U.S. Comptroller who spent decades trying to shrink government has big ambitions for Trump

David Walker, the former U.S. Comptroller General who spent decades fighting federal waste and fraud, still believes President Donald Trump has a historic opportunity to achieve what other modern presidents haven’t: substantially shrinking the size of government.

“The government has grown too big, promised too much, subsidized too many and lost control of the budget,” Walker told Just the News. “You know, it is flying blind in mountains of debt without an instrument panel. No wonder we got a problem.”

Walker spent decades trying to root out waste and fraud and shrink the size of government, first as a public trustee for Social Security and Medicare, and later as the chief at the Government Accountability Office, where he served as Comptroller General from 1998 to 2008.

During a Thanksgiving Day appearance on the "Just the News, No Noise" television show, Walker laid out a clear plan for Trump to shrink government that includes:

• Fixing the federal programs in the GAO's high risk list;
• Using the federal government’s annual improper payments report to reduce wasteful spending;
• Using the annual GAO duplication, overlap and redundancy report to streamline agencies and programs;
• Requiring all federal programs that hand out tax dollars to check the Social Security dead persons database each month to eliminate tens of billions of dollars that currently go to people who are deceased.

Congress didn't follow up on DOGE cuts

Asked how much those four items could save annually in government spending, Walker gave a stunning answer: “Hundreds of billions.” 

Walker said that while the DOGE effort led by Elon Musk did a good job identifying potential savings, it actually did not save big money because Congress never followed up to end the spending. 

“DOGE actually saved a small fraction of what they claimed,” Walker explained. “Because, just as I said before, when you say that you canceled the contract or canceled the grant that doesn't save money. Congress has to rescind the funding.”

The Trump administration this year canceled tens of billions of dollars of contracts and grants at agencies like the Environmental Protection Agency. Trump‘s signature legislation, dubbed the Big Beautiful Bill, saved about $200 billion over 10 years and Congress subsequently reduced another $9 billion by eliminating subsidies to programs like National Public Radio and the Public Broadcasting System.

Entitlement programs, duplication, waste, fraud 

Trump has even bigger ambitions for next year, with a plan to eliminate the U.S. Education Department formed by President Jimmy Carter in the late 1970s. Already Secretary Linda McMahon has cut about half the workforce at that agency, while continuing grants to state and local school systems.

But Walker said the biggest savings are to be made in eliminating duplication, waste, fraud, and payments to dead people and foreigners in major entitlement programs like Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security and food stamps. 

Much of that mission, he said, could be accomplished with modern data, sharing systems that quickly detect fraud and payments to ineligible recipients, such as deceased Americans.

“We don't do enough data sharing in the government. We need to, frankly, modernize our information systems. We need to move towards integrating our information systems,” he said. “The most up-to-date death register is held by the Social Security Administration. That needs to be shared, you know, on a frequent, if not real-time basis with all the other departments, governments and agencies.

“One of the things ultimately we need to try to do is what Brazil did. They now have a consolidated, integrated information system for all of their federal government. If Brazil can do it, we can do it,” he added.

Walker said the final step in ensuring a long-term, more affordable government, is holding a one-time Convention of the States under the provisions of the U.S. Constitution, where states can impose via a constitutional amendment a permanent form of fiscal discipline on a resistant Congress and federal bureaucracy.

“First understand that the only thing that can constrain current and future Congresses is a constitutional amendment,” he said. “And my view is […] focused on trying to get a constitutional amendment that will limit how much debt as a percentage of the economy we can take on through an Article V limited Convention of States focused solely on that issue.

“And the reason for debt to GDP is because it's pro growth. If you grow the economy faster than the debt, even if the debt is going up, you're making progress,” he added. “And it doesn't tell Congress how to solve the numerator problem, how much of it is spending reductions, mandatory, discretionary, how much is revenue increases. It just says you have to solve it. And if you don't solve it, things happen. That's what is needed.”