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To the editor:
An Open Letter to Addison McDowell: I have had little luck getting real answers out of your office through phone calls or emails so I would like to invite you to come home to your district, host a public meeting and answer some important questions that are on the minds of “We the People.”
Anyone reading the news would get a sense that the House of Representatives has given up on its power of the purse and handed over much of its constitutional power to billionaire Elon Musk, a federal contractor whose companies have received $21 billion from our government since 2008.
Many of the agencies first targeted by the President and Musk’s Doge group were investigating Musk’s companies. The agencies targeted include Department of Labor, Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), Department of Transportation (DOT), U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), Federal Election Commission (FEC), Department of the Interior (DOI), Department of Defense (DOD), Department of Justice (DOJ), Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), and Office of Government Ethics (OGE). All of these agencies were actively investigating Musk. Why would our House allow a federal contractor to decimate the agencies investigating the contractor? This is a conflict of interest that boggles the mind. This should not happen in a democracy.
Even more confusing is the focus of the cost cutting the civil service which makes no sense because if anything, its numbers have not kept up with the need for services.
The federal government’s workforce has remained largely unchanged in size for over 50 years, even as the U.S. population has grown by 68% and federal spending has quintupled. Compensation for federal employees cost $291 billion in 2019, or 6.6% of that year’s total spending.
Eliminate all federal civilian employees and save 6.6%. Then we would also have no government services or replace them with more expensive contractors. Those civilian salaries are small compared to the US budget. “In fiscal year 2023 (FY 2023), the US federal budget spent almost $6.2 trillion.”
Be honest with us. What percent of the government workforce are you going to eliminate 10%, 20%, 50%, or do you even know? Assuming you eliminate 20% and you save 1.3% or $3.78 billion. The next time the government goes to hire federal employees, you will have a harder time hiring them because of all the random firings.
Cuts made have left starving children without food around the world. The USAID budget was less than 1% of the total budget and at least $2.1 billion of the USAID budget was used to buy products from US farmers. Now farmers don’t know if they will be paid at all. The disappearance of these farm purchases will negatively effect prices here in Davie County. Are you going to pay farmers for their losses? The cuts have created chaos in National Parks, generals have been fired, FAA staff were fired even as we are having the first plane crashes in years. Doge fired CDC employees even as bird flu grows and there are measles outbreaks. The government’s response is to forbid the CDC from telling us what is happening. Doge fired people responsible for watching over our nuclear materials. Apparently the post office is next on the cutting block. The people who run our post office do a great job. Can you explain why they might get fired?
The other thing which makes no sense is abandoning Ukraine while trying to blackmail them to hand over mineral rights. Only thugs and gangsters do this. Ukraine in spite of what the president believes was invaded by Russia. They do not want to give away their country any more than we would give ours away. Have we forgotten the failure of appeasement in World War II? You do not stop dictators like Putin by giving them territory they never should have invaded. Davie County lost over 42 soldiers in World War II defending democracy. The way to stop Russia is to help Ukraine so we won’t have to go to war ourselves. We should not turn our friends into enemies so the President can cuddle up with Putin.
Canadians have been great neighbors, they have fought side by side with our soldiers, sent help during disaster and you allow them to be insulted. That’s wrong.
Finally, my understanding is that your proposed budget increases the deficit to $4.5 trillion so you can extend expiring tax cuts and provide new ones skewed to the billionaires and corporations. You are planning to do this by cutting $880 billion from Medicaid. You realize that when you deny preventive care to the poor, they end up in the emergency rooms and drive up the costs for everyone. This is a fool’s bargain and inhumane. I hope you know that as of December 2024, there were over 9,600 people in Davie County on Medicaid. Which ones are you going to strip of healthcare? Those are my friends and neighbors. We are a better country than that. Why would you want to take away healthcare from people who have had some bad breaks in life? My religion calls for helping the disadvantaged – not billionaires and corporations.
It makes no sense to cut healthcare for the poor to fund tax cuts for the rich. The U.S. is not a heavily taxed nation.
As evidenced by rich people and companies avoiding taxes completely, we do not need to give them more breaks.“According to a 2021 White House study, the wealthiest 400 billionaire families in the U.S. paid an average federal individual tax rate of 8.2 percent. The average American taxpayer paid 13 percent.
Twenty-three of the largest and most profitable companies in the US paid no federal corporate income taxes from 2018-2022. And 109 corporations paid zero federal tax in at least one of those years. The US government is estimated to have lost around $135 billion in revenue due to corporate tax avoidance in 2017.
Your numbers do not add up. Instead of going after $135 billion in corporate tax avoidance in just one year, we are going to fire thousands of IRS employees and try to save money by slashing the civilian employee budget. Remember firing 20% of all federal workers saves only $3.78 billion, but only if you don’t have to replace them.
Let’s create some numbers that make sense. Every billionaire and corporation should pay reasonable taxes. Let our civil service continue providing services. Get Elon Musk out of our data and stop letting him threaten federal employees. Keep my neighbors healthcare intact. Try giving us some numbers that are good for all of us not just the rich.
David Sobotta, Mocksville