While the scope of the financial waste, fraud, and abuse uncovered by President Trump’s DOGE, currently being managed by Elon Musk and his team of tech geniuses, is staggering, I’ve actually held this view for a long time. Well over a decade, in fact.

Before I jump into the topic, let’s get my background out of the way—I run a fairly large national workplace drug testing company. So yes, I could potentially benefit if legislation was implemented to require all government employees to undergo regular drug testing. That’s unlikely though, because a program of that scale would require a company far larger than mine, so one of these mega corporations would probably get most if not all of that work anyway.

But I still believe this needs to happen, both for the safety and financial security of every American.

And I’m not just talking about safety sensitive jobs, like transportation, military, or law enforcement. Sure, those people absolutely need to be drug tested regularly, and in most cases, already are. I’m also talking about our elected officials, appointed roles, like judges, agency heads, and ambassadors, and even rank and file bureaucrats.

Every. Single. Government. Employee.

Why is that, you might ask?

Well, there are a lot of reasons, but today, I’m going to address the financial ones.

The United States is currently $36 trillion in debt, and that number continues to grow at a maniacal pace. In fact, our budget is so out of control that just the interest payment alone now exceeds our entire military budget. To put it bluntly, we have a massive spending problem, driven by both poor judgment and corruption, and each of those problems are exacerbated by substance abuse.

When I bring this topic up, I’m met with a pretty standard response…

“Wait, are you accusing people in our government of having a drug problem, David?”

Yes, I absolutely am.

First of all, it’s a fairly well known “open secret” that drugs are prevalent among the DC elite, but the DOJ reports extremely high levels of drug use in general as well. And a recent study shows the area holds the distinction for having the nation’s 3rd largest drug problem, which is bad enough to begin with, but even worse when you consider that if the district was a state, it would rank fiftieth by population, ahead of only Wyoming.

Here’s how D.C. ranked:

● 11th – Share of Teenagers Who Used Illicit Drugs in the Past Month
● 2nd – Share of Adults Who Used Illicit Drugs in the Past Month
● 1st – Drug Overdose Deaths per Capita
● 4th – Share of Adults Who Couldn’t Get Treatment for Illicit Drug Use in the Past Year
● 3rd – Substance Abuse Treatment Facilities per 100,000 People (Age 12+) Using Illicit Drugs

While our elected officials and the bureaucrats who do their bidding have proven time and time again that they’re more than willing to spend our money irresponsibly, which is almost certainly driven to some degree by substance abuse, there’s an even more insidious risk lying just under the surface.

People with a substance abuse problem pose a significant national security threat because they can be manipulated by blackmailing them to either influence policies, or to access sensitive information. The financial impact of either can be devastating, and could tank our economy in one fell swoop under the right conditions.

This problem becomes even more apparent when we consider the egregious spending that’s recently been uncovered by DOGE, so for the financial wellbeing of America as a country as well as our fellow citizens, I believe it’s critical that we demand drug testing be implemented for all government employees.

That’s why a drug-testing program, along with the comprehensive work that DOGE is doing to find and eliminate financial waste, fraud, and abuse within our federal budget, would provide an opportunity to pay down our debt and restore our economy so that it works for all of us instead of just a handful of DC insiders.

If we don’t, we’ll see American’s credit rating decline, inflation grow, and interest rates climb, likely leading to a recession. And with little manufacturing, energy production, or gold reserves, that could be the death blow, financially speaking, for our country.

Bottom line—we need to start drug testing every government employee to save our economy.

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David Bell is a serial entrepreneur, and is currently the CEO of the national workplace drug testing company, USAMDT, where they help employers create a safer and more productive work environment.