Can DOGE Do It? Federal Debt Solutions with Government Efficiency

Elon Musk’s DOGE savings plan aims to cut $2T in U.S. government waste. Can Congress act? Bruce Rutherford breaks down the real solutions we need now.

The U.S. faces a $36 trillion national debt crisis, and the clock is ticking. Can Elon Musk’s budget reforms and ideas on government efficiency help? Bruce Rutherford breaks down the U.S. budget deficit in 2025, explains the U.S. debt ceiling, and explores federal debt solutions to avoid U.S. economic collapse risk. We tackle key issues like Social Security reform, Medicare insolvency, and how to fix government spending by cutting inefficiencies and eliminating government waste. Plus, we compare national debt vs. GDP and reveal shocking government waste examples. Washington has tough choices ahead—will they act before it’s too late?

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ABOUT COMMON SENSE FOR AMERICA:
Common Sense For America brings history and facts together to inspire non-partisan, common sense solutions to America's biggest challenges. Inspired by Common Sense a pamphlet written by Thomas Paine, 1776, Bruce Rutherford, political commentator and educator, dissects U.S. history, American finance, and global affairs, and shares insights in everyday language.

Thomas Paine's Common Sense argues that concentrated political power, whether in a monarchy or elite class, is unjust and undermines democracy. Like with Common Sense, we advocate for a government accountable to the people, emphasizing transparency, representation, and checks on power.

Transcript

Every American family is now carrying their share of this massive debt burden.

You are paying... You, today, are paying more for everything and paying higher interest rates on everything because our national debt and deficits are out of control.

Welcome Patriots to this Episode of Common Sense For America. I am your host and commentator, Bruce Rutherford, and I'm coming to you from West Wood Golf Club in Houston Texas. Today we will be discussing the new Department of Government Efficiency ("DOGE") to be led by Elon Musk.

If you are listening to our podcast, please rate us and leave us a review. Your reviews are a great way for us to get to know you and your story. If you are watching on YouTube and you like what you hear today, please "like" us and subscribe to this channel. Give us your thoughts in the comment section of this site. We love hearing from you.

Now let us get down to business. President Trump's idea for DOGE is badly needed. For the last eight years, the government has run a deficit of at least $2.0 Trillion per year. We have reached the congressional debt limit of $36.1 Trillion. One Senator has recently said "we do not have a revenue problem; we have a spending problem". The current budget which is set to spend over $7 Trillion this year, already projects a deficit of $1.8 Trillion is already over budget. In the first three months of this fiscal year, October through December, our government over spent its revenues by $710 billion. At that rate the deficit will be over $2.1 Trillion again. Our national debt is equal to 99% of our Gross Domestic Product. It has not been this bad since WWII.

Why do I care, you ask? Chronic deficits and total debt of this size increase inflation and interest rates. For lesser countries than the US, debt of this size relative to their Gross National Product (GNP) has led to economic collapse. You are paying... You, today, are more for everything and paying higher interest rates on everything because our national debt and deficits are out of control. 

Let me put this in perspective for you, patriots. Every American family is now carrying their share of this massive debt burden. It's about $100,000 per person! $400,000 for a family of four. We feel this debt in every purchase we make. So YES! We do need DOGE and we need it now.

Elon Musk, who is leading DOGE, is famous as a businessman for cutting costs. He originally said he thought they could find $2.0 Trillion in efficiencies in the government. My own review of the US Government budget makes me believe it will be easy to identify more than $2.0 Trillion in efficiencies. But it will not be so easy to implement those savings. Members of the House and the Senate will try to protect their pet projects and programs they have promised to their constituents. Department heads and regulators will be loath to part with the programs they run upon which their jobs depend. Some efficiencies will require congressional action to implement. Even the military could be more efficient, and no organization is more difficult to change than the Pentagon.

But some savings are painfully obvious. Did you know that our government is sending $82 million per month to the Taliban in Afghanistan? That's $1.0 Billion per year, for what? The Post Office could be outsourced to save $500 million a year. Congress has routinely spent money on pet projects ranging from "a bridge to nowhere" in Alaska to studies of the sex lives of rats. How do we get all this foolishness under control? Musk will recommend cuts to Trump who will use his executive authority where he can to cut spending and save  money, but that won't be enough. Trump will need congressional cooperation to make significant cuts in the budget and that will be hard to get. In some cases entire departments, such as the Department of Education, may be cut. The Commerce department may be shrunk and folded into the State Department. Nonmilitary government pensions should be converted to 401K plans; this one action alone could save $400 billion per year.

A lot of this is going to take congressional action which won't be easy, even with a majority held by the Republicans.

These aren't just numbers on a page, folks. This is your money being wasted while your family struggles with rising costs, everyday. You talk about it at the kitchen table. "Why are eggs so expensive? Why is milk so expensive? Why is gas so expensive?" It's a lot to do with these numbers being out of control

One area Trump can implement by executive order, which means: very fast,  is to modernize the procurement process of the US Government. This antiquated RFP (Request for Proposal) process takes too long and leaves innovation and best practices unutilized. We need a procurement process and system that focuses on the best outcome for the operations of government in question, and not just the cheapest price for the item in the RFP.

In the long run we need what we have advocated in our earlier Podcast and earlier episodes in Common Sense for America: 

--a Presidential line-item veto authority

44 states already have it. Why doesn't our president have it?

We advocated a constitutional amendment to say that :

The house may not appropriate money for any project that benefits less than three states. 

If two states want to do a project, they can finance it themselves. We are not going to federally finance a high-speed train that goes from Los Angeles to Sacramento or from Los Angeles to Las Vegas. 

We also advocated a constitutional amendment that said: 

No bill may be longer than 100 double spaces pages, preventing congressmen from hiding spending on projects in a bill that is 2500 pages long.

We all realize that a huge portion of the government budget, 55% or thereabouts, is non-discretionary. That means it happens no matter what congress says, unless they change the law.  This is primarily Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, and the Affordable Care Act, and interest on our national debt, which now exceeds our budget for the entire U.S. military.

Let's break this down piece by piece, because these programs affect a huge percentage of American families.

Congress knows what to do about Social Security; they just need the backbone to do it. They must gradually raise the age for benefits without affecting people who are already 55 years or older today. Those people wouldn't have a change, but younger people would see an increase in the age for benefits. 

We must stop paying Social Security benefits to non-citizens while grandfathering those who are already receiving those benefits. We should demand that everyone working in America pay Social Security System taxes on their total income but not receive benefits unless and until they become citizens. We currently invest the $3.0 Trillion Social Security Trust Fund in U.S. Government bonds and T-Bills. The effective return to the Trust fund is only slightly higher than 2.5%. If this trust fund were professionally managed by competent financial managers it could easily earn more than 7.5% net to the trust fund, tripling the income to Social Security. 

Common Sense says we should hire a panel of financial advisors like Berkshire Hathaway, Fidelity Investments, T Rowe Price, Fisher and others to manage the Social Security funds money. We could give them a share of the earnings and still earn dramatically more than 7.5% net to Social Security. That is at least a $150 billion increase in Trust Fund income per year. Think about that for a moment, $150 billion in additional income just by managing our Trust Fund more efficiently. That's real money that could secure benefits for generations. Realize that 57 million Americans have only Social Security for retirement. The Trust Fund is not expected to have enough money to pay everyone their full benefits in 2035. In 2035 we have a REAL PROBLEM coming.  Some people, probably the ones who are better off financially, will have their benefits cut if we do not fix this problem. I think we can fix this one if we only use our common sense, it's easy to fix. 

Medicare's Hospital Insurance Trust Fund is expected to be insolvent by 2036 according to the latest Medicare Trustees Report. 97 million Americans rely on Medicare for their health insurance, including me and my wife. That number will increase as the number of older people increases; eventually becoming 23% of the US population. Insolvency of Medicare would be a national catastrophe. Here again, Congress has long known what to do but lacks the political guts to do it. The eligibility age for Medicare must be gradually increased, just like Social Security. We should not give Medicare benefits to non-citizens. And again, the Hospital Trust Fund should be professionally managed. Common Sense can fix Medicare and we must fix it.

Medicaid is a program that provides health insurance to the poor and indigent. The Federal Government gives 90% of the money the states need to buy medical insurance for the poor people in that state. The Congressional Budget office says that costs for the program are expected to rise 60% over the next decade to $898 Billion, or 2.2% of our nation's gross domestic product. US Citizens and permanent residents of the US who are not citizens are eligible at age 65 if their income is 133% of the Federal Poverty Level ("FPL") or lower. The FPL is $15,000 for a single person and $31,200 for a family of four. (Other numbers are in there for smaller families). Costs are increasing steadily as medical costs increase and as politicians expand the program. Again, the ways to fix this problem are known to Congress. 

What congress has not considered are economic actions we could take to reduce the number of poor people needing Medicaid. We have advocated a change in the tax laws in earlier episodes that would dramatically benefit the working poor and help them ascend into the middle class and beyond. That change would scrap the current income tax laws and replace it with one $50,000 tax exemption per income earner. You and your spouse would each have a $50,000 exemption. The exemption would increase to $100,000 in ten years. We would all pay the same tax rate on all currently taxable income above the exemption amount, say 25% tax rate. In return there would be no other deductions or exemptions from income. You could file your income tax return on a post card. If you made $100,000 and you had a $50,000 exemption, you pay 25% of $50,000, or $12,500. That's effectively a 12.5% tax rate. In ten years you and your wife would both have a $100,000 exemption. You could make $200,000/yr and pay no income taxes.

 Income tax revenues would actually increase under this plan because the rich would pay a higher percentage of their incomes in taxes, especially on capital gains and dividends. This tax change would be a tremendous benefit to the poor and middle class and it would expand our economy dramatically. The percentage of poor people in the US would decline dramatically. This decline in the percentage of poor people would in turn take pressure off Medicaid. Again, common sense shows us the way.

The last part of the budget we must address is the interest on our national debt. Today that interest bill is larger than the entire defense budget. With inflation pushing interest rates higher this bill will only increase. If congress continues to add to the debt-- we're running a $2 trillion deficit every year... If we continue to add to the debt the interest bill will naturally increase. All the things we have suggested and more must be done to control government spending. But we need significant surpluses to lower the debt and back away from the fiscal abyss that we are staring into right now. Remember, every dollar we spend on interest is a dollar we can't spend on our military, our infrastructure, or on returning to taxpayers.

There are two obvious things we can do to create surpluses that we can use to reduce our national debt. First look at the giant balance sheet of the Federal Government for things we can sell or lease. Some estimates put the size of our Balance Sheet at as much and $186 Trillion. On this balance sheet are at least 70,000 empty buildings owned by the Federal Government. Thousands more are only partially occupied. Selling buildings and consolidating partially occupied buildings into one will produce, probably, a $ Trillion or more of new cash to reduce the debt. The Federal Government is the largest landowner and owner of land mineral and timber rights in the world. Remember, Lincoln used Federal Land sales and swaps to finance the Civil war and the Transcontinental Railroad at the same time. We can do the same today to sell or lease Federal land, timber rights and mineral rights to produce Trillions to pay down the national debt. Trump has already, kind of, got this idea percolating; he just hasn't specified how we are going to do it.  We regular citizens will not even notice the actions this takes. The Government owns some of the most valuable land in the nation, such as the Presidio military base in San Francisco which could be sold for real estate development for at least $1 Billion. The same could be said for the beach front in Florida that the United States military owns. A lot of money could be harvested from this balance sheet. 

The Federal Government and its various agencies, and the Federal Reserve own Billions if not Trillions of non-government securities. These securities could be sold and the cash applied to the debt or they could be traded for Government Bonds and T-Bills in private hands thereby retiring that portion of the national debt. Common Sense demands we should sell or lease some of these assets to pay down our debt and reduce our interest expenses.

These are real solutions, patriots. Solutions that don't require raising your taxes or cutting essential services.

Please consider these thoughts and discuss them with your family and friends. Click on the comments section of our site and tell us what you and what your friends and family think about these ideas and what you think should be done about these problems. We love hearing from you. If you are listening to us on a podcast, please rate us and leave us a review. If you are watching on YouTube and you like what you hear, press "like" and subscribe to this channel. Join us next time. Until then, God Bless you and yours and God Bless America.