To the editor: Contributing writer Josh Hammer takes a well-worn page from the right-wing playbook in his comments on the U.S. government’s fiscal challenges (“DOGE was a good start. Trump needs to push further for real fiscal change,” May 30). He cherry-picks seemingly indefensible government expenditures and uses them to mischaracterize the Department of Government Efficiency cuts that already are damaging government services and federally funded scientific research. The $175 billion of purported cuts he ballyhoos amount to less than 5% of the $4 trillion (a median of the $3 trillion to $5 trillion estimates) that could be added to the national deficit if President Trump’s 2017 tax cuts are extended.
Why doesn’t Hammer even mention the revenue side of the deficit equation? Advocates of cutting extensions claim it’s necessary for economic growth. The previous cuts, which mostly targeted high-income taxpayers, failed to contribute meaningfully to growth. How many times do we need to learn that Art Laffer was wrong about tax cuts paying for themselves via economic growth? The Trump tax cuts ignored by Hammer fuel the deficits he claims to oppose.
Daniel Stone, Los Angeles
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To the editor: DOGE was a good start? Did we forget when they fired hundreds of the country’s nuclear experts and tried to scramble to hire them back? What about when these computer geniuses didn’t know how to read data and thought that there were tens of millions of dead people collecting Social Security? Or when they “accidentally” cut USAID’s Ebola relief? If you ran a business this poorly, you’d be sacked immediately.
It’s funny how the people obsessed with “efficiency” and “fraud” are only ever concerned about programs that help citizens and never with blatant corporate corruption. Medicare? Far cheaper and more efficient than private insurance. Medicare Advantage, the massive giveaway to private insurers? Wildly wasteful but never on any so-called conservative’s chopping block. Republicans always whine about “fiscal responsibility,” but one easy way to save money would be to not give trillions away in tax cuts to billionaires. If you want a government that works efficiently, you have to fund and staff it properly, not randomly fire people and be surprised when it turns out those people did something important.
Kyle Kramer, Los Angeles
