When Chad Pergram interviewed Speaker of the House Johnson last week in the hallowed halls of congress about Musk’s condemnation of the House’s recent passage of Trump‘s “Big, Beautiful Bill,” Johns0n – under his breath, looking away from the camera, with exceptional control of the highest hubris – claimed “We didn’t know about the wasteful spending“!
     There is not an average taxpayer in America who could avoid prison with that excuse for such massive fraud. 
     Every judge in America knows “Ignorance is no excuse of the law.”
Why should politicians who are elected and paid with our money get a mulligan for such massive fraud, waste and abuse being committed for most of our history right under their noses – not only with their consent but with their participation. 
      Aren’t taxpayers funding something called an “Oversight Committee“? It must be operating with blinders on. 
     It’s their job to know. They have all the resources to know. They have eyes that choose not to see and ears that refuse to hear. It would be like testifying against themselves in the court of public opinion. 
     Promises by the GOP that the “lines between the debt and prosperity will cross in the future” is a massive disinformation campaign to avoid the criticism of passing a bill that increased the national debt by five trillion. 
     Remember, it was both Parties who rescinded every remedial measure to fix the 2008 Mortgage Crises two years after it devastated millions of taxpayers life savings. 

    A more credible source for the “inattention” of congress to wasteful spending is Senator William Proxmire (D) (WI) (November 11, 1915 – December 15, 2005) who served in the U.S. Senate from 1957 to 1989.

     Proxmire served in the Army during WW II enlisting as a private rising to the rank of First Lieutenant in Counterintelligence – unlike most politicians today who have never served. He was an early advocate of campaign finance reform and never accepted government reimbursement for travel expenses related to his official duties. In his last two re-election campaigns he refused contributions and spent less than $200 of his own money to file the paperwork for filing to run for office. He mailed back unsolicited contributions. Proxmire actually showed up for work while in congress. He still holds the U.S. Senate record for consecutive roll call votes cast: 10,252 between April 1966 and 1988. 

     Proxmire gained fame for integrity by introducing his Golden Fleece Award presented monthly between 1975 and 1988 to focus media attention on political projects he viewed as wasting taxpayer dollars.

     His first Golden Fleece Award was given to the National Science Foundation for funding an $84,000 study on why people fall in love. Other awards were given to the Justice Department for conducting a study on why prisoners wanted to get out of jail, the National Institute of Mental Health to study a Peruvian brothel (the researchers made repeated visits “in the interests of accuracy,”) and the Federal Aviation Administration for studying “the physical measurements of 432  airline stewardesses paying special attention to the “length of their buttocks.”

     House Speaker Johnson and the GOP‘s response to GAO criticism of Trump’s “Big, Beautiful Bill” as a budget buster consists of denigrating the integrity of the GAO – blaming the whistleblower. They dismiss the GAO as”a long-time biased organization.” 

“The Government Accounting Office is an independent, non-partisan agency that supports congress in meeting its constitutional responsibilities and helps improve the performance and accountability of the federal government for the benefit of the American people [no wonder Johnson, et al criticized it!]. 
     It’s core mission is to provide congress with timely, fact-based, non-partisan information to improve government operations and save taxpayer money.  GAO’s work helps identify inefficiencies, wasteful spending, and areas where government programs can be more effective. The agency investigates allegations of illegal or improper activities and reports on how well government programs are meeting their objectives, promoting accountability within the federal government.” (wikipedia)

Most Americans are probably shocked and amazed there is actually such an agency within the federal government. The next question is “Have they been doing their job?” Followed by “Haven’t the politicians in congress been listening to them?” The answer to the first is “Yes, they’ve been doing their job.” The answer to the second is, “No, congress has completely ignored them – except when its’ investigation turns up dirt on a politician who isn’t one of the boys and needs to be expelled for doing the same thing they do (like Senator Menendez recently). 

     In his 1980 book The Fleecing of America, Proxmire calls the GAO a “Good Watchdog.” 
“As a taxpayer, you are fortunate to have the General [sic] Accounting Office (GAO) working for you. The GAO serves as a congressional watchdog over the programs on which we spend your money. It is headed by a comptroller general and manned by some 4,000 expert accountants and auditors. For more than twenty years I have used this agency to investigate allegations of our federal government’s waste, mismanagement, and loopholes for fraud, not only in this country but all over the world.
     My experience with the GAO has been consistently good. Their findings have been generally admitted even by the agencies they criticize. The are remarkably accurate. They have saved the nation billions of dollars. Recently they made an estimate of the cost of waste and fraud which plagues our government. 
     On September 18, 1978, the GAO reported on a possibly $250 billion of federal resources “susceptible to fraud and other white collar crimes.” In their conclusion, they state “No one knows the extent of fraud against the government, but Department of Justice officials believe it ranges from $2.5 billion to $25 billion a year.”
     Yet fraud is very likely the smallest part of the waste of taxpayer dollars.
As many forces push, and will continue to push, for increased government spending [congressmen], and with this spending take a mammoth 40 percent of personal income out of your pockets, many more recruits are needed for economy campaigns of all kinds and descriptions.” – The Fleecing of America by William Proxmire, 1980; p. 50
[see also: Fiscal “Cliff” Solutions – Remember the Grace Report? “It’s the Fraud, Waste and Abuse, Stupid!” this site dated 2013/03/02]

     “When have men refused to get rich from fear of ruining others?” – C.C. Post, Driven From Sea to Sea, or A’Campin’; 1883, p. 133

The GOP majority in congress has bought the American public tolerance for an incredibly immense increase in the national budget by appealing to our most basic instinct – self-interest. While granting us tax deductions for this and that with one hand they are stealing our wallets with the other. Our cumulative deductions so magnanimously proffered by our politicians costs them nothing while buying continued employment with the largest pork barrel feast in our history. Even Biden didn’t have the balls to increase the budget by that much in one year. 

All it takes to stop this bankrupting insanity is – as Musk said, “All you have to do is care.”