In his first month as president, Donald Trump has shaken our federal government to the core. Many argue that his “meat ax” approach to cutting government waste, abuse and spending is as harmful to our country as the current “runaway spending and borrowing.”

Regardless, America needs a strong wakeup call. The question is where to go from here. Is there a better way?

In short, we need good comprehensive audits of current programs to determine how and where our tax dollars are spent and if we, as taxpayers, are getting our money’s worth. Performance audits like Brian Sonntag conducted during his two decades as Washington state’s auditor (1993-2013) work.

Unfortunately, the president and Congress do not have the leverage of state governors and legislators. They must balance budgets and cannot borrow to finance daily governmental operations. However, they have a limited ability to finance roads, bridges, and buildings by selling bonds.

“Founders of this state wanted their auditor to be a very populist, citizen-centric type of elected official and we’ve tried to make it that,” Sonntag said. “Because we did raise the visibility and credibility of the office, it created the environment for the performance initiative to happen.”

Voters in 2005 emboldened Sonntag’s work by passing Initiative 900 to lock in millions of sales tax dollars each year to produce the reports. It gave the auditor a pot of money and established Sonntag’s fiscal autonomy from the Legislature; however, it sparked clashes between him and lawmakers who did not like voter-earmarked dollars, which they felt were needed to help balance the budget.

President Trump needs to look to Sonntag for advice. Our debt is a huge problem. The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) projects that if current laws remain the same, net interest payments will total $12.9 trillion over the next decade, rising from an annual cost of $1 trillion in 2025 to $1.7 trillion in 2034.

This year (FY25) our interest payment will be $242 billion, which is our third highest cost behind Social Security ($374 billion) and defense ($262 billion).

Currently, if our lenders called for immediate repayment of our nation’s mammoth loans it would amount to $36.5 trillion, and each taxpayer would have to fork over $323,000.

Rather than spending billions to hire new IRS agents, as President Biden pushed in the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), why not focus on learning if our current tax dollars are put to effective use.

Sonntag performance audits gave taxpayers a sharp vision into how departments operated. His approach emulated that of a skilled surgeon with an exacting set of scalpels.

America does not need an “army” of 87,000 new IRS agents to audit ordinary taxpayers, Congress needs to give the Government Accounting Office (GAO) the resources and direction necessary to step up their investigation of federal spending and performance. GAO, the “congressional watchdog” was established to provide fact-based, nonpartisan information.

Sonntag put his stamp on a department long known for its steady churn of audits of taxing bodies: cities, counties, schools, and special districts.

In the past decade we began measuring how well state agencies spend tax dollars using what are known as performance audits, Sonntag added. These reports turned up the heat on practices of the state’s largest agencies including the Department of Social and Health Services and Washington State Ferries.

Nothing makes elected officials, and their appointed directors take notice as a letter stating that the GAO or state auditor is planning an audit.

It may be an effective way for President Trump to redirect America.

Don C. Brunell is a business analyst, writer and columnist. He is a former president of the Association of Washington Business, the state’s oldest and largest business organization, and lives in Vancouver. Contact thebrunells@msn.com.