At this writing, the offense of the hour (it will soon change, but for this hour, anyway) is that the new Trump-Vance administration has stripped several former high-level bureaucrats of very expensive Secret Service protection.
Former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, former National Security Advisor John Bolton, and former NIAID director Anthony Fauci (long the most highly-paid federal employee, for what it’s worth) were among those whom the country has been providing with robust round-the-clock security for years.
What do we mean by robust? Millions of dollars per year. Each.
Some of these data points aren’t public, but as one example, the nation spent $12 million per year protecting two former NSAs: John Bolton and Robert O’Brien. If we assume their costs were about the same – probably not a safe assumption – that’s $6 million per man. Per year.
Should a new administration be salivating over the opportunity to throw individuals into danger? Of course not. And the Trump administration isn’t doing that. But they are being sensible, and watching the federal budget on every initiative they tackle. We simply cannot have our federal government paying out for security 100 times the average American annual salary for a full-time American employee.
Yes, you read that right.
For some perspective, note that the average American full-time worker earns just $60,000 per year. And we’ve been paying a hundred times that just for the security detail of one former government bureaucrat.
If that’s not proof that people in Washington are not taking the American taxpayer’s financial security into consideration, nothing is. There has to be a cheaper way to protect these people.
When is the last time anybody heard of a U.S. government bureaucrat getting shot, anyway? Republican politicians get shot, of course; Democrat activists have tried to assassinate Republican congressmen at a baseball game, another who was mowing his lawn, a president at a rally, and the same president at a golf course, oh, they’ve tried plenty of times. But bureaucrats? Former bureaucrats aren’t exactly creating their own scary actuarial tables at the insurance companies.
But there’s another way to look at this question, one that might indeed be more relevant to more readers and voters:
How about asking the question, who in America deserves protection more?
Millions of commuters take the bus or train to and from work every day, in Chicago, Boston, New York, Philadelphia, Los Angeles, Atlanta, and a host of other cities. There are at least 2,000 reported crimes each year on those public transit networks, from muggings to rape, from assault to murder. And that’s just the ones that get reported, and make it to be included in federal statistics.
Perhaps those commuters could use some protection.
Millions of students attend grammar schools and high schools in the United States. The occasional mass shooting gets all the news coverage, but there’s a great deal more danger in our schools on a regular, quiet day, than these rare horrors on the evening news. In fact, there are upwards of a million violent crimes per year in our nation’s schools, from sexual abuse to beatings to homicide.
Perhaps these kids could use some protection.
As our population continues to grow, there are more and more houses, townhouses, condos and apartments for our 330 million people to live in. About a million of these suffer home burglaries every year, which means that over an average lifespan, Americans have a better than one-in-five chance of having their homes burglarized at some point, their money, valuables and precious heirlooms stolen or destroyed in the process. The average cost of such break-ins, counting the property damage involved, is nearly $100,000 per incident.
Surely these homeowners or renters could use some protection.
The fact is, there is a great deal of crime in these United States, and a lot of it is preventable.
We know that it costs upwards of $50,000/year to incarcerate a known, convicted criminal. Since almost all crime is committed by recidivists, just locking up the convicted criminals a while longer will prevent countless crimes. That’s cost-effective. That’s a good expenditure of federal tax dollars.
We know that a huge number of crimes are committed by illegal aliens. ICE last year reported to Congress that they had been ordered to release some 435,000 illegal aliens who had already been convicted of crimes. Who knows how many crimes could be prevented if we just finished the border wall, and kept these convicted criminals in jail instead of releasing them back to the community as the Biden-Harris regime ordered. In many cases, they could even be released back to their home countries, where they are supposed to be serving time for the crimes they committed at home before coming to America.
Now, we can say that these are things to consider, but it’s not like these ideas are all that revolutionary. The American public already knows about these dangers; that’s why they elected the Trump-Vance ticket. And that’s why the Trump-Vance administration is indeed pursuing these kinds of solutions already, right out of the gate.
The American government needs to protect the American people – senior citizens walking their dogs in the alley, cashiers working the graveyard shift at the convenience store, pizza delivery drivers, students on their way home from night school. We don’t need to protect them from fictional problems like the climate hoax, but from real dangers like convicted criminals who’ve been released too early, and foreign drug cartels and their gatecrashing gang members who’ve invaded our sanctuary cities.
Cleaning up the streets of these known criminals will make our subway platforms and bus stops safer, make our parks and neighborhoods safer, make our schools and workplaces safer. This is the job of government.
Are there times to pay special attention to a specific potential victim in known danger? Certainly. But first, society should protect everyone from known, proven criminals. It’s the easiest thing in the world: once you’ve got them, keep them locked up as long as you can, rather than setting them free to endanger the community again.
In just the past few months, we have all seen reports of gangs beating up students on their way to college, or rabbis on their way to synagogue, or women jogging through parks or on public roads. These victims shouldn’t be in danger. The criminals who assault them just don’t fear the American law enforcement system. They have spent too many years hearing stories of catch-and-release, generous plea bargains, and sentences amounting to “time served.” Anything to set them loose in the neighborhoods again.
Should this administration be focused on preventing crime and protecting people? Yes indeed.
But this new administration is looking at the big picture, and that means rightly judging where the significant danger is, and cracking down where that crackdown will be the most beneficial – that is, where it will protect the most lives.
John F. Di Leo is a Chicagoland-based international transportation manager, trade compliance trainer, and speaker.
https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2025/01/who_should_america_protect_and_how.html
