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Comment by erehweb | Hacker News Reader

People certainly believe there is huge waste in government, but that doesn't make it true - people believe all sorts of incorrect things. Politicians have been running for years on plans to cut "waste, fraud, and abuse" in government spending, but I suspect there's a lot less fat than the average taxpayer thinks.

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There is fat, but I'd venture not much on the CDC, FEMA or USAID. A big part of this mess is that fat is concentrated on areas that are very unpopular to cut, like military expenditure, or in legacy processes and systems that will take years and a lot of upfront investment to streamline (and that DOGE won't touch).

If you meet an average government worker in the US, you quickly realize how little they make and how understaffed their departments tend to be. People underestimate how complex government work is and how different it is from what you do at a regular business.

Compare budgets in 2024 ( $6.752 trillion) vs 2015 ($3.688 trillion)

Where are these numbers from? I see 2015 (4.89 trillion): https://fiscaldata.treasury.gov/americas-finance-guide/feder...

And let's correct for inflation.

2015 4.89 trillion is 6.503 trillion, which means the budget only went up 249 billion, or 3.83% over that 10 year span.

The number is from https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2015_United_States_federal_b...

Total expenditures $3.90 trillion (requested) $3.688 trillion (actual)[3] 20.6% of GDP[4]

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