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Someone that is not elected gets 8mill/day from the government now overseas the government with some 20-year old fanatics that can’t even put up a secure website for DOGE?
For those downvoting, the roles are President, Vice President, Senator, and Representative.
Outside of that, everyone is hired / appointed.
Tell me you don’t know how the US government works without telling me you don’t know how the US government works, why don’t you?
""[The President] shall nominate, and by and with the Advice and Consent of the Senate, shall appoint Ambassadors, other public Ministers and Consuls, Judges of the supreme Court, and all other Officers of the United States, whose Appointments are not herein otherwise provided for, and which shall be established by Law: *but the Congress may by Law vest the Appointment of such inferior Officers, as they think proper, in the President alone, in the Courts of Law, or in the Heads of Departments.*"
Emphasis on the last sentence. There have been a plethora of such vestments in the Executive branch over the decades.
5 U.S.C. § 105 - This statute authorizes the creation of "necessary agencies" within the Executive Office, giving the President flexibility to establish entities like the USDS and staff them as needed, subject to funding.
5 U.S.C. § 3101 - This law states that "each Executive agency" (including the EOP) "may employ such number of employees ... as Congress may appropriate for." It implies broad authority to hire staff, with Congress controlling the budget but not necessarily the individual appointments.
Excepted Service Authority (5 U.S.C. § 3301 and Schedule A) - Under 5 CFR § 213.3102, agencies like the OMB can use Schedule A hiring authority for positions requiring specialized skills (e.g., tech expertise) that aren’t practical to fill through standard civil service exams.
This authority, delegated by Congress via the Civil Service Reform Act of 1978 (Public Law 95-454) and regulations from the Office of Personnel Management (OPM), allows the President (or OMB leadership) to appoint USDS personnel directly.
Term Appointments - Many roles are temporary or term-limited (e.g., 2-4 years), often filled by detailees from other agencies or private-sector experts. These don’t require Senate confirmation because they aren’t permanent "officers." This flexibility is supported by 5 U.S.C. § 3161, which allows temporary organizations within the executive branch to hire staff for specific projects.
And he's not even "auditing" the government. When you're auditing, you emit a report that the audited party later analyzes and acts upon. He's been given freeway to fire government workers as he pleases as if he's an elected officer, which he's not.
They are auditing as part of their process of cutting costs. They're literally tracing trillions of dollars in financial records.
He's doing everything he's doing by executive order of the President of the United States, who was elected.
And already has a number of lawsuits started because he's trying to do things neither he nor the president are allowed to do. Getting an EO to do something doesn't mean it's automatically legal. Multiple big decisions have already been reverted or are held until judges can review them. Even things like the promised payout for quitting are not practical, because only congress can approve the money for that.
He, a single person, has far too much control of our system.
Thats not how it works.
Btw. i think having the richest man in the world in his current position is very very unique.
If he does to the USA Gov what he did to Twitter, he will destroy the brand, reduce the workforce by 80% and reduce the value by 80% too.
The issue with him is, tha tin Twitter, the affected people had money. A missed payment of USA can literaly kill people.
He would have regretted it if it wouldn't have played out (and this game he is currently playing, is not finished yet) like it currently does. He said in an interview that he puts everything on one card now.
Edit: Also he gets a lot of valuation due to him being a cult or whatever. From companies surviving the AI phase we are in right now, if he can't get the nazi people on his side to buy his stuff, he is a very high risk.
He destroyed twitters brand and bluesky emerged. He destroys Tesla and other car makers making ground. SpaceX needs a lot of subsidies and his goal for mars is only a cult topic not a financial success topic.
Wrong tools.
They can use data processing, detect anomalies better, leverage AI models, automate data extraction from analog records, ingest unstructured data like emails and memos, build complex financial dependency graphs, detect leaks, build custom scrapers, etc etc.
I'm sure there's at least one accountant in the loop, but you really want the team to consist mostly of data nerds.
You also seem confused; COBOL might be used, but it isn't the only tool available to accountants working for the government. COBOL is a straw-man. What you're describing here—software engineers who presumably have training in accounting—already exists, and they work inside and out of the government. This is an existing career path.
You're speaking about this as though you know a better way to do something, but it's already happening, and has been for years. Accountants aren't writing 62 year old programming languages waiting to die in their chairs while the world continues to progress without them.
Accounting just about anywhere you find it is already accomplished by accountants, some of them technically trained, as well as data scientists and software engineers. It's an interdisciplinary collaboration in any serious organization.
Or they will have absolutely no idea about the context and for example reveal secret information while they think they're just looking at money https://www.huffpost.com/entry/elon-musk-doge-posts-classifi...
You can easily get drowned by a see of numbers and get confused and gaslighted, unless you don’t make sure all data is available and computable.
Not sure how this release, which impressive by all means transformed into an attack on DOGE which is the exact approach startups are taking to disrupt an industry.
How much disruption started with massive failures?
You don't start with a live system or did SpaceX put astronauts in therir first rockets?
https://www.themarginalian.org/2013/01/17/richard-feynman-of...
Here is an unelected NAZI and ILLEGAL IMMIGRANT (worked illegally on a student visa) who did a seig heil at the presidential inauguration taking up an informal unconfirmed-by-congress department head role (DOGE is just US Digital Services renamed) and getting wide access to government systems, and seemingly firing thousands of government employees.
Billionaires, who should not exist, are so rich that they don’t need government services and would rather the government go away so they can make more money. But regular people do need a government, and that’s just one reason of many why Elon shouldn’t be anywhere near policy decisions.
Now, you might say I’m being dramatic. But I’ll say there is no criticism of this man is unfair. He is one of the world’s biggest hypocrites, along with the other MAGA Nazis in his camp.