We can’t imagine why!
The Trump administration is stocked with some of the most shameless, unscrupulous people on the planet who believe that the purpose of their time in government is to enrich themselves as much as possible, an outlook you can hardly blame them for when the guy at the top takes self-dealing and corruption to a whole new level. In normal times, Congress might do something about, say, a Commerce secretary whose family stands to financially benefit as a direct result of the tariffs he’s helping to implement, or an Interior secretary who might have been bought off by an oil-services giant with a microbrewery (a claim he denies). But this is no such Congress! So instead, one of the few recourses in place to investigate and expose corruption at federal agencies is inspectors general—independent, nonpartisan watchdogs who play a major role in uncovering and preventing abuse, fraud, and taxpayer waste. It was the Health and Human Services I.G. whose probe determined that ex-Secretary Tom Price took a whopping 20 trips that violated federal requirements, and urged the department to go after him to recoup at least $341,000 of the taxpayer money he blew on private jets so he wouldn’t be inconvenienced with delays. Its counterpart at the Environmental Protection Agency opened multiple investigations into the winner of the Most Blatantly Corrupt Trump Official 2018 award, despite being reportedly blackballed by Pruitt’s aides. A report by the Department of Veterans Affairs called out former Secretary David Shulkin for making a staffer “effectively act . . . as a personal travel concierge” to him and his wife, as well as that time Shulkin took the Mrs. to see Wimbledon on the taxpayer dime. So, naturally, Trump wants to hamstring the ability of these groups to do their jobs:
In her report, McCaskill wrote: “Cutting the budgets of independent watchdogs is deeply troubling and hinders the effort to ensure taxpayer dollars are spent appropriately. Inspectors General contribute to the important job of curbing waste, fraud, and abuse at federal agencies, so it’s unconscionable that we would cut their budgets and decrease accountability, especially as we’re potentially increasing the budgets of some of the very same agencies they’re supposed to oversee.” We truly cannot imagine why Donald Trump, D.C.’s most upstanding individual who is totally not a magnet for corruption, would want to do such a thing.
