To the editor:

I read with a mixture of anger, frustration and disappointment a recent article in the LJW about the CDC’s “zombie programs.” One program, authorized by Congress yet not funded ($41 million), is the Alzheimer’s initiative. My late mother suffered from dementia for about the last 10 years of her life. It was a struggle for us to watch her decline before us, this once loving and effective teacher a shadow of her once self. What seems especially cruel is that $41 million is but a pittance of the federal budget (not even a visible dent in the $40 trillion debt our nation now has). The current administration, rather than working though the legislative process to enact the changes it wants to implement, instead is altering the federal government through executive fiat rather than the process outlined in our Constitution. Most people in the country have probably moved on from DOGE (remember it?) and its ill-conceived and ineffective draconian methods to remake government. They neither made government more efficient nor saved the taxpayer the money they said they would. Congress idly stood by and watched DOGE slash-and-burn through a government it didn’t really understand or comprehend. Elon Musk may have gone back to making cars and flying rockets, yet his antics and those of his ilk are still with us and will be for a while. Sorry to see that programs designed to help those in need like my mother are stalled in a bureaucratic swamp.

David L. Teska,

Lawrence