TJ Walker argues Trump's Department of Government Efficiency never actually existed or saved money before disappearing. A recent bill adds $3.4 trillion to deficits over 10 years while pharmaceutical concessions block Medicare from negotiating drug prices and boost industry revenue by $8.8 billion.
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Doge and deficits. Trump's efficiency department vanishes as the deficit explodes. According to Reuters, President Trump's Department of Government Efficiency, known as Doge, or in some quarters as Dodgy, has quietly disappeared eight months before its charter was set to expire. The administration now acknowledges that Doge quote, doesn't exist in any meaningful way, despite months of high profile claims that it was saving taxpayers tens of billions of dollars. The problem is that none of those savings were ever independently verified. There was never any public accounting of what Doge actually accomplished. What has been verified is the impact of Trump's massive, big, beautiful bill. Nonpartisan budget analysis says it will add trillions of dollars to the deficit over the next decade. Those larger deficits are pushing interest payments toward $1 trillion trillion dollars a year. Money that buys nothing new. It's simply the cost. Past decisions. And while the administration claims to be fighting waste, it weakened provisions that would have lowered prescription drug price and saved taxpayers billions. The pharmaceutical industry gets protections, public gets the bill. Okay, so what's the real message here? Doge quietly snuck out of town, out of D.C. without saying goodbye because it realized it had accomplished nothing. Nothing. If you think government is more efficient today after Doge, you are utterly fooling yourself. The only thing it did is show once again that large interest groups are going to continue to get what they want from the federal government and shaft you and me in the process. Let's dig a little bit deeper here. So this was great political branding initially. It got people excited because everybody, I mean, everybody thinks there's waste in the federal government. Problem is, one person's waste is another person's escape essential spending. So it's very hard to really cut much from the federal government. Again, I'm not saying there's not bloat, but we could differ on where the bloat is. One thing that cannot be debated is there's not a single penny of government spending that doesn't have a lot of people passionate about that money being. So let's look at some facts. Doge again, didn't delete waste. It helped camouflage who is looting the treasury, the cbo, the Congressional Budget offices. Trump's one big beautiful bill will add $3.4 trillion to deficits over 10 years. That's going to add billions of dollars more in extra interest rates from that bill alone. So here's a perfect example of government ways that Doge did not trust. Medicare. Drug price negotiations under existing laws were projected to save roughly $100 million plus billions more in lower out of pocket Cost seniors. But the so called big beautiful bill changed that under existing, the negotiations under existing law were protected and they got rid of that. They added special exemptions so the drug companies can make an extra 8.8 to $10.9 billion in extra revenue. So when you hear stories about, oh, people smuggling in prescription drugs from Canada or how much less expensive drugs are in the United Kingdom or anywhere in Europe, the first response is, well, that's of course they have socialized medicine. We all know how bad socialism is. That's the instant knee jerk response. That's not why the prescription drugs are less expensive. They're less expensive because the government says we're going to purchase all the drugs and we demand best rate. We demand a huge discount because we're a bulk purchaser. It's basically the concept of why you can get things less expensively if you go to Costco. It's why when I go to Costco, I can get a container of raspberries this big for 499. Whereas if I go to the Publix grocery store where I am, I get a pint that's half as big, also 4.99. I save 50%. It's basically 100% more expensive if I go to the grocery store. So it's the same concept. Governments around the world understand that. So they strike deals to buy drugs in bulk at a huge discount for their entire population. Now the United States has a big population buying drugs and the government does pay for it most of the time, through Medicare, through Medicaid, through health for veterans. So the government's already spending it. But because we like to live under this fiction of, oh, we're private sector people here, we don't believe in these evil socialists even though our government spends more money on health than any government in the world. Not supposed to know that we live under this fiction. And the pharmaceutical executives, pretty shrewd group, they have just figured out if we funnel campaign cash to politicians, if we spend millions of dollars on campaign contribution, they'll let us charge whatever we want and we're going to get billions and billions of dollars more money back because we can charge a high price. We can make Americans sort of the sucker customer of our business. And you're paying for it, I'm paying, everybody pays for it. Now of course it is true that pharmaceutical companies do have to make money or they're not going to have enough money to do research for the next drug. So I'm not suggesting they're all evil. I love pharmaceuticals that have Saved my life. And I love, I love penicillin. I've had to use various drugs as other members of, of anyone's family does. At some point, everyone needs some kind of vaccine or pharmaceutical. So I'm not one saying that pharmaceutical companies are reflexively bad. No, I'm saying what is bad are the politicians who could strike a much better deal to save government money and simply don't because they. Oh, I don't want to hurt the feelings. You know, my Buddy who's the CEO of this big pharma company, he makes $60 million a year and he takes me to the super bowl for free. How's it going to look if he's got to go from a $60 million a year salary to $30 million of salary? My goodness, he might not give me free super bowl ticket or he might not give campaign cash to my pack to help me get elected. That's really what is the problem with our large government. In a nutshell, you could say I'm oversimplifying. There are other issues, other examples of waste, yes. But ultimately it comes down to businesses have figured out how to game the system. Very little of it, frankly, is going to foreign aid. Less than 1%, and very little that actually goes to poor, needy people. Our government, it goes around and around in circles, paying off various special interest groups a lot more than they could get in the private sector. Something that didn't get much attention recently was the demise of the penny, the copper penny, which takes cost about 3 or 4 cents to make. Why did that happen? And if you talk to the typical voter out there, why is the government so big? Many of them would say, well, it's for giving money to poor people who are too lazy. And yet the 3 or 4 cents we spent to make a penny, which cumulatively adds up to tens of millions of dollars every year, it was to make copper mines happy. Copper mining executives, copper mining CEOs and shareholders happier. They're like, we know it doesn't make any sense to spend $0.03 on copper to make a penny, but we love the fact that the government gives us a big paycheck to buy stuff they don't really need. That's why we did. And we had politicians from states, and this is bipartisan. There were Democrats and Republicans who represented states where there were copper mines who said, hey, we can't get rid of the penny, it's too essential. So I will give credit. It did happen under the Trump administration. At least they're not wasting money on the penny anymore. But comparatively, that's pennies to the amount of money we waste every single year simply because we're unwilling to negotiate with pharmaceutical companies. And if you really want to talk about waste, there's no organization with more waste than the Defense Department. But then they've got the perfect political messaging. If you dare criticize defense spending, automatically you're un American. Automatically, you're a part of the radical left. And so that conversation is off. And the political dynamics are such that if you're Republican, you're pro military. That's your brand. And if you're a Democrat, you're constantly worried about someone calling you a coward, anti military, anti defending America. So you generally, if you're a Democrat running for office or you're an incumbent member of Congress, you're like, I'll show them I'm tough, too. Yes, I will vote for all the money that the Defense Department wants and I'll give them more. I'll force them to take even more. Believe it or not, that is what it. Is.
