> A government agency spending $300 million in taxpayer dollars to produce sterilized flies sounds like a dream scenario for a DOGE team looking to cut waste, fraud, and abuse.
> Grocery shoppers could get hit with higher prices if the screwworm cases turn into a full-blown outbreak. That could cost $3 billion across the Southwest, according to a report by the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas.
Good tax, or bad tax?
Returning to your question, though: Yes, I assert the cost of troubleshooting a "bad tax" may exceed the benefits of having addressed it.
"Look at the pros and cons of each one" is an enormous handwave; I've provided very clear evidence of our inability to do that successfully in a very topical and concrete case.
What DOGE did is not one I'd consider proper review, so bringing them up doesn't necessarily help your point. There definitely are ways to look at each tax and determine its worth, in a non-partisan way.
We are tweaking a multi-trillion dollar system impacting hundreds of millions of people directly and billions indirectly. The impacts of those tweaks take years or decades to (imperfectly!) assess. Many of the tweaks and their impacts are a matter of deep partisan and academic contention.
If I’ve already found with a poor justification or better yet, someone is proposing a new one. Shouldn’t we remove it?