Speaker Mike Johnson Commits to Working With the DOGE - But What About the Debt?

While Speaker Mike Johnson's hold on the gavel is being decided, the man himself is making some interesting commitments. On Friday morning, Speaker Johnson took to X to state one such, that being to work with Elon Musk, Vivek Ramaswamy, and the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) to hopefully get federal spending under control.

There is one aspect of American fiscal responsibility, however, that the Speaker does not mention.

The American people have demanded an end to the status quo, and a return to fiscal sanity. That’s why the citizens of our great country gave President Trump the White House and Republican control of both chambers of Congress. If we don’t follow through on our campaign promise for…
— Speaker Mike Johnson (@SpeakerJohnson) January 3, 2025

The Speaker states:

Republicans have a real opportunity in the next two years to make meaningful spending reforms to eliminate trillions in waste, fraud, and abuse, and end the weaponization of government. Along with advancing President Trump’s America First agenda, I will lead the House Republicans to reduce the size and scope of the federal government, hold the bureaucracy accountable, and move the United States to a more sustainable fiscal trajectory.

The specifics are encouraging, and the DOGE's tasks are badly overdue; the question that remains as to whether House Republicans, with whom spending bills originate, will work with the DOGE recommendations and wield an axe rather than a scalpel. The Speaker continues to lay out some specifics:

As Speaker, I commit to:
1. Create a working group comprised of independent experts – not corrupted by lobbyists and special interests – to work with DOGE and our committees on implementing recommended government and spending reforms to protect the American taxpayer.
2. Task that working group with reviewing existing audits of federal agencies and entities created by Congress – and issuing a report to my office for public release.
3. Request House committees undertake aggressive authorizations and appropriations reviews, including providing additional resources where needed, to expose irresponsible or illegal practices and hold agencies/individuals accountable that have weaponized government against the American people.

All of that sounds good, but, of course, all is subject to votes in the House of Representatives. All spending, after all, must originate in the House.

What isn't mentioned anywhere in this statement is the federal debt, which, as of this writing,g stands at $36 trillion. Even so, reducing spending — not reducing the rate of increase but reducing the amount spent — could help deal with that to some extent. There's an old saw that states, "If you're in a hole, the first thing to do is to stop digging." Under the Biden administration, federal spending has traded that shovel that Washington has been using to dig us into debt for a steam shovel, and that is what we hope the DOGE and the incoming House of Representatives will take on. Maybe between the two, Washington will finally stop digging.

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Dealing with runaway spending is good. It's something that has to be done, and it just isn't possible to cut enough; not in the current political environment. We should be — must be — discussing the shutdown of entire government agencies. We can hope that this will be on the table. That remains to be seen.

There must be a plan, though, to not only stop running up the debt, but to pay it down and, in time, to eliminate it. This is the flip side of spending reduction, and we don't have fiscal responsibility without both aspects. The runaway federal debt is inflationary; at the moment we are adding another trillion in debt every 100 days. This obviously can't continue; we are headed for a sovereign debt crisis that could destroy not only the American economy but the global economy. We can grow our way out of it, we can inflate our way out of it, or we can repudiate it; the last two options would be ruinous.

The Speaker's X post concludes:

If we want to restore fiscal responsibility, we must start by being transparent about the dollars that are spent, address the issues we find, and then hold those accountable who have misspent funds. Republicans have a mandate to implement the America First Agenda, and as Speaker, this will be my priority.

All this sounds good — but we also need a plan in place to reducing the federal debt. The alternatives do not bear contemplation.