Wrecking Balls and Wedding Rings

Guest Columnist

By Mary Keyes Rogers | Nov. 30, 2024

Where do a couple of billionaire businessmen intend to aim a wrecking ball on behalf of the Department of Government Efficiency? Sorry, that’s not a joke. It is an honest question.

Let me tell you a story. Little Jimmy was playing ball in the yard when he saw a giant bug on the outside glass of the kitchen window. He didn’t know what kind of bug it was, but it was huge and gross. Jimmy wanted to squish it with his thumb, but the window was too high. He looked at the baseball resting in his mitt and threw it at the bug. The glass broke into the kitchen sink, launching his mom’s wedding ring from the sill into the sink’s garbage disposal.

The crash brings Jimmy’s mom and dad into the kitchen to investigate. Seeing Jimmy’s baseball and the broken glass, they look out the window, finding a horrified Jimmy, jaw open wide, arms down, and mitt in hand. “There was a huge bug on the window!”

“What?” they scream in unison. “It was HUGE!” says Jimmy. Then, in perfectly united parentese: “What were you thinking? What did you think would happen? You threw a baseball at a window!”

Jimmy wasn’t thinking that far ahead. And what about that wedding ring?

I’m now thinking of a very real story featuring President-elect Donald Trump and his promise to “make everything about the United States government and Washington, D.C., better.” He will maneuver the pulleys and levers of the United States government through executive orders and outright illegal means to crush federal agencies from the inside before improving everything with his newly enhanced powers of the Oval Office.

He promises that his new government will bring working-class Americans lower prices, better schools, lower taxes, more affordable housing, fewer regulations, and cheaper gas. Hmm.

Remember that Jimmy only wanted to squish a bug. Trump and his team just want to fix the U.S. government. I predict many lost wedding rings over the next four years while our federal government is getting “fixed” by Trump’s new Department of Government Efficiency or DOGE, led by billionaire businessmen Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy. Do you think they will approach the task by looking through the eyes of a working-class Midwestern family? Unlikely.

A demonstration of the discord and danger resulting from a complete lack of preparedness from seismic change by government, this time from the judicial branch, is seen in the events immediately following the Dobbs decision of the U.S. Supreme Court, which held that the Constitution does not confer to women the right to have an abortion.

As expected, right-to-life advocates celebrated the overturning of Roe v. Wade, which they have demonstrated since 1973. Physicians, women’s health centers, women from sea to shining sea, and even some passionate right-to-life advocates were unprepared for the consequences created by the immediate return to the antiquated laws of their home states. Women experiencing fetal health emergencies while giving birth were at risk of dying. Americans were unprepared.

What will happen to the Affordable Care Act? Will Elon and Vivek address the needs of working-class families or corporate profits?

The wrecking ball may take its first swing at the Environmental Protection Agency. Wedding rings all over the place.

Here’s why: The incoming administration has said the government needs to get out of the way of industry. Let business do business, they say. Okay, let’s make it less expensive and easier for manufacturers to dispose of their industrial waste in our waterways.

Are Americans ready to say goodbye to the Environmental Protection Agency, which among other things, regulates industrial pollution of our forests, rivers, streams, air, and wildlife? I don’t think so. Economic growth be damned. We need a damn planet.

Every action has an equal reaction, and there is nowhere more vulnerable than federal programs. Here are just a few examples of how slashing federal funding by the DOGE wrecking ball could aim, fire, and cripple with obvious consequences and lost wedding rings: We will see more sick and hungry children (higher parental absenteeism from work), polluted air and waterways (devastated wildlife ecosystems and increased cases of cancer and asthma), workplace injuries (lifelong disability and poverty), and early release of inmates in federal prisons (crime and homelessness).

Reducing federal spending on programs millions of Americans rely on is like playing the whack-a-mole game. Hit one here, and another will pop up there.

Mary Keyes Rogers is a resident of Traverse City, providing consulting services to small business owners. Her career has included her radio show Mary in the Morning, Marigold Women in Business, executive director of the National Association of Women Business Owners, and Michigan Small Business Development Center.