The pushback in Washington, DC, against the Trump administration’s Department of Government Efficiency’s (DOGE) efforts to dramatically cut federal waste has taken on the authenticity of professional wrestling. Credentialed “experts” decrying the profound tragedy of it all can be instantly tied to the gushing money spigot they so desperately do not want to see turned off. A leading think tank provides a handy example.
Elaine Kamarck is a “senior fellow in Governance Studies and the director of the Center for Effective Public Management” at the Brookings Institution. She is extraordinarily skilled in her field, the group stresses. Kamarck “is an expert on American electoral politics and government innovation and reform in the United States, [Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development] nations, and developing countries,” her Brookings bio reads.
On Feb. 14, Kamarck lent the weight of her expertism to advising DOGE not to get too carried away. “Cutting government budgets is broadly popular in theory, but if Trump and [DOGE head Elon] Musk overcome legal challenges and succeed in large-scale downsizing, they will find that cutting government can backfire on them,” Kamarck wrote. “By using an axe instead of a scalpel, they run the risk of throwing out the baby with the bathwater and eliminating essential functions.”
Kamarck asserted that America may in essence collapse if the federal cuts run too deep. Social Security and veterans’ benefits disruptions, delays in tax refund processing, massive increases in food poisoning deaths, a budding food scarcity catastrophe — all are now on the table due to DOGE.
The sky is falling, and you have to be a respected DC think tank official to see it.
Kamarck and her Brookings colleagues have good reason to be so alarmed about the gutting of the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) and similar federal programs. A look at the group’s finances reveals its revenue streams are highly dependent on the government agencies being targeted by DOGE.