DOGE ... Elon and Vivek ... and results by 2026

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I guess we will see. Saw this on X last night:

• The CBO revealed at least 1,264 federal programs and bureaus have expired authorizations, but they still received $516B in funding for FY2024

• The Government Accountability Office estimates the federal government wastes $247B in taxpayer money each year

• The Department of the Treasury reported $24.5B in "unreconciled transactions" in the past meaning it spent ~$25B on unknown items

• Department of Agriculture employees misused government issued credit cards spending millions on personal purchases like concert tickets, tattoos, lingerie and car payments

• $33.2M was spent on transgender monkey research

• The NIH spent part of a $2.7M grant to study Russian cats walking on a treadmill

• The DoD ruined $170M of military equipment by leaving it outside

• The US Agency for International Development spent $6M to promote tourism in Egypt

• The SBA gave over $200M to music artists like Post Malone, Chris Brown and Lil Wayne through the Covid Paycheck Protection Program

• The US military bought soap dispensers for aircraft at over 80 times the commercial price

I saw on X that none of those claims is true. Whose anecdote wins?

We shall see. Many claims over the last month, that you might have believed. turned out to be...wrong.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:It’s incredible misleading to call out programs with expired authorizations that are still receiving money like it’s some bad thing. This happens all the time when Congress wants a program to continue, but doesn’t want to change it or can’t reach agreement on legislative amendments to change it. In that case, they fund the program via annual appropriations acts at whatever funding level they agree is appropriate, exactly the same way they did before the “authorization of appropriations” provision in the authoring act expired.

Many newer programs no longer have “authorization of appropriation” provisions at all. They are a relic of the past in many ways. Their purpose was for the authorizing committees of Congress to signal to the appropriations committees how much they thought the appropriators should provide in implementation funding. The appropriators have always been free to disregard that and decide on a higher or lower amount. At the end of the day, if a program receives funding, it’s because Congress voted to provide it.

+1 and thank you.

Several other misleading things in the list. For example, Covid PPP money to performers was to pay staff and crew who would otherwise not be employed because concerts weren't happening. (And before you say "rich artists could cover it" - so could all the corporations that took PPP money.) More to the point, that money is already spent and not being recovered, so unclear how Musk will "fix" this issue.

Government credit card fraud being described in a report has by definition been discovered already, and the money already being recovered from the bad actors if at all possible. Again, not being fixed by Musk. Although we can wonder if cutting personnel and red tape will lead to better fraud detection in the future ... doesn't sound likely.

Most of the rest of it is money appropriated by Congress and spent on something you don't think is worthy: complain to your elected rep, but somebody told that agency to spend that money in that way. People love to dump on "bureaucracy" but bureaucracy only carries out the orders it gets from Congress or the president, it doesn't magically get a checkbook and then think up ways to spend.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:It’s incredible misleading to call out programs with expired authorizations that are still receiving money like it’s some bad thing. This happens all the time when Congress wants a program to continue, but doesn’t want to change it or can’t reach agreement on legislative amendments to change it. In that case, they fund the program via annual appropriations acts at whatever funding level they agree is appropriate, exactly the same way they did before the “authorization of appropriations” provision in the authoring act expired.

Many newer programs no longer have “authorization of appropriation” provisions at all. They are a relic of the past in many ways. Their purpose was for the authorizing committees of Congress to signal to the appropriations committees how much they thought the appropriators should provide in implementation funding. The appropriators have always been free to disregard that and decide on a higher or lower amount. At the end of the day, if a program receives funding, it’s because Congress voted to provide it.

+1 and thank you.

Several other misleading things in the list. For example, Covid PPP money to performers was to pay staff and crew who would otherwise not be employed because concerts weren't happening. (And before you say "rich artists could cover it" - so could all the corporations that took PPP money.) More to the point, that money is already spent and not being recovered, so unclear how Musk will "fix" this issue.

Government credit card fraud being described in a report has by definition been discovered already, and the money already being recovered from the bad actors if at all possible. Again, not being fixed by Musk. Although we can wonder if cutting personnel and red tape will lead to better fraud detection in the future ... doesn't sound likely.

Most of the rest of it is money appropriated by Congress and spent on something you don't think is worthy: complain to your elected rep, but somebody told that agency to spend that money in that way. People love to dump on "bureaucracy" but bureaucracy only carries out the orders it gets from Congress or the president, it doesn't magically get a checkbook and then think up ways to spend.

+1,000!

[Anonymous]

I think Elon and Vivek will be done before 18 months. Get your head out of the sand.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I think Elon and Vivek will be done before 18 months. Get your head out of the sand.

I agree that they will be done with each other before 18 months.

[Anonymous]

If you read replies to E’s or V’s posts on X, MAGA’s believe that somehow cutting all of this govt spending will result in big returns to the them and somehow they’ll benefit financially. So sad that they believe this.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:If you read replies to E’s or V’s posts on X, MAGA’s believe that somehow cutting all of this govt spending will result in big returns to the them and somehow they’ll benefit financially. So sad that they believe this.

The idea of eliminating the IRS is extremely popular, but I wonder if they think through the next step of what happens to our government without most of our revenue.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:It’s pretty simple for him to reduce the federal work force by 10% just by not recommending any annual pay increases for the next four years.

I think agency leads figure out a way to keep top performers in this scenario. This isn't the first presidency to halt pay increases. ESo, sure a certain percentage will leave (certainly I think a lot of attorneys, esp in finreg space) but there are so many Feds in the GS 14 and under and so many superfluous positions even in the finregs, where you wont see attrition because for these folks, getting a job in the private sector is a pretty hard threshold.

No pay increases for BOTH of Obama’s two terms.

What are you suggesting? There were zero increase years in 2011-2013, which is only three years of Obama’s eight in office.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:It’s pretty simple for him to reduce the federal work force by 10% just by not recommending any annual pay increases for the next four years.

I think agency leads figure out a way to keep top performers in this scenario. This isn't the first presidency to halt pay increases. ESo, sure a certain percentage will leave (certainly I think a lot of attorneys, esp in finreg space) but there are so many Feds in the GS 14 and under and so many superfluous positions even in the finregs, where you wont see attrition because for these folks, getting a job in the private sector is a pretty hard threshold.

No pay increases for BOTH of Obama’s two terms.

What are you suggesting? There were zero increase years in 2011-2013, which is only three years of Obama’s eight in office.

And Obama only proposed pay freezes for the first 2 of those years because there of low private sector wage growth, the 3rd year he proposed an increase and the Republican Congress stuck us with a freeze. As an aside, last year’s 4.6% Biden federal pay increase was the largest in over 40 years.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:It’s pretty simple for him to reduce the federal work force by 10% just by not recommending any annual pay increases for the next four years.

I think agency leads figure out a way to keep top performers in this scenario. This isn't the first presidency to halt pay increases. ESo, sure a certain percentage will leave (certainly I think a lot of attorneys, esp in finreg space) but there are so many Feds in the GS 14 and under and so many superfluous positions even in the finregs, where you wont see attrition because for these folks, getting a job in the private sector is a pretty hard threshold.

No pay increases for BOTH of Obama’s two terms.

What are you suggesting? There were zero increase years in 2011-2013, which is only three years of Obama’s eight in office.

And Obama only proposed pay freezes for the first 2 of those years because there of low private sector wage growth, the 3rd year he proposed an increase and the Republican Congress stuck us with a freeze. As an aside, last year’s 4.6% Biden federal pay increase was the largest in over 40 years.

Might have something to do with the state of inflation we were in …

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Ironic they plan to decrease federal workforce by starting a new agency.

This new agency is so efficient they selected 2 people to run it!

Get an original line—Elizabeth Warren already made headlines with this witty retort.
But my guess is that Elon will provide the data support mechanism and Vivek will do the analysis and implementation.

This is Washington, DC. This dumb plan is DOA. The lawsuits start right away. No way they will be given data. They are both major idiots.

[Anonymous]

isn't this what GAO and OIGs do? This seems like unnecessary overlap and duplication.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:isn't this what GAO and OIGs do? This seems like unnecessary overlap and duplication.

It might drive Trump nuts that GAO isn’t an executive agency. But, yes, GAO has an annual report:

https://www.gao.gov/duplication-cost-savings

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:It’s pretty simple for him to reduce the federal work force by 10% just by not recommending any annual pay increases for the next four years.

I think agency leads figure out a way to keep top performers in this scenario. This isn't the first presidency to halt pay increases. ESo, sure a certain percentage will leave (certainly I think a lot of attorneys, esp in finreg space) but there are so many Feds in the GS 14 and under and so many superfluous positions even in the finregs, where you wont see attrition because for these folks, getting a job in the private sector is a pretty hard threshold.

No pay increases for BOTH of Obama’s two terms.

What are you suggesting? There were zero increase years in 2011-2013, which is only three years of Obama’s eight in office.

And Obama only proposed pay freezes for the first 2 of those years because there of low private sector wage growth, the 3rd year he proposed an increase and the Republican Congress stuck us with a freeze. As an aside, last year’s 4.6% Biden federal pay increase was the largest in over 40 years.

Might have something to do with the state of inflation we were in …

Wage growth was higher in 2020 than 2024, which is what the federal employee pay raise is indexed to. Biden chose to give a bigger raise to feds than Trump.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I guess we will see. Saw this on X last night:

• The CBO revealed at least 1,264 federal programs and bureaus have expired authorizations, but they still received $516B in funding for FY2024

• The Government Accountability Office estimates the federal government wastes $247B in taxpayer money each year

• The Department of the Treasury reported $24.5B in "unreconciled transactions" in the past meaning it spent ~$25B on unknown items

• Department of Agriculture employees misused government issued credit cards spending millions on personal purchases like concert tickets, tattoos, lingerie and car payments

• $33.2M was spent on transgender monkey research

• The NIH spent part of a $2.7M grant to study Russian cats walking on a treadmill

• The DoD ruined $170M of military equipment by leaving it outside

• The US Agency for International Development spent $6M to promote tourism in Egypt

• The SBA gave over $200M to music artists like Post Malone, Chris Brown and Lil Wayne through the Covid Paycheck Protection Program

• The US military bought soap dispensers for aircraft at over 80 times the commercial price

You saw it on X! That’s better than seeing it in person.

How about original sources?

NP. These examples seem about right. I know there are more. We've got a lot of talented, ethical federal employees, but there is a lot of bloat and a lot of petty tyrants.