February 21, 2025
Trillions in Graft
By Todd and Erik Gregory

In their desperation to shield the U.S. Treasury Department from the DOGE forensics team, Democrats and most media are wailing that Elon Musk is unelected and thus has no right to audit the finances of the rabidly partisan and notoriously corrupt Internal Revenue Service (IRS).

Yes, Democrats, Elon Musk is unelected. And by Democrat logic, IRS supervisors and other Treasury Dept functionaries are also unelected, so by what right do they voyeuristically snoop on the finances of millions of Americans, criminally leak private tax returns of disfavored conservative citizens to the media, and inflict punitive audits and confiscatory penalties disproportionately on Republicans (a**holes, according to the legendary Lois Lerner, whose annual pension exceeds $100,000 and whose estimated net worth is $5.7 million dollars).

DOGE is the corrective, the counterbalance to an abusive and rogue Treasury Department.

When trillions of dollars routinely go missing under the government’s stewardship, the money doesn’t just disappear into a nebula or black hole. The unaccounted-for money goes into people’s bank accounts. That’s why anodyne terms like “waste, fraud, and abuse” are wholly inadequate descriptors.

It would be one thing if the U.S. government made the trains run on time. Or if highly questionable government agencies and programs were just superfluous but inexpensive oddities like a human appendix.

Yet, look at the performance metrics and finances of the DMV, Amtrak, the Social Security Administration, FEMA, the Department of Education, Medicaid, USAID, on and on -- all government agencies and programs primarily serve as fig leaves to disguise graft, the theft of taxpayer dollars by government officials.

Which proves the adage that those who can, do. Those who can’t, teach. And those who can do neither fail up, up, and away in government, purloining tax dollars while performing virtually no actual, meaningful work. Taxpayer money provides boatloads of welfare for government drones.

With trillions of appropriated tax dollars serving as a gigantic slush fund for government officials, it is hardly surprising that politically aligned Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs) and government contractors want to get in on the feeding frenzy.

Many NGOs and foundations under the umbrellas of George Soros and Bill Gates gorge themselves at the taxpayers’ trough as they partner with government to advance far-left initiatives that were never approved by voters (and in many cases violate federal law, as with the promotion and facilitation of illegal immigration).

Even Catholic charities partner with government (no separation of church and state there, apparently), as both divvy up taxpayer money to accelerate illegal immigration and further enrich themselves in the process.

Mainstream corporate media (Politico, PBS, the NY Times, and others) also join the grifting free-for-all, growing rich off the taxpayer slush fund as they pump out a firehose of endless and government-reinforcing progressive agitprop.

The government and affiliated NGOs demand and receive gobs of taxpayer money for the homeless industrial complex, the welfare industrial complex, the illegal migrant industrial complex, the DEI industrial complex, the climate change industrial complex, and so on.

As the late astronomer Carl Sagan might have said, “billions and billions” (of dollars embezzled). On the accounting books, they can write off losses as overhead, or miscellaneous expenses, or, as DOGE found, just leave the Treasury Account Symbol (TAS) field altogether blank on the expense sheet.

In keeping up with the Joneses in looting the Treasury, it is only natural that a fellow fedtard feels entitled to his fair share as well. Plus, tenured federal employees generally cannot be fired, so it’s perpetual oink oink on the gravy train.

Bureaucrats and other government officials know they face little or no oversight (and no legal jeopardy), and thus feel free to skim as much as they like right off the top. GS-10 through GS-15 federal employees, in particular, invariably have a far higher net worth than they should (based on their salaries).

One would hope there would be a special rotisserie in hell for those who steal from hardworking taxpayers, robbing actual productive workers of their time, labor, and money, and hijacking their children’s and grandchildren’s financial futures.

One would also expect -- or hope -- there would be full-throated bipartisan support for DOGE’s noble and unprecedented undertaking.

Yet, polls show roughly half of the U.S. electorate (blue voters) disapprove of DOGE and agree with Democrats and the legacy media that decades of government grift and graft should continue untouched and undisturbed.

Whether it’s corrupt circuit court judges, woke white women, former FBI fascisti like Frank Figliuzzi, or Margaret Brennan expelling halitosis on the evening news, Big Blue is going to the mattresses to stop DOGE.

Suppose you had your wallet, cash, and credit cards stolen year after year, and the burglars were never caught. Then, one day, a cop told you the police had finally nabbed the robbers, and could put a stop to the robberies, if only you would be willing to ID the culprits and press charges?

Democrats shriek Nooooo! -- do not apprehend anybody; maintain the status quo, and enable the highway robberies to continue as before. Obedient lemmings to the bitter end, Democrats never question the destructive and fictional narratives of their leaders, and only follow along blindly.

Put another way, if a taxpayer worked for 50 years and learned that 25 of those working years were strictly to pay taxes -- not for any mediocre government services rendered but so that government employees could coast on their mostly fake jobs and retire wealthy at an early age -- wouldn’t any normal person resent such an unfair and asymmetrical arrangement?

In explaining their ameliorative (or perhaps palliative) reform efforts to the public, it is vital that DOGE strongly articulate that their radical transparency is exposing government graft -- outright theft of taxpayer money -- on an almost incomprehensible scale.

We are way beyond mere waste, fraud, and abuse. Trillions and trillions, as Carl Sagan said.