Trump is disrupting everything — why isn’t Congress doing anything? 

Much of what we know about President Trump’s leadership is revealed by his personal behavior. For example, during his first month in office, while Elon Musk conducted mass firings and canceled government services to cut spending, Trump spent nearly $10.7 million of taxpayer money to play golf at his properties. 

The Department of Government Efficiency hasn’t mentioned this. HuffPost calculated the expenditure based on Trump’s tax-supported golf outings during his first term. Over those four years, he golfed 293 days at a cost of $152 million. Taxpayers footed the bill for him to travel on Air Force One, transport motorcade vehicles, and station gunships off the coast of his West Palm Beach golf club. 

It’s unclear whether he charged his Secret Service detail to stay at his tony resorts, as he did before.

Trump’s golf expenses are chump change compared to his cost-cutting and revenue-raising plans for the government. Still, they illustrate a double standard when tens of thousands of government workers have been fired with little notice and without cause, suddenly jobless and unable to waste money on something like green fees. 

Trump’s big initiatives reflect his personality, too. They appear to be driven by impulse rather than sound analysis. Their costs and benefits are not transparent, and his decisions are mercurial. They are causing considerable disruption in the stock market, business plans and people’s retirement funds. 

It’s not clear Trump knows what he’s doing. For example, he and his advisers say import tariffs will generate billions of dollars in tax breaks. However, these are tax increases imposed on American businesses that rely on imports. Companies will pass the cost along to consumers. 

Trump adviser Peter Navarro seems confused, too. “The message here is that tariffs are tax cuts,” he told Fox News. Then, he predicted they would raise about $600 billion annually. As one business writer explains, tariffs are “likely to represent a huge tax increase unlike anything seen in history.” 

However, the size of the tax increase is impossible to predict because Trump keeps his plans close to his chest and keeps changing his mind. His pattern of imposing tariffs one day and suspending them the next has “already upended diplomatic ties, shake markets, and confounded entire industries,” the New York Times notes. 

What will Trump do with all the money? We don’t know. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent says the president might use it for leverage in negotiations with other countries. Other advisers would prefer to pay down the federal debt or fund more tax breaks for wealthy Americans. 

Trump’s immigration plan is another example of his impulsiveness. Federal agents seem to be swooping in and sweeping up just about anyone who is not white and has tattoos. Suspects are shipped off to other countries illegally, without due process to determine whether they have the right to be here.

Meanwhile, although career federal workers can be fired only for cause and with the right to appeal, Musk has summarily dismissed tens of thousands. He’s canceling programs and entire agencies without permission from Congress or any apparent analysis of what the cuts will mean for the millions of Americans who rely on the government. If hiring should be based on merit, merit should be favored in dismissals, too. It’s not hard to identify and retain the best workers because federal employees undergo annual performance reviews. 

Trump claims DOGE is “saving taxpayers billions and billions of dollars every single day.” Is it? Trump can cut federal programs, but the problems the programs addressed remain, whether it’s industrial pollution, weather disasters, abject poverty, veterans’ suicides or lousy schools. The problems will fester, or states and their taxpayers will have to pick the costs of dealing with them. 

Trump is disrupting lives and the economy on an unprecedented scale, with much more to come as Americans begin feeling the consequences of his decisions, especially if Congress codifies them.  

The potential victims include the 68 million retirees who received Social Security payments in fiscal 2024, 22 million people who receive health care under the Affordable Care Act, 67 million people enrolled in Medicare, millions of families that survive because of social safety nets, 18 million veterans who receive disability and retirement benefits or medical care at the Veterans Administration’s hospitals and clinics, and all 340 million Americans whose lives, health and productivity are threatened by unregulated pollution. 

The disruptions also will affect all 64 states and territories, 19,429 municipalities and 33.2 million businesses that rely on federal help for infrastructure repairs, disaster recovery, education funding and social spending, not to mention the individual Americans who count on everything from safe food to disease prevention and cancer research. 

Waste, fraud and abuse exist in government. No one denies it. Just last month, the Government Accountability Office reported that 68 federal programs across 16 agencies made at least $162 billion in improper payments in fiscal 2024. Since 2003, improper payments totaled at least $2.8 trillion. This is outrageous and unacceptable. 

However, in a more rational process, the administration would round up and evaluate the many other audits by the GAO, inspectors general, the press and watchdog groups that have identified waste and fraud and ideas to fix it. 

Congress should be asking hard questions about Trump’s leadership. If Republicans don’t hold hearings, Democrats should convene their own. As Congress’s call volumes show, the people want to know what’s going on. 

William S. Becker is executive director of the Presidential Climate Action Project and a former central regional director at the U.S. Department of Energy.