To the Editor:

Thank you for publishing Lynn Hungaski’s March 13 letter, “Home and Town Budgets 101.” Federal Budgets 101 is also in the news every day, and critically important here in Newtown.

On the expense side, over 2/3 of Americans believe we should reduce expenditures of our federal government. Bravo!

Unfortunately, the Trump administration has launched an incompetent, chaotic and cruel campaign in its stated attempts to do so. Many tens of thousands of Americans have been fired from the Federal government, in a haphazard way. Our fellow citizens have been disparaged as lazy or corrupt, which is shameful. I have personally worked with about 80-100 federal employees during my career. They’ve been high integrity, non-partisan and well qualified for their jobs. On top of this, these staff reductions are relatively small budget-wise and very big in terms of impact on capabilities.

It is doubtful that these minor expense reductions can justify the widespread harm to many institutions that have truly made America great since WWII. The US is damaging alliances and our global economic stature in the name of false economies.

President Trump promised to audit and eliminate “extreme levels of fraud” in Social Security, yet hardly any fraud has been found. At the same time, Trump is laying off about 7,000 staff in that agency, or 12%. That is already affecting this service that distributes $1.5 trillion annually! This is not good. Maybe this will be like the WMD that were never found in Iraq, where lying got us into trouble.

Any organization that’s interested in financial efficiency will look at both expenses and revenue. However the Administration is reducing staffing at the IRS, which is almost beyond belief! Based on IRS reductions of 11,000 to 20,000 staff, tax revenues are projected to decrease by 10%, or over $500 billion. This is not smart. These revenue losses dwarf any gains from the current DOGE expense cuts.

Many of these dopey actions beg the question of whether the Administration’s actual objective is to improve the financial condition of our country, or is deliberately meant to be destructive, perhaps driven by culture wars. They defy rational explanations.

I hope Americans will wake up to these budget realities, and appeal especially to our Republican leaders, who seem like they’ve gone into a coma during this Trumpian budget disaster.

Peter Van Buskirk

Newtown