Letters

If Ed Surgan enjoys reading letters from local Democrats [“It Stinks,” Letters, February 27], he’s likely to have an aneurysm reading a letter from a local Republican who says the same thing.

I’ve been a Republican since I registered to vote in high school. I believe in a small, responsible government. Freedom of speech. Freedom of choice. Personal liberty.

What Donald Trump and Elon Musk are precipitating via the Department of Government Efficiency is not responsible government. Musk’s intimidation of two million federal workers is not just abhorrent, it’s illegal. Employees are not answerable to the Office of Personnel and Management, nor is it legal to fire those who do not comply. Unsuprisingly, Trump was forced to backtrack this threat.

Trump and Musk have shown no understanding of the checks and balances that ensure distribution of federal authority. In Article I, Section 8, of the U.S. Constitution, the power of Congress to levy taxes is irrefutable. Yet, they’ve moved unilaterally to cancel contracts and dismantle agencies that have been ensured by acts of Congress. This should infuriate even the most sophomoric of Republicans.

Trump and Musk have shown no understanding of the agencies they’re dismantling. They’ve laid off thousands of IRS employees during tax season. They’ve rescinded firing Centers for Disease Control and Prevention employees in the midst of a nationwide bird flu outbreak. They’ve rescinded firing hundreds at the National Park Service as swaths of the country face drought. They’ve rescinded firings at the FDA and Energy Department.

None of the waste that Musk has “unearthed” was a secret. None of it was hidden. Everything he’s claimed as wasteful has been known about for years. The issue is that true government reform takes time. It also takes money — money that other administrations refused to spend, or were prevented from spending.

How hilarious to chime in about $36 trillion of debt, or the $2 billion budget deficit. Independent reports estimate that through all this chaos and harassment, DOGE has saved just a fraction of what it claims to have saved. Some report only $2 billion. Why, at this rate, Musk might actually hit his $2 trillion promise — in 500 years!

This all ignores the fact that Trump’s tax plan is set to add more than $7 trillion to the debt and $3 trillion to the deficit over the lifespan of those tax cuts. What’s all this about accountability? What’s all this about national security?

None of this is about saving the U.S. taxpayer a dime. It’s about dismantling the federal bureaucracy to ensure that it fails. In its place, the pyrite pillar of private enterprise will rise, not accountable or transparent, or answerable to the American people, but only for the sake of private wealth.

Michael Pintauro

Sag Harbor