Letters: Bring back checks and balances; Veterans deserve better

Bring back checks and balances

The United States Constitution provides the power to propose and pass budgets to the Congress, and only to the Congress. Only Congress can create departments, agencies and programs, and only Congress can decide to remove those from funding. For example, Congress created and funded the Department of Education, USAID, and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. Only Congress can remove them or defund them.

Therefore, there is no Department of Governmental Efficiency, because Congress did not create or fund it. Thus, Elon Musk is not authorized to do anything regarding departments, agencies or programs, or their funding, if Congress did not fund or approve those actions. Anything he and his minions do is unconstitutional and illegal in our government.

Call Congress and demand that they take back their constitutional authority to propose and control funding for our government! Remove Elon Musk from all governmental actions!

Veterans deserve better

The Trump/Musk war on the federal government is a war on veterans.

Military veterans receive preferential hiring for federal jobs. Firing hundreds of thousands of federal employees disproportionately impacts veterans who have obtained good employment allowing them to continue giving back to their country. Additionally, the Department of Veterans’ Affairs, one of the largest federal agencies, can’t help but be impacted by DOGE slash-and-burn and by trillions in proposed budget cuts.

The VA provides veterans with health services after serving their country. What message does this send to veterans that incurred visible and invisible wounds serving their country? That we don’t owe them anything?

Taking care of veterans is personal. My grandfather served in the Pacific, surviving the Bataan Death March and the “hellships” taking POWs from the Philippines to Japan. I remember driving with him to summer VA hospital visits. When he was diagnosed in the 1990s as 100% disabled from PTSD, it was a VA doctor that comforted him as he began to cry in the exam room.

How can I look veterans, including my union sisters, brothers, and siblings, in the eye as our leaders tell them they’re owed nothing for their sacrifices?

Veterans, and every American reliant on federal services, deserve better. We need representatives — including Senator Fetterman, who has abandoned the values he campaigned on — to stop putting billionaires first, and deliver for working Pennsylvanians.

Many reasons to oppose USAID cuts

All patriots should stand against the proposed cuts to USAID. Here’s why:

• Geopolitics. Through its support of economic development, USAID serves American interests by strengthening our ties to friendly nations. Through its support of democracy and human rights initiatives, it strengthens these core American values in places where they are under threat. Removing this support creates a power vacuum that Russia and China will be sure to fill.
• Local economics. USAID is a major buyer of American agricultural products, including from farmers right here in central Pennsylvania. Such a disruptive drop in demand will have a harmful ripple effect through the local economies where those farmers operate.
• Constitutional separation of powers. It is the Congress that decides where to spend taxpayer money and where not to. However well-intentioned the executive branch may be, it is usurping a right that is guaranteed to our elected Congressional Representatives by the Constitution. There is nothing conservative about allowing that to happen.