Once operationalized DOGE should start their prune exercise with the Pentagon.
b) I don't think that's true. And even if were to suppose that it were true then your accounting problem would be so easy to solve.
c) Agreed. That outcome is more likely.
Politics is hard. Government spending is death by a thousand cuts, so the easy things to do are two: remove whole departments (remove all of the education, veterans, and defence, that will net you 1.5T) or ask the heads of each department to do the cuts. But then each one will face the same issue, and the deeper you go, the more you encounter people who want a specific spending e.g. reps who got elected supporting veteran support or education spending or a specific factory in Springfield, Illinois.
People favor spending cuts the way they favor tax breaks: don’t cut you, con’t cut me, cut that fellow behind the tree.[0] everyone's is for them in the abstract as long as they don't touch them.
And yes, I think the richest man in this world does not know how federal funds are being spent, based on the fact that he thinks he can cut "at least 2T" out 6.5T. To save 2T you'd have to erase the Department of Health[1]. If you cut 50% of Social Security, Health and Defence, you'll not get that, and people will riot.
Also, I point you to X, where Musk managed to save money by firing 70% of the workforce and <checks notes> losing 80% of the company value. The fact SpaceX and Tesla are successful[2] does not automatically translate in Musk being good at everything.
[0] https://quoteinvestigator.com/2014/04/04/tax-tree/ [1] https://fiscaldata.treasury.gov/americas-finance-guide/feder... [2] both, let me point out, with massive help from government expenditures
If the solution is not to cut excessive and unchecked spending, you tell us your solution for the dealing with the problem?
> remove whole departments (remove all of the education, veterans, and defence, that will net you 1.5T)
AFAIK DOGE or rather Elon hasn't specified how they are going to cut $2T from the annual budget so all this is speculation and we don't actually know which sectors might receive the cuts. For all we know it could be a goal setting figure. Even if they don't reach this target, the endeavour is still worthwhile. They have 4 years to sell their plans to Congress after all.
In summary you fail to make a good case for why DOGE is a bad idea other than Elon bad. I challenge you to remove this bias from your thinking, it alone just may help you avoid missing the forest for the trees on the issue of government overspend and the relation to uncontrollable public debt.
There is no need to create another new program instead of improving what already exists, except that GAO is non-partisan so it won’t cut whatever the new administration says it should, and Musk wouldn’t join it unless he’s at the top.
Here's them in 2022 saying $247B [1] got lost in that year due to "payment errors".
Looks like their job is to only make recommendations on spending and nothing more.
[0] https://www.gao.gov/blog/gaos-scorecard-how-we-saved-federal...
[1] https://www.gao.gov/blog/federal-payment-errors-known-improp...
The new department will do exactly the same. Congress controls spending, so recommendations are all any executive department can do. If GAO should be able to find more inefficiencies, or should be given the power to cut stuff on its own (it shouldn’t), then the focus ought to be on making them do that. Adding a whole new redundant department seems…inefficient.
Stop the funding and see what breaks?
They don't want the transparency.
I’m sure there is plenty of waste to be found but also that only a tiny amount of that won’t involve significant political wrangling.
- Environmental Protection Agency (EPA)
- State Department
- Science and Public Health Offices
- Civil Rights Offices
DOGE doesn't have to do something new or significant, all they have to do is to promote it better even if it's the same actions by any republican reaching office.