choice; second, expand free trade; third and most importantly, cut government spending.” That was long before Presidents Barack Obama and Joe Biden came along.
There are not too many problems in America that cannot be traced back to the growth of big and incompetent government.
It is notable that the two big bursts of inflation during modern times both occurred when government spending exploded. The first was the gigantic expansion of the LBJ “war on poverty” welfare state in the 1970s with prices nearly doubling, and then the post-COVID era spending blitz in the last year of Trump and then the Biden $6 trillion spending spree with the CPI sprinting from 1.5% to 9.1%.
Coincidence? Maybe. But I doubt it.
The connection between government flab and the decline in the purchasing power of the dollar is obvious. In both cases the Washington spending blitz was funded by Federal Reserve money printing. The helicopter money caused prices to surge. (I still find it laughable that 11 Nobel prize-winning economists wrote in the New York Times in 2021: Don’t worry, the Biden multi-trillion-dollar spending spree won’t cause inflation.)
The avalanche of federal spending hasn’t stopped even though COVID ended more than three years ago. We are three months into the 2025 fiscal year and on pace to spend an all-time high $7 trillion and borrow $2 trillion. If we stay on this course, the federal budget could reach $10 trillion over the next decade.
This road to financial perdition cannot stand. It risks blowing up the Trump presidency.
Upon entering office, Trump should on day one call for a package of up to $500 billion of rescissions — money that the last Congress appropriated but has not been spent yet. Cancelling the green energy subsidies alone could save nearly $100 billion. Why are we still spending money on COVID?
We could save tens of billions by ending corporate welfare programs — such as the wheel barrels full of tax dollars thrown at companies like Intel in the CHIPS Act. The Elon Musk Department of Government Efficiency is already identifying low hanging fruit that needs to be cut from the tree.
Along with extending the Trump tax cut of 2017, this erasure of bloated federal spending is critical for economic revival and for reversing the income losses to the middle class under Biden.
This is especially urgent because the curse of inflation is NOT over. Since the Fed started cutting interest rates in October, commodity prices are up nearly 5% and the mortgage rates have again hit 7% — in part because the combination of cheap money and government expansion is a toxic economic brew — as history teaches us.
Nothing could suck the oxygen and excitement out of the new Trump presidency more than a resumption of inflation at the grocery store and the gas pump. Trump’s record-high approval rating will sink overnight if the cost of everything starts rising again.
Cutting spending won’t be easy. The resistance won’t just come from Bernie Sanders Democrats. Trump will have to convince lawmakers in his own party — many of whom are already defending green-new-deal pork projects in their districts.
This is why Trump should make the case in his inaugural address that downsizing government is the moral equivalent of war. Borrow a line from Nancy Reagan: just say no — to runaway government spending. Say yes to what Friedman titled his famous book: “Capitalism and Freedom.”
Stephen Moore is a contributor to The Daily Caller News Foundation and a visiting fellow at the Heritage Foundation. His new book, coauthored with Arthur Laffer, is “The Trump Economic Miracle.”
One of Arizona’s top Republican leaders is urging the incoming presidential administration to adopt his state’s regulatory oversight model.
Earlier this month, Senate President Warren Petersen wrote an op-ed for The Wall Street Journal, which was entitled, “Arizona’s Sunset Law Is an Example for DOGE.”
Every federal agency should be subject to a periodic sunset review requiring affirmative Congressional reauthorization for the agency to continue in existence, writes @votewarrenhttps://t.co/IbfjA8rGao
The piece was written as a roadmap to the proposed Department of Government Efficiency to be operated by the next Trump administration. President-elect Donald J. Trump has deputized Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy to run this department once the transition in American government becomes effective on January 20.
When Trump announced the formation of DOGE on November 12, he wrote, “It will become, potentially, ‘The Manhattan Project’ of our time. Republican politicians have dreamed about the objectives of ‘DOGE’ for a very long time. To drive this kind of drastic change, the Department of Government Efficiency will provide advice and guidance from outside of Government, and will partner with the White House and Office of Management & Budget to drive large scale structural reform, and create an entrepreneurial approach to Government never seen before.”
Trump added, “I look forward to Elon and Vivek making changes to the Federal Bureaucracy with an eye on efficiency and, at the same time, making life better for all Americans. Importantly, we will drive out the massive waste and fraud which exists throughout our annual $6.5 Trillion Dollars of Government Spending. They will work together to liberate our Economy, and make the U.S. Government accountable to ‘WE THE PEOPLE.’ Their work will conclude no later than July 4, 2026 – A smaller Government, with more efficiency and less bureaucracy, will be the perfect gift to America on the 250th Anniversary of The Declaration of Independence. I am confident they will succeed!”
In Petersen’s piece for the Journal, he writes, “To make these reforms last beyond his administration, Mr. Trump should also consider pushing for a federal law that has been effective at the state level. Every federal agency should be subject to a periodic sunset review requiring affirmative congressional reauthorization for the agency to continue in existence.”
Petersen added, “The federal government can, and should, learn from the states. Since 1978, Arizona has had a sunset law, which was signed by Democratic Gov. Bruce Babbitt. To combat the sins of government complacency, Arizona law requires the automatic expiration of all state agencies in 10 years or less, unless continued by the Legislature. In recent years, lawmakers have generally renewed agencies for eight years. During an agency’s ‘sunset review process,’ the Legislature’s independent auditor identifies inefficiencies, exposes fraud or abuse, quantifies costs imposed on consumers, and analyzes the continued need for the agency. As part of the review process, agency heads must answer direct criticisms from the testifying public, unshielded by the bureaucratic processes created to discourage accountability.”
The Senate President concluded his appeal to the incoming administration, saying, “The American people, not special interests or bureaucrats, are the sole beneficiary of the sunset review process. Arizona taxpayers have saved millions since 1978 from the repeal of unnecessary regulations and the termination of occupational boards that suppressed competition and inflated the cost of services while fulfilling no government function. Imagine the same for federal taxpayers. DOGE promises to save our nation from collapse beneath the weight of bureaucratic bloat and financial incompetence. I hope Congress goes one step further, ensuring that the good DOGE does is enshrined for many generations to come.”
Daniel Stefanski is a reporter for AZ Free News. You can send him news tips using this link.
President-elect Donald Trump has a big job ahead of him in restoring common sense and sanity to federal energy policy when he takes office on January 20. The last four years in this realm can more accurately be characterized as a series of ill-considered, irrational scams than as any sort of coherent, productive set of policies. It has been four years of bad policies — largely based on crass crony capitalism principles — that has done severe damage to America’s level of energy security.
There is no doubt that cleaning up this mess left behind by President Joe Biden and his appointees will take the full four years of Trump’s second term. But the new president will be able to take some fast actions to jump-start the process as part of his first 100 days agenda.
With respect, here is a list of 10 quick common-sense actions Trump can take to begin to restore America’s energy security:
1 — Rescind Biden’s ridiculous permitting “pause” on LNG export infrastructure. Of all the Biden energy policy scams, this was perhaps the most heinous and unjustified of all. Terminate it immediately and get this American growth industry back on track.
2 — Terminate U.S. participation in the Paris Climate Agreement and in any future annual COP conferences sponsored by the United Nations. Halt the spending of federal dollars related to any and all goals and commitments related to either of these wasteful processes.
3 — Terminate the office of Senior Advisor to the President for International Climate Policy, aka “the Climate Envoy,” currently occupied by John Podesta and eliminate its budget.
4 — Turnabout being fair play, Trump should invoke a “pause” of his own related to permits and subsidies going to Biden’s pet offshore wind boondoggle. The pause would be justified by the need to conduct a truly thorough study on the potential impacts of those massive developments on marine mammals, seabirds, and the commercial fishing industry. Invoke the “precautionary principle” that has been ignored by Biden regulators related to these costly and possibly deadly projects.
5 — Order the Interior Department to immediately and aggressively restart the moribund oil-and-gas leasing program on federal lands and waters. Direct the Interior Department Inspector General to investigate the Biden-era manipulations of these programs for potential criminal violations.
6 — Form an interagency task force to recommend ways the executive branch of government can act to streamline permitting processes for energy projects that do not require congressional action. Congress has proven several times now that it is incapable of passing legislation in this arena.
7 — Place an immediate hold on all green energy subsidies pending a full compliance review. This should include any and all subsidy programs that were part of the IRA or the 2021 Infrastructure law. This review should also include suggested reforms to qualification requirements for these subsidy programs in light of the high percentage of bankruptcy filings by unsustainable companies that have benefited from these subsidies.
8 — In light of the Supreme Court’s recent recission of the Chevron Deference, order the Environmental Protection Agency to review the rationale for regulating atmospheric carbon dioxide, aka “plant food,” as a pollutant under the provisions of the Clean Air Act.
9 — Order an interagency review of the U.S. power grid and transmission infrastructure as they relate to national security concerns. Include a special focus on the current, growing trend of major tech firms locking up power generation assets for their own specific needs (AI, data centers, etc.) which might deny generation capacity that would otherwise be dedicated to the public grid.
10 — In light of recent reports of Biden regulators steering billions of dollars of IRA and other green energy funds to NGOs to provide funding for anti-fossil fuel propaganda, lawfare, and other abuses of the legal system, order an immediate freeze on all such spending pending a formal review.
In reality, this list could consist of hundreds of high priority items for the new administration to undertake. Such is the level of damage that has been wrought on American energy security by the outgoing administration.
But executing these ten items in the early days of his second term would represent a good start and place the country on a path to recovery. We wish Trump and his appointees the best of luck in restoring U.S. energy security.
David Blackmon is a contributor to The Daily Caller News Foundation, an energy writer, and consultant based in Texas. He spent 40 years in the oil and gas business, where he specialized in public policy and communications.
