Army Corps Caught Red-Handed Marketing Programs With Zero Funding—Trump Team Cleans House
The United States Army Corps of Engineers has been distributing glossy pamphlets across America promising federal cash for local infrastructure projects that had absolutely no approved funding behind them.
That’s right—phantom programs marketed to unsuspecting municipalities nationwide.
Assistant Secretary of the Army for Civil Works Adam Telle exposed this embarrassing reality during a Pentagon roundtable last week. The federal agency tasked with critical infrastructure was literally advertising services it couldn’t deliver, making commitments backed by zero congressional appropriations.
This represents government dysfunction at its most brazen.
A Culture of Empty Promises
For years, the Corps operated under a dangerous mentality: drum up more work regardless of capacity or funding reality. Officials marketed aggressively to communities, encouraging them to bring forward projects without any honest assessment of what could actually be accomplished.
“Their mode has been out there to market to see ‘Hey, bring us more work. Bring us more work,’ instead of focusing on delivering the things that are nationally strategic,” Telle stated bluntly.
This isn’t public service. It’s bureaucratic empire-building.
The Real Cost of Government Bloat
Consider the Port Everglades project in South Florida—a critical commerce hub that should have cost $600 million to deepen and widen. The actual price tag? A staggering $3.2 billion.
That’s more than five times the reasonable cost.
Excessive environmental processes, regulatory overreach, and a complete absence of leadership willing to impose common sense transformed a straightforward dredging operation into a budget-busting boondoggle. Meanwhile, America’s global competitors complete similar projects at a fraction of the cost.
“Our competitors around the globe are not paying 5X for a port based on these types of concerns,” Telle explained. The implication is clear: while China builds infrastructure at competitive prices, American bureaucrats pile on regulations that quintuple costs and delay completion for years.
27 Initiatives to Restore Sanity
Telle’s “Building Infrastructure, Not Paperwork” initiative outlines 27 specific reforms designed to eliminate bureaucratic excess. These include establishing “consistency in communication of the president’s budget”—essentially preventing another pamphlet scandal by ensuring federal officials only promise what they can actually deliver.
Other critical measures include eliminating inactive projects that drain resources, improving prioritization to focus on nationally strategic needs, and terminating contracts that provide no tangible benefit to taxpayers or national security.
These aren’t revolutionary concepts. They’re basic management principles that should have been standard practice all along.
Part of a Broader Transformation
The Army Corps cleanup fits perfectly within the Trump administration’s aggressive push to eliminate wasteful government spending. War Secretary Pete Hegseth has already terminated $5.1 billion in unnecessary Pentagon contracts, redirecting those funds toward warfighter healthcare and essential capabilities.
“We need this money to spend on better health care for our warfighters and their families, instead of $500 an hour business process consultant,” Hegseth declared. “That’s a lot of consulting.”
Prior to that announcement, he had already cut $580 million in bloated contracts.
Army Secretary Dan Driscoll emphasized the urgency: “Continuous Army transformation is about rapidly delivering war winning capabilities to the Army today, not years in the future. But that’s not all; we’re also transforming at home, too.”
The Accountability America Demands
For too long, federal agencies operated without genuine accountability, marketing programs they couldn’t fund and inflating costs through regulatory excess. The result was predictable: broken promises to communities, wasted taxpayer dollars, and infrastructure that costs five times what it should.
The Trump administration’s willingness to confront these failures head-on represents exactly the kind of disruptive leadership Washington desperately needs. When government officials hand out pamphlets advertising non-existent programs, they’re not serving the public—they’re perpetuating the swamp.
Telle’s reforms signal a fundamental shift: from bureaucratic self-preservation to mission accomplishment, from endless paperwork to actual infrastructure, from marketing empty promises to delivering real results.
This is what draining the swamp looks like in practice. And it’s about time.
