The first I heard of it was from Chris Halkides in a succinct comment to yesterday’s post about Trump’s ignorance of law, governance and presidential authority.
The Vaeth memo freezing spending makes the firing look like small potatoes by comparison.
And indeed, it does. Putting aside the question of whether the executive has any authority to “usurp” the power of the purse, a prerogative reserved by the Constitution for Congress, the memo from the acting director of the Office of Management and Budget, Matthew J. Vaeth, is a stunning display of ass-backwards incoherence that created a depth of chaos and instability that undermined any sense of reliability in the federal government. To call it a bludgeon where a scalpel was needed is far too kind.
The American people elected Donald J. Trump to be President of the United States and gave him a mandate to increase the impact of every federal taxpayer dollar. In Fiscal Year 2024, of the nearly $10 trillion that the Federal Government spent, more than $3 trillion was Federal
financial assistance, such as grants and loans. Career and political appointees in the Executive Branch have a duty to align Federal spending and action with the will of the American people as expressed through Presidential priorities. Financial assistance should be dedicated to advancing Administration priorities, focusing taxpayer dollars to advance a stronger and safer America, eliminating the financial burden of inflation for citizens, unleashing American energy and manufacturing, ending “ wokeness” and the weaponization of government, promoting efficiency in government, and Making America Healthy Again. The use of Federal resources to advance Marxist equity, transgenderism, and green new deal social engineering policies is a waste of taxpayer dollars that does not improve the day-to-day lives of those we serve.
Ignoring the usual hyperbole, political ignorance and infantile rhetoric, there are likely a great many Americans who agree that the federal government squanders substantial amounts of taxpayer funds on wasteful, useless or counterproductive programs. The simple reaction is “great, lets put an end to this wasteful spending.” But that’s not what the memo does.
To implement these orders, each agency must complete a comprehensive analysis of all
of their Federal financial assistance programs to identify programs, projects, and activities that may be implicated by any of the President’s executive orders. In the interim, to the extent
permissible under applicable law, Federal agencies must temporarily pause all activities related to obligation or disbursement of all Federal financial assistance, and other relevant agency activities that may be implicated by the executive orders, including, but not limited to, financial assistance for foreign aid, nongovernmental organizations, DEI, woke gender ideology, and the green new deal.
Sequence matters, or as the old aphorism goes, don’t “put the cart ahead of the horse.” What the memo does is pause first, under the vagary of calling it temporary, after which agencies “must complete a comprehensive analysis.” Even if you support both the idea that Congress’ allocation of funds in earlier budgets needs to be reviewed for its uses and efficacy, and that funded programs which have acted upon their funding, hired people, rented labs or offices, leased or purchased equipment in reliance upon grants and loans should be left high and dry, you figure out first what programs, projects and activities are to be deemed unworthy and then address their funding.
Instead, Trump cut the funds first, to good programs and bad, to programs upon which lives and livelihoods depend, to programs that will be incapable of functioning if they can’t pay their bills, with the direction to figure it out later. It’s unsurprising that Trump and his minions are unfamiliar with Chesterton’s Fence, yet another concept that requires forethought, which makes Trump cranky.
But you hate DEI and believe it to be a blight on our nation and an exercise in unconstitutional discrimination? Cool, cool. You’re not alone. So why, then, “pause” funding for the hiring and training of police officers, but that’s part of Vaeth’s mindless mix. Are the cops to stop eating, stop paying their mortgage, stop feeding their children, while awaiting the pause to be over, or will they take jobs as baristas because life goes on regardless of whether Trump can figure out how sequence works?
The point isn’t that everything Trump putatively seeks to do is necessarily bad, but that how it’s done can make the difference between effective change and disaster. Like pretty much everything else government does, the distinction is drawn by thinking first, understanding how things work and fit together, and then, and only then, wielding the scalpel to excise the waste. And yet here we are, again, with Trump swinging his bludgeon.
The spending freeze has been stayed for the moment by a federal judge in order to provide the court with some time to sort out what programs the Vaeth memo impacts. But what seems unfortunately clear is that relying on federal funding under Trump courts disaster and chaos. For the people whose lives are at risk, and whose programs have nothing to do with “Marxist equity,” the eventual elimination of DEI won’t put food on their plate while the government “pauses.”
