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Episode 219: How Elites Concern Troll 'Waste' to Gut Social Welfare and Divide the Working Class

Added 2025-04-23 17:54:30 +0000 UTC

"Poverty plan hit for fraud, waste," reported the Associated Press in 1966. "Study says government waste is unbelievable,” insisted United Press International in 1983. "Beneath Trump’s Chaotic Spending Freeze: An Idea That Crosses Party Lines," announced The New York Times in January of this year.

It’s an argument that dates back decades, even centuries: Government is bloated, spending wastefully, and enabling widespread fraud and abuse. The only solution to this waste, fraud, and abuse is to root it out. Cutting salaries, personnel, or entire programs or agencies, it follows, will streamline government bodies, saving millions to billions of dollars.

But who gets to decide what’s “wasteful” in the first place? How are these concepts routinely racialized? What effect does it have on a public dependent on social programs and essential government services like safety inspections? And why should governments be expected to “save” money, when their job—at least in theory— isn’t to make money in the first place, but—again in theory—improve the welfare of its citizens?

On this episode, we detail the past and present of the “waste, fraud, and abuse” framing, looking at how it’s long been used to justify the degradation of essential social programs; mischaracterize governments as businesses; and weaken protections for workers, renters, and everyone else who isn’t a capital-owning member of the elite.

Our guest is Death Panel's Beatrice Adler-Bolton.

Guest

Beatrice Adler-Bolton is co-host of the Death Panel podcast about the political economy of health and co-author, with Artie Vierkant, of the book, Health Communism: A Surplus Manifesto (published in 2022 by Verso Books).

Show Notes

Fighting “Waste” Is an Age-Old Alibi for Austerity

Jack Schneider | March 9, 2025 | Jacobin

Hey Elon: We Found a Place to Cut More Than $2 Trillion in Wasteful Spending

Nick Turse | February 28, 2025 | The Intercept

‘Waste, fraud and abuse’ is a political fight older than the nation. Here’s what to know

Bill Barrow | February 17, 2025 | Associated Press

We Found the $2 Trillion

David Dayen | January 27, 2025 | The American Prospect

Western Media’s Narrow, Colonial Definition of ‘Corruption’

Adam Johnson and Nima Shirazi | April 17, 2019 | Citations Needed

There's Always Work at the Post Office: African American Postal Workers and the Fight for Jobs, Justice, and Equality

Philip F. Rubio | 2010 | University of North Carolina Press

Creating "The Propaganda of History": Southern Editors and the Origins of "Carpetbagger and Scalawag"

Ted Tunnell | November 2006 | The Journal of Southern History

Preaching Thrift: J. Peter Grace; A Budget Cutter Who Won't Quit

Sandra Salmans | February 24, 1985 | The New York Times

Grace Commission Recommendations

US Senate Finance Committee | February 8, 1984

Ford Sees Himself as an Internationalist and a Moderate on Domestic Issues

Marjorie Hunter | August 9, 1974 | The New York Times

An Essay on the Principle of Population

Thomas Malthus | 1798

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Transcript

For a full transcript of this episode, go here. You can also find transcripts of past episodes, live shows, Beg-a-Thons, Interviews and News Briefs here.

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