Pay Down The Debt
The idea has been floated that the Department on Government Efficiency, or DOGE, has found so much waste and therefore so much savings, that some of it should be returned to taxpayers in the form of a $5,000.00 check, a rebate on in essence overpaying your taxes.
At first glance, that idea might have support. After all, as you are filing your income taxes this month and next, you’d probably feel pretty good knowing a check for $5,000.00 is coming back to you soon.
But it’s a bad idea for a host of reasons, chief among them that we are still thirty-six and a quarter trillion-with-a-t dollars in the hole…that’s the amount of the national deficit these days, and it’s only getting larger.
Frankly, until that debt is paid down, we shouldn’t be sending checks back to citizens—especially when we hear about so much fraud and waste in the distribution of other government checks, including paychecks to fake employees and retirement benefits to 150-year-old citizens.
If the DOGE savings is real, and wasteful spending has been cancelled, it’s not a windfall…it just means we are going in the hole this year by less than forecast. And even if DOGE found enough waste to fully fund the government for a year…that just brings us even for that year. And even if DOGE found enough waste to fund the government for a year and then some…that extra ought to be applied to the bringing down the deficit and cutting the accruing interest.
Let’s say you owe $10,000.00 on your credit cards. You save money you might have spent on other things. That saved money is not profit, or a windfall, since you are still upside down. That saved money should be used to pay down the principal of the credit cards, not spent elsewhere as supposedly “free” money.
Sure, if they start sending out checks, I’ll take mine. But how about we not send out checks meant to curry favor politically, and do the smart thing financially by paying down the crippling debt instead.
