Ben Shapiro: “Head Start is one of the great fails in federal history”
Published
Citation
From the April 30, 2025, edition of The Daily Wire's The Ben Shapiro Show
BEN SHAPIRO (HOST): The government, unfortunately, to my mind, is still running much as before. However, much spending has, in fact, really been stopped. There's been an open question as to how much spending will be permanently stopped, how much can be temporarily frozen versus actually just cut. Will firing these employees actually stick? But Democrats are caterwauling because as it turns out, DOGE actually has been quite effective in stopping an enormous amount of spending. Is it trillions of dollars? No. Is it hundreds of billions of dollars? The answer apparently is yes.
According to Reuters, President Trump's administration has so far withheld at least $436.87 billion dollars of congressionally-approved funding, the top Democrats on the US Congress' appropriation committee said on Tuesday. The frozen allotment spanned the federal government according to the first estimate of potential impoundments in the project led by Senator Patty Murray of Washington and Representative Rosa DeLauro of Connecticut. You'll remember Rosa DeLauro, she of the purple hair. Almost 42 billion dollars was frozen or canceled for the State Department. Of course, that includes the freeze on support for USAID, USAID along with another 62 billion plus in competitive grant funding for the transportation department according to the estimate.
Democrats also are detailing 943 million dollars frozen for the Head Start early education program. By the way, Head Start is one of the great fails in federal history. Head Start — the idea that you are radically increasing the chances for young children if they go to a federally funded, federally run preschool program, the data on Head Start has been pretty solid for a long time showing effectively no difference between kids who go to Head Start and kids who do not.