Why DOGE Exists
- William Robinson
- Feb 17
- 5 min read
We Need More Citizen Oversight — Not Political Oversight
I was listening to Conservative commentator Hugh Hewitt discuss the importance of getting rid of fraud and waste in the Federal government by having more oversight capability of the various departments and spending programs. I totally agree!!!
The whole reason that DOGE exists is due to the lack of enough proper oversight in Washington D.C. And it is OUR fault. We the People’s fault. My fault. Your fault.
There are currently about 4,000 civilian political appointees, with approximately 1,300 appointees requiring Senate approval. Mr Hewitt said to get the proper oversight there needs to be an additional 3,000 political appointed positions created. The conflict is that while applauding the downsizing of the federal work force, he is also calling for adding an additional 3,000 workers that will be appointed by the leader (President) of a political party. The last thing I, or We should want is more Political Party oversight that requires appointees to agree with the dogma of a non-profit institution like the Donkeys or Elephants.
I don’t care which party is in control of the Presidency and Congress as both parties have proven during the last 30 years they cannot properly govern, and have relied on OUR debt to fund their priorities.
Instead of adding more political cronies we need to TRIPLE the size of the House of Representatives to 1,305 members. That’s what PROJECT 1305 is all about. What we need is MORE OF US, and less of them!
I think this article from the Center for Effective Government titled ‘Political Appointees to the Federal Government’, describes the appointee environment rather well.
Until 1913 Congress increased the size of the House with ‘every subsequent Term of ten Year’ (census), as is recommended by the U.S. Constitution. The House size was set at 435 in 1911 after the 1910 census, and was frozen at 435 members by the bipartisan (D’s & R’s) Permanent Apportionment Act of 1929.
My opinion is both parties realized that by capping the House at 435 it would become more difficult for a 3rd party to be formed to compete with the Donkeys and Elephants. We are now experiencing the fruits of their labor and our country’s partisan divide is a direct, and predictable outcome of it.
Have you heard anyone in either party talk about increasing the size of the House? How about the mainstream, upstream, downstream, livestream, and no stream media? Neither party has a willingness to even discuss this subject, let alone embrace it. And the result is our total frustration with the hypocrisy of leaders on both sides and their lack of accountability to The People.
Republican Senators are complaining that Democrats stalled the process of approving Trump appointments. Under Biden the Democrats complained about Republican stall tactics, and under Obama the same. Don’t they see how ridiculous they are to The People? Both sides try to screw over the other and then complain about it like it’s something new. Meanwhile, We The People are the ones that actually get screwed.
Project 1305 proposes to increase the size of the House of Representatives by 3X — with 870 new Districts and new Representatives. Say What!?
One of the first persons I shared this with responded, ‘What, and have even greater dysfunction?’ and ‘What about the cost?’
Sure, I get it. It’ll just be harder to get things done and will cost us so much more. To that I say ‘BS’.
In regard to getting things done, I certainly don’t believe it would be any worse than our current dysfunction with the far left and right wings of the two parties running our Country. America’s population was 92 million in 1910, and it’s 340 million people in 2024. On average, we now have 1 Representative for every 760,000 people. In Montana, they have just 1 Representative for their population of 1,137,233 people, and South Dakota has just 1 with a population of 924,000 people.
How can any single Representative possibly provide proper Governance?
The House needs to modernize and the argument of ‘where would they meet’ is a non-starter. There is plenty of room in the current Capitol Building to renovate the House Chamber to accommodate 1,305 members to meet and vote. They may not all have offices in the Capitol Building but that should not prevent the People from having appropriate representation. Plus, during those sessions they won’t have the gallery of cheerleaders. Those seats will be taken by Representatives.
They may not have as much room to spread out, and may even be forced to ‘sit with the enemy’ versus on opposite sides. Sorry, the People are supposed to come first.
But what about the huge cost? My response is just look at the cost of not gaining the level of oversight we citizens need! Currently, between wages, benefits, the cost of staff in D.C. and in district, along with cost of building maintenance, the Capitol Police, etc., each House member costs about $4.4 million per year. Adding 870 new Representatives would add close to $4 Billion per year.
The General Accounting Office identified up to $500 Billion dollars of waste or fraud in America’s annual expenditures. So let’s see, a $4 Billion dollars investment to get back $500 Billion? There’s not a hedge fund manager around that wouldn’t take that bet.
Just look at the cost overruns in our Department of Defense. Per President Tump, America’s newest aircraft carrier wasn’t just over budget — it was gloriously over budget.
As quoted in Business Insider, “Look at the Gerald Ford, the aircraft carrier,” Trump said. “It was supposed to cost $3 billion. It ends up costing like $18 billion.”
In addition, consider the B-1 Bombers, or the U.S. Navy’s Columbia-class submarine program, or Abrams tanks —which are all armaments over budget due to lack of Proper Representation in the House, resulting in non-effective Oversight by the House. Don’t get me wrong about our military spending. We need a strong military, but our single largest budget expense needs sufficient oversight.
Our lobbyists and defense contractors certainly have a lot of oversight. Apparently, not so much for our Generals that have signed off on the invoices the last 25–30 years. Lobbying has continued its upward spiral to set a new spending record in 2024 — $4.4 Billion! Per this article by Open Secrets, “The most common issue addressed by lobbyists was federal spending, with lobbying pushing for increased appropriations, following a recent trend.”
Companies don’t continue to invest in something unless it pays off. With over 12,000 lobbyists hounding our 435 Representatives, WE are outnumbered by 27 lobbyists for each House member. 27–1 are not good odds for our side.
Check out #1 on the list! Of course it’s the largest target.
Simply put, the long-term answer is in the numbers — the more our numbers the stronger OUR voice.
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