Musk cuts waste and progressives melt down. He must be on the right track. I Opinion
At the behest of President Donald Trump, Elon Musk is flirting with audits of the Internal Revenue Service, the Department of Education and the Pentagon. Forget wine and roses on Valentine's Day: That might be the most seductive sentence I've read in a long time.
A president and his top advisers are actually doing something to bring financial responsibility to the federal government? It's enough to make a fiscal conservative swoon.
Of course, not everyone is feeling the love. Democrats and much of the mainstream news media are howling like a dog that's lost its dinner. They've charged Trump with an unconstitutional overreach and Musk with being power-hungry. But taxpayers should be standing by with prosecco and praise for the administration's efforts to turn nonsense into common sense.
Consider one of Trump's latest pronouncements: The president on Sunday ordered the Treasury Department to stop making pennies because they have long been a losing proposition for taxpayers. In its 2024 annual report, the U.S. Mint said that each penny costs 3.69 cents to produce and distribute.
Even progressives' newspaper of record, The New York Times, noted last year that 'the necessity of abolishing the penny has been obvious to those in power for so long that the inability to accomplish it has transformed the coin into a symbol of deeper rot.'
So goodbye, bad penny, and good riddance.
Of course, Washington bureaucrats stopped pinching pennies a long time ago, which means Elon's Musketeers have a lot of ground to cover and waste to uncover.
Last week, he posted a poll on X asking his 217 million followers if the Department of Government Efficiency should audit the IRS. More than 90% answered in the affirmative.
And an audit of the auditors − the IRS employs more than 90,000 workers − does seem very much in order.
Thankfully, Musk is just getting started. Trump said in a recent interview that the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) will soon target spending inside the Department of Education and the Department of Defense.
Last year, the Education Department received $268 billion in funding − the sixth highest total of any agency. Despite all those billions, our students and our schools have fallen behind. In a 2022 test of 15-year-old students worldwide, the Program for International Student Assessment found the United States placed 16th in science. Our children did even worse in math, ranking 34th.
As a parent, I want to know why tax dollars devoted to education aren't delivering a better return on our investment.
Opinion: Trump and Musk should gut USAID. America needs to fix our own house first.
Taxpayers also deserve to know that the Pentagon, with a 2025 budget of $850 billion, is spending with precision to safeguard our nation. Trump has said that Musk will find billions of dollars in waste and fraud in this department. I don't doubt it.
The hunt for waste and fraud is exactly what Americans want − a Reuters/Ipsos poll in late January found 61% public support for Trump's plan to downsize the federal government.
Even some critics of Trump and Musk acknowledge that they are likely to find "awful examples of wasteful spending," as Democratic California Rep. Ro Khanna put it.
Last year, a Government Accountability Office report estimated that federal agencies handed out $236 billion in 'improper payments' during the 2023 fiscal year.
Yet, nothing changed − until now, thanks to Trump and Musk.
Still, Democrats are accusing both men of overreach. "We've got Donald Trump and his co-president Elon Musk, and they're just running a wrecking ball through (the government),' Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., said on MSNBC.
Warren also told protesters outside the Treasury Department last week that "Elon Musk is seizing power from the American people. He is here to seize power for himself."
Opinion: Trump's tariff threats are tumultuous for consumers. That won't fix the economy.
Since when is ensuring that taxpayers' money is spent appropriately a power-hungry move? Do Democrats really want to be in a position of defending waste and fraud?
I've got news for them: This is exactly what Americans voted for and what the federal government needs. A new CBS News/YouGov poll found that almost 60% of Americans describe Trump as "effective," that 70% agree he's doing what he said he'd do during his reelection campaign and that 53% approve of his job performance.
Trump and Musk were clear on the campaign trail that they would implement DOGE, and now they're doing it. As president, Trump has the responsibility and the power to ensure that federal agencies operate efficiently and spend tax dollars effectively. He's not overreaching; he's doing his job.
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The U.S. government is wisely built on a system of checks and balances. But the government's misuse of tax dollars has gone unchecked and our budget has been unbalanced for far too long. If Musk can help save us from Washington's standard operating procedure of fiscal irresponsibility, then I say go for it.
Can you imagine if our federal government ran as efficiently as Amazon? If it had the same standards of excellence as Apple? Or the innovative spirit of SpaceX?
Be still my beating heart. It all seems wildly romantic.
Nicole Russell is a columnist at USA TODAY and a mother of four who lives in Texas. Contact her at nrussell@gannett.com and follow her on X, formerly Twitter: @russell_nm. Sign up for her weekly newsletter, The Right Track, here.
You can read diverse opinions from our USA TODAY columnists and other writers on the Opinion front page, on X, formerly Twitter, @usatodayopinion and in our Opinion newsletter.
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Trump drops a bad penny as Musk saves taxpayers billions I Opinion
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