Thanks to the heroic efforts of Nick Shirley, James O’Keefe, Dr. Oz, and RFK Jr., Americans are beginning to get an idea of the horrifying scope of the money blown by federal, state, and municipal social services bureaucracies. Billions, possibly trillions, earmarked for daycare, elder care, medical treatments, hospices, pharmacies, addiction rehab, and sober living facilities funded lavish lifestyles and foreign terror organizations.
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What made America vulnerable to this tsunami of fraud has its roots in the late 19th-early 20th century progressive movement. Somehow, for certain influential citizens, the American system didn’t seem to offer enough for the underclass.
In our country, no one’s opportunities were restricted because of being born in the wrong class. Our country had, at great expense in blood and treasure, ended slavery. In about a century, Americans had built homesteads and businesses stretching across the continent. We had a lot of upward mobility. We had built the Gilded Age. And, in the view of some of our powerful citizens, the Gilded Age was not enough.
The people would need more. Americans needed safety nets.
The first social programs in America operated out of settlement houses that offered recreation, education, and accommodations. Ironically, the same movement that introduced America to social programs also pushed for tenement reform and housing codes that destroyed such low-cost housing options as single-room occupancy and boarding houses. Because every household, even of one person, needs a kitchen, a stove, a minimum amount of square feet, and a bathroom that isn’t shared.
After a century and a half of ever-expanding tax-fueled largesse, according to the U.S. Treasury, Americans now pay more in taxes than for our housing, food, and clothing combined.
And those tax expenditures aren’t improving things for Americans these days.
The bureaucracies that ladled out cash weren’t monitoring where the money went. Even if a state, say Minnesota, refused to provide info on whose futures were being fed, how difficult would it have been for federal bureaucrats to count the number of children who were, on paper, accommodated by all those learing centers, and compare it to the number of Minnesota residents under age five? Simple questions were clearly never asked.
The fraud revelations were followed by a mad scramble. State authorities bounced from claiming they’d investigated the fraud themselves to claiming that the Trump administration was taking food from the mouths of starving children and depriving frail elders of necessary medical care. But we all understand that no kids or seniors were helped by money leaving the country or squandered on luxuries.
It’s not that there are never Americans who really need help. Sometimes, the need is extensive and acute. Some forms of help, like treatment for cancer or a severe injury (even just the insurance copays), can be horribly expensive.
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I have a very simple — even modest — proposal to address this whole mess.
First, we shut down every federal, state, and municipal bureau, agency, department, office, or program responsible for money earmarked for social services (including food, housing, and cash assistance, child care, elder care, large medical expenses, student loans, and any “etc.,” that I didn’t think of).
Federal and state income taxes would be immediately cut by the amount no longer spent on and by enormous bureaucracies ostensibly operating social services. If that amount is half the federal income tax take expected for 2027, everybody’s 2026 income tax would be half what they paid for 2025. (It might even be less than half. The whole scope of the fraud has still not been determined).
Next, we set up a single crowdfunding website where citizens can plead their case to their fellow Americans. They could ask for a lump sum, for, say, 1st, last, and security for a new apartment, or a used car to get to work, or to pledge support for education to become an engineer, a pilot, or a doctor. Users could also post their availability for work. All those newly unemployed bureaucrats could sign up on the crowdfunding page, too.
Americans are a generous bunch. We contribute to crowdfunding campaigns. We donate to charities. We support business ideas on Kickstarter. We subscribe to content creators through Rumble or Patreon, and give one-off donations via the YouTube Thanks button and the Buy Me A Coffee platform.
We each would choose whom to help, and what expenses we would prefer to support. We’d also be able to begin the process with our own due diligence. We’d crowdsource not only help for our needy fellow citizens, but also scam detection.
It would feel good to know we’ve helped someone get out of a real jam, or get a start on a productive career — a lot better than it feels knowing that our nation’s largesse has been squandered on a massive scale.
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