The past few weeks have been highly instructive as Democrats rush to defend federal waste and fiscal folly in the face of the DOGE onslaught. The level of hand-wringing signifies far more than a concern over the “unelected” Elon Musk or executive branch overreach.

It can’t be the latter that has generated so much mewling. After all, Democrats sat silently as President Joe Biden essentially ignored the Supreme Court while pursuing his vote-buying student debt forgiveness schemes.

In addition, as George F. Will points out elsewhere on these pages, progressives have long considered the Constitution an unfortunate shackle on the strong chief executive they have so ardently sought — having apparently never pondered that, if they fulfill their dreams, a Republican might some day inhabit the White House.

And it can’t be Musk’s status as a special government adviser that has the likes of Chuck Schumer and friends all aflutter. After all, Democrats have long provided aid and comfort to the thousands of “unelected” federal bureaucrats who serve as a de facto shadow government, interpreting congressional acts to justify intervening in virtually every aspect of American life — or, as the founders so delicately put it in the Declaration of Independence, “to harass our people and eat out their substance.”

No, it must be that Musk and his cost-cutting commission are actually on to something. In less than a month, Musk and his team have focused national attention on a federal government that uses a portion of the trillions in revenue it sucks up every year on a litany of questionable expenditures.

Tribune graphic / Forum News Service

So far, Musk’s panel has identified billions in potential savings, including “canceling 85 DEI contracts at more than 10 federal agencies, amounting to about $1 billion” and a “$45 million scholarship program for students in Burma,” Newsweek reports.

In addition, Fox News writes, DOGE “canceled 12 contracts in the Government Services Administration and the Department of Education that resulted in a total savings of about $30 million. It also canceled 12 underutilized leases for savings of $3 million.”

The agency, which, in a nod to transparency, created a website to update taxpayers on its progress, also identified $10 million spent on “studies involving transgender animals,” according to Newsweek.

None of this waste or extravagance is new. Fiscal watchdogs over the years have regularly identified numerous examples of government profligacy, and Republican politicians have been talking about eliminating entire Cabinet departments — What has the Department of Education accomplished over the past 45 years? — dating back to the Reagan administration.

Previously, however, the advocates for responsible spending were labeled as cranks by defenders of the status quo, their suggestions dismissed as background noise drowned out by the cacophony of the perpetually grinding gears powering the overworked federal printing presses.

But as the national debt has ballooned past $36 trillion, and public acceptance of business as usual wears thin, President Donald Trump and Musk have now frightened many Democrats into thinking that their worst nightmare may be on the horizon — a public groundswell to demand an end to America’s fiscally unsustainable path.

Yes, any savings targeted so far remains a pittance compared with the amount of money the federal government spends annually, and DOGE faces towering hurdles — including from many congressional Republicans, who could be as reluctant as their Democratic counterparts to have their home-state bacon targeted — that will aggressively and noisily obstruct its efforts to impose a cultural change on the Beltway.

But any such endeavor must begin with small, targeted steps before moving on to more substantive reforms. That Democrats recoil in terror at the exercise reveals just how much disdain they have for the taxpayers forced to serve as a bottomless ATM for the political class while the nation careens toward bankruptcy.