Whenever any proposal arises to cut government spending -- or even to modestly reduce the rate of spending increase -- statist progressives roll out a parade of horribles to demagogue the idea. To "progressives," existing funding levels always represent the absolute bare minimum to stave off untold human misery and death. Much of the reflexive and hysterical opposition to DOGE was rooted in the mindless 'principle' that taxpayer-funded spending programs must always and inexorably increase. Keeping things flat is effectively a cut, they say, amounting to unimaginable cruelty. And any cut whatsoever, no matter how deserved or warranted, is also cruel cut, of course. Dollars spent (which is to say other people's dollars confiscated and redistributed by politicians and bureaucrats) is treated as a crude metric that measures empathy and compassion, with results treated as secondary, tertiary or even irrelevant. To spend is to care. To reform or reduce spending is to kill. This is their worldview.
This is why blue states and jurisdictions almost treat bloated, sclerotic, unsustainable budgets and red ink as badges of honor. Such waste is evidence of their virtue, you see. And if things spiral out of hand, they'll expect a bailout from the federal credit card. Rewards for recklessness must be rejected. And head-to-head comparisons like these must be highlighted at every opportunity:
The comparisons between New York and Florida -- similarly sized states with very diverse populations -- that @DavidADitch did here are astonishing: https://t.co/6J82dJgA4o pic.twitter.com/RuwPYUlJyr
— Dominic Pino (@DominicJPino) June 12, 2025
US News recently ranked low-spending, low-tax Florida number one in the country on the economy and education. It is by far the largest state in the overall top ten rankings. High-spending, high-tax New York comes in 41st on the economy, and many slots below Florida both on education and overall (a similar disparity in governing results can also be seen by contrasting Texas and California). Despite this, New York Democrats sneer at red Florida as a matter of course. Gov. Kathy Hochul famously told Republicans to "jump on a bus and head down to Florida where you belong. OK? Get out of town. Because you don’t represent our values." Within months, she was wringing her hands over "the trend of people leaving our state." Democrats in New York City have now nominated a limousine Communist mayoral candidate who seeks to punish success even more aggressively, blithely stating on national television that billionaires shouldn't exist at all. They'll continue to exist, of course, just perhaps not in his city or state -- which may complicate his magical 'tax the rich to pay for massive new spending initiatives' so-called "plan."
Back to the aforementioned rankings for a moment. In spite of its gargantuan spending, the Empire State lands near the bottom of the pack (34th out of 50) in the 'infrastructure' category (for reference, stingy Florida fares much better at 15th). Could New York's dreadful position have anything to do with embarrassing, scandalous misadventures like this?
NYS spent $100M on a light project and never took the lights out of their boxes. Ultimately, the lights were auctioned off for $383K, for a loss to taxpayers of $99.6M.https://t.co/l7cq8N4kgD
— Bob Lonsberry (@BobLonsberry) July 9, 2025
More than $100 million was spent on specialty lighting intended to illuminate New York State bridges, but the lights were never used and have been sitting in storage for two years. This story was first reported by Politico, so CBS6 tracked down New York Power Authority President and CEO Justin Driscoll to see what he had to say about the seemingly forgotten plan. The New York Power Authority purchased the lighting equipment and design plans under former Governor Andrew Cuomo's initiative to enhance the aesthetics of the state's bridges. However, the lights remained in cardboard boxes inside a warehouse, which was an additional $2.1 million in storage fees over seven years.
The state forced its taxpayers to buy more than $100 million in speciality lights to illuminate bridges around the state, only to have those lights just sit in boxes for years -- incompetence and waste that has cost millions more in storage fees. Ultimately, as the tweet above indicates, the entire project was abandoned in utterly humiliating fashion:
In late June, the state attempted to recoup some of the costs by auctioning off the lights. Despite the initial $100 million investment, the auction yielded only $383,000. Taxpayers are left to bear the financial burden of the unused lighting project.
New York Power Authority President and CEO Justin Driscoll was asked about this embarrassment. His on-the-record quote? "It is what it is." It sure is. And it perfectly illustrates the profound disrespect, to put it as mildly as possible, Democrats in places like New York have for taxpayers. Examples and instances like this must be cited repeatedly in the face of inevitable, knee-jerk demands to further increase spending, always and forever. Although it certainly is interesting to see areas in which they're willing to pretend to be tight-fisted misers. For instance, in California, the Secretary of State (D) responded to calls for common-sense reforms to clean up the state's atrociously glacial, third-world vote-counting processes this way:
Democrat California Secretary of State Shirley Weber took to social media Wednesday to say the reason why the state takes weeks to process election votes is due to the fact that it would cost up to an estimated $110,000 in each county per election. Among a handful of states that tend to lag behind in Election Day ballot counting, California took five weeks after the 2024 November election to officially count all ballots and declare results. With some legislators in the state signaling interest in speeding up the process, Weber posted on X why costs increase, saying faster results wouldn’t “increase accuracy,” but just make “it more costly.”
It took her state the better part of a month and a half to finalize its ballot tabulation last year. Her excuse for opposing improving this shocking status quo is that it would cost a pittance more. And yes, $110,000 is a pittance in a place that flushes tens of billions on train projects to nowhere. Then there's this, out of Washington State:
NEW: Gov. Bob Ferguson defunds treatment for babies born addicted to drugs, but just announced millions for abortion https://t.co/ZShgkNHQqq
— Jason Rantz on KTTH Radio (@jasonrantz) July 11, 2025
Washington Democrats and Governor Bob Ferguson claim to champion the vulnerable, yet they have once again revealed their disturbing priorities. Ferguson, in a move of pure political pandering, has pledged to backfill federal funding cuts to Planned Parenthood. At the very same time, a one-of-a-kind center dedicated to saving the tiniest victims of our state’s drug crisis is shutting its doors forever, thanks to budget cuts Ferguson and his party oversaw. The message this sends to the people of Washington is as clear as it is terrifying: under the leadership of Bob Ferguson, the right to an abortion is more sacred than the right of a newborn to survive drug withdrawal due to a parent who became hooked because of the drug legalization Democrats created.
Sick stuff, from a notoriously politically sick region of the country. At the federal level, as State Department workers grieve staffing reductions with various performative spasms of Resistance Theater, it's always useful to bear context and proportions in mind:
Looking at State Department documents, it appears the department went from 57,340 total employees in 2007 to 72,895 in 2015 to 80,214 in 2024. So it grew by nearly 23,000 employees before the 'devastating' cut of 1,300. pic.twitter.com/KCIUlE6nVN
— Byron York (@ByronYork) July 12, 2025
It's curious that journalists have virtually no appetite for sob stories when private sector layoffs impact people on a regular basis (unless there's a helpful political angle, of course). And when Democrats oversee payroll reductions, low-key headlines seem a tad...gentler:
Literally shaking #fascism https://t.co/uIQR8cZqwg
— Guy Benson (@guypbenson) July 12, 2025
I'll leave you with a portion of an excellent National Review editorial highlighting how the Parade of Horribles brigade has been proven wrong over and over again amid Argentina's free market revolution:
Argentina’s economy is growing at 7.7 percent, according to the latest year-over-year data. It grew by 1.9 percent in April, the most recent month for which data are available...Argentina is achieving this growth not through a strategic industrial policy or a mercantilist trade policy. It’s achieving it by rolling back the overextended public sector, slashing the government budget, controlling the money supply, and removing price controls. Milei eliminated rent controls in Buenos Aires, and the apartment market was flooded with new properties and the average real price went down. He turned a budget deficit into a surplus in his first full year in office. He eliminated half of the country’s cabinet departments.
When Milei took office in December 2023, inflation was 25 percent per month. In May, it was 1.5 percent. The initial shock of the policy change led to a spike in the poverty rate, but it has been falling since the second half of last year and is now lower than when Milei became president. As is routine whenever a leader proposes shrinking government, “Over 100 Economists” signed a letter in 2023 saying that Milei’s policy proposals were “fraught with risks that make them potentially very harmful for the Argentine economy and the Argentine people.” When the Argentine people were subject to decades of statism that turned them from one of the world’s richest countries into an economic disaster zone, “Over 100 Economists” were silent. It was only when Milei, an economist himself, proposed to do something about it that “Over 100 Economists” found their voice.
Milei is providing libertarian shock therapy to a failing economy, and it's working. The failure-engineering "experts" were wrong. Their fear tactics have been disproven. NR's editors point out that another country is experiencing a policy-driven 'miracle,' too: "Poland is in the middle of its own 'miracle,' which has made it a top-20 global economy, ahead of Switzerland and Taiwan. Leaders of post-communist Poland were told by the professors and social engineers that the free-market shock therapy of economist Leszek Balcerowicz would be dangerous, and then they were told they were fools for not joining the euro. They ignored them and were vindicated with strong growth." Imagine that.
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