America’s $36 trillion national debt — and the return of the debt ceiling on January 1 — underscores the need for President Trump and the GOP Congress to slash federal spending. The liberal press is already gnashing its teeth. The Washington Post warns of “an almost impossible budget-cutting agenda.” The subject of its ire is the Elon Musk-envisioned Department of Governmental Efficiency, highlighting wasteful government spending.

DOGE points to absurdities like $28 million spent on “licensing fees” for “Afghan National Army uniforms,” and $2.5 million on “a Super Bowl Ad for the Census.” Or $1.7 million “for holograms of dead comedians.” Or $500,000 “to build an IHOP” at Washington, D.C. Scolds the Post: “It’s easy to find what appear to be nonsensical expenditures in the federal government. But scratch below the surface and there is usually an explanation.”

That’s the kind of nanny-state pedantry that has justified the lavish expenditure of taxpayer dollars since the advent of the New Deal. There is almost always an “explanation” from federal bureaucrats for the spending that justifies their salaries and provides the raison d’être for their jobs. So what’s the justification for taking 2.5 million spondulix out of the pockets of hard-working Americans to spend on a television commercial during the Super Bowl? 

The bureaucrats taking up desk space at the Census Bureau, per the Post’s report, say, with a straight face, that the $2.5 million in spending was meant to save the taxpayers’ money. “For every 1 percent increase in mail-in responses it received,” the bureau says, “it would save $85 million sending workers door-to-door to collect information” — even though filling out and returning one’s census form is required by law. 

The Post — with less skepticism than was displayed by Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein in their investigation of Watergate — seems perfectly satisfied with the census takers’ justification. “So what appears to be a waste of money was intended to reduce spending over time.” See, folks? The expenditure was intended to reduce spending. In that case, please, by all means, why not have the Census Bureau buy out the entire broadcast?

One doesn’t want to make too much of a $2.5 million line item in the federal budget, which in fiscal 2023 ran to more than $6 trillion. Neither, though, does one want to make too little of it. Such outlays encapsulate not only the illogic undergirding much of the spending by the federal leviathan — but also the arrogance of the bureaucrats doing the spending and the obsequiousness of the press in refusing to so much as question it.

For all these reasons, the prospect of Mr. Musk and entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy teaming up to tame federal overspending is one to savor. Feature a few of the other budget line items DOGE served up on its X account the other day. There’s, say, $45 million in tax dollars “for a diversity and inclusion scholarship in Burma,” or $3 million for “girl-centered climate action” down in Brazil. Last, but surely not least, $288,563 “for diverse bird watcher groups.” 

The focus by DOGE on this kind of profligacy is not only smart public relations. It marks a welcome change of pace amid the liberal consensus that higher taxes, not spending cuts, are the only way to balance the budget. The spotlight on waste also echoes the work done by President Coolidge and his budget director, General Herbert Lord, in the 1920s. The two met once a week, Coolidge biographer Amity Shlaes writes, to “cut, and then cut again.”

“Coolidge demands economy in budget,” was the Times’ headline. The goal was to cut down the federal budget to $3 billion from $3.2 billion — quaint-sounding numbers in these days of a debased dollar. D.C.’s budget was cut by a fifth. Even better, all the trims helped pave the way for a tax cut. The spending cuts sparked gripes, but Coolidge’s legacy could yet inspire Messrs. Ramaswamy and Musk — and Trump — that this task is far from “impossible.”