I watch a lot of YouTube. History, mostly. So I am subjected to all manner of pop-up ads - two recent ones from Kean, Jr. being among them.

In one ad, an elderly woman (effectively, a stand in for the Congressman) asks us to “thank him” for supporting President Trump’s common-sense reforms to eliminate “waste, fraud, and abuse.“ In other words, the hard work of DOGE.

I get the empty marketing. If you repeat a tag line long enough, in people’s minds it morphs into a fact. It is the only true alchemy.

So, what has DOGE’s “hard work” accomplished? One could conclude that it has accomplished nothing. Or less than nothing. As previously observed by me in InsiderNJ, the promise was to quickly save $2 trillion.  That then became $1 trillion. And is now claimed to be $150 billion, of which less than $5 billion – according to a former lead research fellow on the federal budget and spending policy at the ideologically conservative Heritage Foundation - is verifiable. The rest, this same economist has noted,  is either not backed up with specific data, based on mathematical errors, represents triple-counting of the same savings, or includes funds that were never going to be spent.

And those $5 billion in savings may well increase the deficit. Why? Because DOGE used rank amateurs to cut agencies who had no understanding of the agencies they were cutting. Yes – there is always room for greater program efficiency. But you will almost certainly never realize it by cutting people en masse based not upon their role or skills, but instead upon the length of their tenure. Within days DOGE fired many thousands of newer employees because under the civil service rules they were the easiest to fire. Trump then planted the flag and declared victory.

The harvest of this approach will likely not be long in coming. Look, for example, at the chronically under resourced IRS – where even before Trump over $700 billion a year in taxes owed was already not being collected. Since January 2025 the IRS has, under Trump, now had five different Directors, cut 1/3 of its personnel, and stopped modernizing its antiquated computer system. All in the name of government efficiency. Which will almost certainly encourage even more tax evasion and fraud. Forgive me, Congressman, if I withhold my gratitude.

In Kean, Jr.’s other YouTube ad, he again solicits our thanks – this time for supporting Trump’s “big, beautiful bill.” You know, the one that Musk recently described as a big, beautiful abomination.

I don’t know if it is or it isn’t since I – like many (most?) members of Congress – will never read it.  But there is one piece that Kean, Jr. is fixated on. Raising the SALT deduction from $10,000 to $40,000 which, it is asserted, happened because Kean, Jr. (with several others) insisted on it. Here’s the rub. That increase will actually benefit only a sliver of New Jerseyans. Because as I understand it you don’t get to the SALT lines on your tax return unless the deductions you can itemize exceed $30,000 (if married, $15,000 if single). Otherwise, it is meaningless to you.

I am not asking anyone to break out their tax tomes or consult their accountants on this. Just ask yourselves whether, before Trump, you itemized and, if so, did that number come near $30,000. If not (which will be the case for most of us) then as to you there is a real question about whether this jewel in the Kean, Jr. crown is made of diamonds or glass.

Look, I get the world we are living in right now. Fiction is fact. Taglines are substance.

When I cut through that self-defeating nonsense, here is what I see. By all appearances, Kean, Jr. has consciously decided that it is in his political self-interest to accelerate our national decline. He has seemingly decided to mischaracterize bad as good, and (to be consistent with the fiction that he actually believes this to be true) has shamelessly asking us to “thank” him for doing so.

You now know why I can’t get there. But I do have one ask of Kean, Jr. Having made your bed, Congressman, please have the common decency to lie in it. Quietly.