I am skeptical that Elon/Vivek will actually cut any Federal spending as the only administration to actually reduce the number of Federal gov jobs was President Clinton from 1992 to 1997.
What I find very interesting is that in the early 1990s when the deficit hit 4.5% of GDP (1992) Congress actually viewed it as a major issue and decided to cut spending but now the deficit is above 6%+ of GDP and reducing spending is an extremely controversial topic.
There are no clear details about what DOGE will alter. All the information we have so far amounts to outrage-bait one-liners. Where and how are they deciding to make cuts, and which agencies are they planning to change? Cutting is not intrinsically a good or bad idea, but everything I’ve read about this so far makes DOGE seem anti-intellectual.
I like the framing of agencies as task forces, because it gives clear goals, then it prepares people for knowing it’s temporary. It also provides an off ramp to resist a situation where admin and bureaucracy always grows.
As always I'm putting my money on "nothing ever happens", but I do think it's probably good that we have a serious discussion on what exactly the purpose various agencies serve and refine their missions and processes to actually support them. Will it happen, probably not, but I can dream.
Real scorched earth policy going on over there.
There's a lot of discussion about the forest.. how about some discussion on the trees? Both are important?
I worry about cuts to departments that is on clean energy, EV, sustainability in general. (For thinking that Musk is in that industry so it wouldn't happen, there's consideration that cuts on Govt support in that area will actually benefit the one that's ahead.. that's Tesla for the charging network, the EV sales, the peaker plant replacements, etc.)
The only meaningful department they should start with is the DOD / Pentagon. I'm sure they will find room for efficiencies once an audit is complete. However, I won't hold my breathe. Bye bye dept of education.
The executive branch only spends the money approved by congress. It only runs the agencies created by Congress. The executive branch can't shrink, can't spend less money, without Congressional approval. With the vanishingly small majority Republicans will have in Congress, this sounds like a pipe dream.
Media has a short memory. This will be just like geohot's very brief tour of Twitter: in like a raging bull and out like a forgettable fly.
There was a related Andy Kessler OpEd in the WSJ recently that shared the same tone (I can't tell if Andy is being sarcastic, but he's full of a lot of bad ideas, so I doubt it). He was advocating for wholesale removal of a lot of agencies, including the FCC, Department of Energy, and Department of Commerce, and made the claim that the FCC could be replaced by a couple of economists. I don't know if they don't understand what all the FCC does and what would happen if you removed the FCC (and just had a spectrum free-for-all), or that a lot of our research prowess comes from DoE grants, or that Department of Commerce runs things like NIST (and that it's laughable to consider disbanding what's likely the source of truth for more than just the US on absolute boatloads of metrology).
I get that there's almost certainly a lot of bloat in the government, but just outright axing stuff doesn't seem like the right way to fix things. I also don't think that we bleed the most money on those anyways, and that entitlements and what to do with them are the real elephant in the room (but of course it's not politically expedient to talk about doing anything to those, at all, ever). Fixing our debt problem (and it's a real problem, no matter what crackpot modern monetary theory believers say) will involve some pain, including likely and unfortunately raising taxes and curtailing benefits somewhere.
As a person who has no idea what most of the agencies do (exactly what Musk and Ramaswamy are):
DHS can easily be folded into the FBI and cuts made
TSA is a non-brainer, they don't really provide much security, let airports handle it on a case by case basis
Do they really need a NSA and a CIA?
Space force - just roll it into the air force
Bam - that's probably like 500 billion right there
That's great, He doesn't have the power to do that but whatever.
I have to imagine Anduril will do very well with the next administration.
Efficiency is not about cutting costs
It's all billionaire fun and games until they try to close post offices. Have fun with that, boys.
Elon and Vivek have no authority to close a federal agency, and Trump doesn’t either.
We’re currently in the bloviating stage of this election cycle; once attention dies down I fully expect DOGE to achieve very little and to die a slow death.
The sad part of all of this is that the government could absolutely be more efficient than it currently is, while still providing the same services. But that’d take serious thought and consensus building, which the incoming administration has no desire to engage in.
I hope the voters learn from this, but I'm ready to be disappointed again
I love the idea that Elon Musk, the greatest beneficiary of federal largess in the 21st century, is going to trim the budget. Redirect it maybe...
Yeah. Elections have consequences.
Everybody who stayed home, and decided that they'd be fine with a Trump Presidency... this is your fault. I know your whole litany of excuses. Let them keep you warm, while the greater of two evils actually does the evils they said they were going to do.
Great. I am eager to see where this goes, as we have too large a civil workforce, unsustainable levels of spending, and a lack of accountability. Same for many states too.
This looks horribly like failing to understand Chesterton's fence https://thoughtbot.com/blog/chestertons-fence
The agencies were democratically put in place for a reason. Removing them with no public discussion of the original reasoning is deeply undemocratic. At the very least, someone thought that the cost of having them in place was less than the cost to society of not having them there. Has that changed?