The funding freeze: the press pounces
Here’s the sort of thing I’m talking about:
An abrupt halt on federal grants and loans announced Monday night by the Trump administration has created widespread confusion across the government, Congress, state programs and nonprofit organizations that rely on that funding.
The Office of Management and Budget sent a vaguely worded two-page memo to all federal agencies Monday night directing them to “temporarily pause all activities related to obligation or disbursement of all Federal financial assistance” that could conflict with President Donald Trump’s agenda.
The following morning, nonprofit organizations said they were unable to get into a system used to access federal funds to pay for expenses, like salaries and rent.
It’s not clear exactly which programs will be halted, but OMB also sent a document to agencies asking for details on more than 2,600 programs, including school meals for low-income students, USAID foreign assistance, mine inspections, the WIC nutrition program for pregnant women and infants, and a reintegration program for homeless veterans.
However, here’s what press secretary Leavitt had to say when asked at a press conference. Unfortunately, I can’t embed that video, so please click on the link to listen to it. Among other things, Leavitt says:
I think there’s only uncertainty in this room amongst the media; there’s no uncertainty in this building. So let me provide the clarity that all of you need. This is not a blanket pause in federal assistance in grant programs from the Trump administration. Individual assistance, that includes … to give you a few examples, Social Security benefits, Medicare benefits, food stamps, welfare benefits, assistance that is going directly to individuals will not be impacted by this pause. And I want to make that very clear to any Americans who are watching at home who may be a little bit confused about some of the media reporting. This administration, if you are receiving individual assistance from the federal government, you will still continue to receive that. However, it is the responsibility of this president and this administration to be good stewards of taxpayer dollars. That is something that president Trump campaigned on, that’s why he has launched DOGE … and that’s why OMB sent out this memo last night.
There was more, but I think the original memo gave the media a golden opportunity to raise the alarm, which of course they did. I know plenty of people who believe that Trump is going to take away their Social Security and their Medicare, and this stirs them up further. Perhaps there’s no way to calm them own, of course. But the situation with this pause should have been announced in a way that was crystal completely clear from the start.
It really saddens me that there are so many people who evidently unquestioningly believe such things despite the fact that
A). Such a thing has never happened
B). While there have certainly been conservatives and libratarians have mused about cutting off Social Security and/or Medicare (but almost always in the context of replacing them with something else), that has never been something that Trump or any other elected prominant Republican has openly advocated because
C). Doing so would be absolute political suicide.
1) Nobody can make the press not distort things in whatever way they wish–they are not above eliding text in a way to make the meaning opposite, for example.
2) Social Security and Medicare are, at some point, getting cut-they’re going to get cut by math if not by politicians. There are increasingly more retired people and increasingly fewer working people. It doesn’t matter if there’s checks being written and taxes collected and full 401(k)s and pension funds, this is more fundamental than money: there were once 12 working-age people per retirement-age person, and now there are three. Three people’s economic production cannot support one retired person’s economic consumption as easily as 12 people’s can. Two will be able to do less, and one will be able to do less than that, as the population continues to age.
For those who don’t click links, 17.9% of the US population is currently 65 or older, and only 58.2% are 20 – 64. 58.2 / 17.9 = 3.24 (You can throw in the 15-19 bracket if you wish, and get a ratio of 3.4, but it doesn’t change the situation.)
If Social Security and Medicare are not actually cut, massive inflation will have the same effect as the cut: economic growth will not keep up with the money needing to be printed, and there will be less and less for the Social Security and Medicare money to buy, because 2 or 1 working person’s economic production will have to support one retired person’s consumption in addition to their own, not 3 as today or 12 as at the inception of Social Security.
It was handled clumsily. OTOH, if they weren’t warning us about things that the administration is doing, they’d be warning us about things that it isn’t doing.
Just read that there was “chaos” in Medicaid funding (Daily Mail). Not sure if real or not, of if some never Trump Dem decided to cause chaos.
And now it’s been paused because of a lawsuit by a bunch of NGOs.
Sadly, this is what is going to happen to most of these executive orders I’m afraid.
What is really needed is for congress to pass some bills that cut this funding out but that is a pipe dream with the tight majorities with the RINOs on one side and the Massie, Roy types on the other that seem to peel off a couple votes on everything.
As impressive as this first week has been this stuff has no chance of lasting without legislation and that is going to be very difficult I’m afraid.
Sorry to rain on everybody’s parade but there has been a lot of irrational exuberance the last week that hasn’t come up against reality yet.
As I posted in the Open Thread, the libs i follow are going absolutely bat shit crazy over this. Of course they are the prime audience for the media to gin up. Unfortunately, that’s at least 30% of the population, and maybe higher. I base that number on Biden’s last approval rating. That’s millions of people undergoing psychotic episodes.
Solid response by press secretary Leavitt.
Griffin,
I agree that solid legislation is needed and that it will be resisted. That said, there’s more than one way to skin a cat and every member of Congress has skeletons in their closet. Perhaps Trump could direct every federal agency to provide VP Vance and DOGE with their files on every Congressional representative… it might provide the leverage to offer resistant Senators and Representatives a ‘deal’ they can’t afford to turn down.
Congressional democrats and RINOs have consistently acted to dissolve Constitutional provisions and guarantees. They should be treated accordingly.
Well, the same people who are claiming to be hysterical about this had no problems with Biden administration withholding munitions Israel had paid for, or attempting to illegally give away money on student loans.
Let’s see details. Pausing all foreign aid (non-military) seems perfectly reasonable.
Might it be a useful tactic to fake/allow the libs to gin up panic only to obviously fall flat?
And now the Trump administration has announced a buyout program for 2 million federal employees. As a former almost useless federal bureaucrat (I took an early out years ago) I think this is a fantastic idea. Based on my experience in the bureaucracy, I think at least 70 percent of the workforce could be cut without anyone noticing. Most people really have no idea what most people in the federal government do and if they knew they would want their money back.
My buyout 13 years ago was extremely generous but this offer is much better. It will be very hard for many employees to resist, even if they really, really hate Trump and all his plans to reduce the size of government.
The implementation by governmental officials complaining loudly to the press and resistance Democrats (overlapping Venn diagrams, to be sure) are emulating Air Force claims to stop teaching about the Tuskegee Airmen. They are self identifying that they are untrustworthy, unnecessary, and candidates for the unemployment line.
As noted, it matters not how these initiatives are presented, they will be distorted.
Whether it is a calculated strategy or not, Trump is drowning the opposition in a tide of initiatives. They are bucking a strong tide.
They cannot fight every initiative, and it may be that some are simply cannon fodder. But which ones?. I liken it to a Chinese human wave attack in the Korean war. They didn’t care how many troops were killed because the supply was virtually unlimited. Trump’s opponents are overwhelmed. Their resources will be limited, but now the shoes have changed feet, and it is Trump who has the unlimited resources of the Federal government to deploy.
Of course, as I said in another post, he has to squash the ability of single Federal judges to block him.
”And now the Trump administration has announced a buyout program for 2 million federal employees.”
The beauty of this is that it comes after a government-wide hiring freeze, so each buyout actually reduces federal employment.
I’m betting the people who resigned in protest on Jan. 20th are kicking themselves right now.
In re the Buyout initiative – I think he’s kicking the ant hills to watch the bureaucrats run, especially the ones who have not been putting their best efforts into the job.
Two of my best friends, who IMO are among those who are actually pulling their weight even working from home, just retired from the local office of the US Park Service last week — good timing!
https://thehill.com/homenews/administration/5112001-trump-federal-workers-buyouts/
The excerpt links to this graph.
https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/CES9091000001
I’m not sure how he squares the “essentially remained flat” (and that actually was an increase of about 191,000 from Jan 2017 to Nov 2024) with all the news reports on how the big employment gains under Biden went mostly to government jobs.
Maybe they were all state and local. (/sarc)
OTOH, the federal workforce stats do NOT include the millions of people employed by all those NGOs that we are paying for. Under the table employment is still a drain on the treasury. Especially since a lot of them are doing things we elected Trump to stop doing.
What the graph does not make clear are a lot of spikes that go up abruptly and come back to where they started in only a few months.
However, looking at the full period after WW2, we have way too many people because we have way too many departments and programs that we never seemed to need before FDR got his mitts on the printing presses, and gave his successors far too many precedents.
I think this guy is just trolling us.
The point is that Trump (via DOGE) is intent on purging the government of partisan and/or lazy careerists who obstruct the legitimate functioning of their agencies.
Red State is going to town on the funding freeze and bureaucrat firings.
https://redstate.com/jenniferoo/2025/01/28/democrats-lose-their-minds-over-trumps-funding-freeze-then-flat-out-lie-about-its-impact-n2184930
https://redstate.com/smoosieq/2025/01/28/art-of-the-deal-trump-admin-offers-buyouts-to-2-million-federal-employees-n2184926
https://redstate.com/streiff/2025/01/28/trump-suspends-as-many-as-60-senior-bureaucrats-for-trying-to-evade-his-executive-orders-n2184896
https://redstate.com/streiff/2025/01/28/equal-employment-opportunity-commission-dead-in-the-water-after-trump-fires-two-commissioners-n2184932
https://redstate.com/streiff/2025/01/28/trump-executive-order-bans-federal-funds-for-pediatric-transgender-procedures-n2184925
https://redstate.com/bobhoge/2025/01/28/ratcliffe-memo-promises-huge-changes-at-the-ciait-will-be-the-ultimate-meritocracy-n2184929
Finally, President Trump is saying what many of us wanted in 2017:
“You’re fired!”
The substance of those posts gives the funding freeze some context. He’s on a strategic rampage to test the limits of executive power, and force some SCOTUS cases that could undo some of the power of the administrative deep state.
I think the order was crystal clear. I think agencies tried to muddy the waters by reading things into it that were never there. I saw a term for that the other day but don’t remember what it was…something like “disruptive compliance” or something like that…basically over-complying with an order to paint it in as poor a light as possible.
Then the media takes that muddied water and uses it to gin up fear and hysteria about the evil administration that they loathe.
That’s what the media does and their obfuscation and doom-saying is not evidence of any malfeasance or ineptitude from the administration.
In fact, I’d say that this order scared and pissed off all the right people.
The government should not be in the charity business. “Non-profits” that survive solely on taxpayer dollars should not exist. Pausing funding of those parasitic organisms was an excellent move.
There’s no scorn like a Democrat NGO scorn.
Sailorcurt:
That’s apparently what happened.
”I saw a term for that the other day but don’t remember what it was…something like ‘disruptive compliance’ or something like that…”
Malicious compliance