Letters

Well. I wasn’t surprised at the reaction from local Democrats to the long-overdue reform of our federal government. It’s hard to fathom how defensive they are over what has always been known was a bloated, over-funded bureaucracy. I’ll take Dean Stiffle’s figure [“No Good Reason,” Letters, February 20] of 2.3 million employees whose productivity has not been seriously addressed since Ronald Reagan’s famous remark, “The nine most terrifying words in the English language are ‘I’m from the government and I’m here to help.”

The American people are now responsible for over $36 trillion of debt. In the past, we could say our government was overweight in its spending, and we just needed a diet to trim some fat and we would be fine. But our current health is much more akin to an 800-pound individual with genuine life-threatening obesity.

Yes, our debt now threatens our national security, and the drastic medical treatment the 800-pound individual requires is what you are shocked to see with the intervention by the Trump administration. Stunning first reports of obscene waste pulled from buried programs illustrate how overdue an independent audit was.

The Democrats attempt to sandbag Elon Musk’s voluntary and patriotic effort to expose the epic waste, fraud and abuse of taxpayer monies is no accident. They are apoplectic over the removal of the sources of their power and influence through the funding of programs that serve only their narrow ideological purposes.

As the litany of these hidden troughs of millions and billions of dollars add up, it has been revealed that devious accounting methods have been used to keep the level of this abuse from being easily noticed. In fact, the disbursement of these funds could not be accounted for in totality because they had no coding system attached that would enable a simple understanding of the scope of the spending.

When this deliberate mismanagement of money is unearthed in the private sector, it is criminally prosecuted. Unfortunately, cleaning up this activity in our federal government might expose too many prominent people and take years to be brought to justice.

So, to Mr. Stiffle, Jean Mahoney [“Do Something,” Letters, February 20], Madeline Kiss [“Not a Drill,” Letters, February 20], Paula Angelone [“Destruction,” Letters, February 20] and Dick Sheehan [“Let’s Hear,” Letters, February 20], I offer my condolences for the mess that you are so concerned with as decades of undisturbed fiscal malfeasance are being unearthed and, as with most organic decomposition, it stinks to high heaven. It can appear to be chaotic from our limited vantage point but is clearly forgivable from the urgency from which it was born.

Your grandchildren may one day be the true beneficiary of this moment if our government is once again brought to heel and taught to serve its true master: We the people.

Ed Surgan

Westhampton