President Donald Trump, along with his surrogates, allies, and supporters, all want this argument.
Moreover, for reasons they know but cannot admit, elected Democrats seem determined to give it to us.
According to Axios, Democratic Reps. Brad Schneider of Illinois and Stephen Lynch of Massachusetts plan to introduce a bill called the “DOGE Accountability and Transparency Act,” which, in the unlikely event of its adoption as law, would require Trump’s Department of Government Efficiency, headed by the president’s friend and ally Elon Musk, to satisfy bureaucratic demands that run counter to the department’s mission of identifying and eliminating government waste and fraud.
According to the bill’s text, the DOGE Accountability and Transparency Act would force DOGE to “provide weekly reports to Congress regarding changes DOGE has made to any Federal agency and the realized impacts of such changes, and for other purposes.”
In other words, by compelling weekly reports, Schneider and Lynch would slow DOGE’s progress. They might as well have called it the “Swamp Protection Act.”
That, of course, constitutes their chief objective. It also illustrates the need for DOGE in the first place.
Of course, in true Democratic fashion, the congressmen framed their Swamp-friendly bill as a matter of principle.
“We should not allow Elon Musk to recklessly take a chainsaw to our federal government; he must answer to Congress and provide real, regular updates on DOGE’s actions,” Schneider wrote in a statement.
Lynch did his colleague one better by conjuring the standard Democrat bugbear. “Oh no!” they say. “How will the people ever survive?”
Do you support the mission of DOGE?
“We cannot let President Trump’s version of ‘Wreck-it-Ralph’ distract us while Elon Musk continues to gut agencies that are responsible for providing American families with essential needs and services,” Lynch said.
Ah, yes, “essential needs and services.” How many billions of dollars have Democrats extorted from voters by stoking fears with language of that kind?
Needless to say, the DOGE Accountability and Transparency Act has no chance of passage in a Republican-controlled Congress.
Likewise, if the bill somehow did pass the House and Senate, Trump would veto it.
Introducing this futile piece of legislation, therefore, has everything to do with creating political theater and making an argument. On DOGE, Trump and his allies want to make their argument. Democrats, by contrast, have no choice but to make theirs.
After all, Democrats cannot abandon by far the largest and most loyal segment of their base: government employees.
But how much sympathy does the plight of government employees generate in places like Iowa? Hence, Democrats must harp on “essential needs and services,” as if DOGE has targeted Medicare or Social Security.
As usual, Democrats cannot reveal their true motives.
They cannot, for instance, explain to voters why they have drawn a line in the sand in order to defend a system that has enriched federal bureaucrats at public expense and made the suburbs of Washington, D.C., the wealthiest counties in America.
Trump and his allies want that argument. Democrats have no choice but to make it.
We like our chances.
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