DOGE Exposes Waste and Constitutional Drift – The American Spectator | USA News and PoliticsThe American Spectator

President Donald Trump in his first address to Congress highlighted some of the wasteful spending targeted by the Department of Government Efficiency. DOGE under Elon Musk is tasked with eliminating waste, ending fraud, identifying harmful regulations, and holding the bureaucracy accountable. (RELATED: DOGE Confirms That Social Security Is a Fine Mess.)

With a $36 trillion national debt and continuous budget deficits, spending is clearly out of control, but the level of debt is reaching dangerous levels. More importantly, DOGE is providing evidence of how far we have drifted from constitutional government. (RELATED: Entitlement Fraud Is Now a Stated Aim of the Democrat Party)

Since at least the 1930s, the federal government has expanded far beyond its original and intended limits. Constitutional principles such as federalism are being undermined.

“The powers delegated by the proposed Constitution to the federal government are few and defined. Those which are to remain in the State governments are numerous and indefinite,” wrote James Madison in Federalist 45. In many policy debates, constitutional arguments have either been set aside or dismissed. “Just give us the data” seems to be the mantra. Spreadsheets have now become the “higher law.”

As an example, the University of Iowa’s International Writing Program has lost its federal funding. The program received a $1 million grant from the United States Department of State, and it has been a longtime recipient of federal funds.

Defenders of the program argue that this is not only a multicultural loss, but they even argue that the funds have a multiplier effect because “90 percent are spent domestically,” which impacts the economy. The unproven assumption is that if that $1 million had been left in the pockets of those who earned it, it would have been squandered elsewhere. In other words, spending is only “multiplied” when the politicians and their beneficiaries do it. That smacks of self-serving alchemy.

Nobody is asking whether this spending and the other spending that is being identified by DOGE is constitutional. Constitutional debates used to be at the center of public policy, but they rarely occur these days. During President George Washington’s administration, fierce constitutional debates took place over the National Bank, funding of “internal improvements,” Secretary of the Treasury Alexander Hamilton’s economic policies, and much more.

President James Madison vetoed the Bonus Bill of 1817, which Congress passed to provide funding for internal improvement projects. Madison argued that the Constitution did not grant Congress the authority to appropriate funds for this purpose. President Andrew Jackson would also veto internal improvement bills for similar constitutional reasons.

Certainly, Alexander Hamilton and Henry Clay disagreed with Madison and Jackson, but these debates were based on constitutional principles. The renowned debates of Senator Daniel Webster and Senator Robert Hayne over the Constitution and the nature of the Union are often forgotten, but these are all examples of the Constitution being at the center of policy debates.

Constitutional arguments did not fade after the Civil War. In 1887, President Grover Cleveland vetoed the Texas Seed Bill, which Congress passed to provide relief to drought-stricken farmers. “I can find no warrant for such an appropriation in the Constitution,” wrote President Cleveland.

Through the 1920s, Congress and the president regarded the Constitution as the sacred law of the land. They cited it often, and defended it as was their duty. Then Franklin Roosevelt and the Great Depression elevated expediency to the highest priority. FDR even tried to pack the Supreme Court to get around the Constitution instead of upholding it.

Historians of ancient Rome note that one hallmark of the decline of its Republic into despotism was a growing disregard for its unwritten but long-revered Constitution. The rules that provided for the protection of individual rights, the customs that produced term limits and high standards for public office, the procedures for administering justice — all of that came to be seen by the Romans as old-fashioned and too restrictive. Instead, “anything goes” became the rule and so Rome went — headlong into history’s ash heap.

The need to address uncontrolled spending should be obvious, but we ignore constitutional matters at the risk of even greater peril. DOGE should remind us to start applying and defending the Constitution in matters of policy. Or as former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi once did with a Trump speech in full public view, we can just tear up the Constitution and do what “the data” or our ephemeral, ideological whims might suggest.

Why is the University of Iowa’s International Writing Program a federal duty? If it is, then why aren’t the writers of this essay entitled to a grant from Washington as well?

“Each generation of Americans, to gain some immediate and practical advantage, will sacrifice some remaining principle of the Constitution, until the noble edifice will one day become as the Parthenon, beautiful in its ruins, but nevertheless a useless and deserted temple of liberty,” warned the constitutional scholar James M. Beck.

Let’s not allow Beck’s warning to become America’s epitaph.

READ MORE from Lawrence Reed and John Hendrickson:

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John Hendrickson is Policy Director for the Iowa Tax Reform Foundation. Lawrence W. Reed is president emeritus of the Foundation for Economic Education in Atlanta, Georgia.