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Could DOGE cut $2T? The legal and practical reality of government reform
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- namuol 2y agohttps://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betteridge's_law_of_headlines https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betteridge's_law_of_headline...
- BriggyDwiggs42 2y agoSomeone needs to come up with a law that any headline can be responded to by pasting this wikipedia link.
- 01HNNWZ0MV43FF 2y ago"Government can't do anything right. Elect us and we'll prove it."
- zdw 2y agoPeople who complain or say "how hard can it be?" without having first-hand knowledge of a problem or area of work frequently fail spectacularly when put in a place of responsibility.
- MichaelZuo 2y agoIt’s possible to initiate such cuts, but whether they stay cut after the inevitable legal battles remains to be see …
- llamaimperative 2y agoNot really, the cuts have to be "initiated" by Congress itself.
- MichaelZuo 2y agoCuts in appropriations yes… cuts in expenditure can be initiated by just about anyone in the federal government, whether or not they stick for more than a few hours is the question.
- alephnerd 2y agoRecommendations from Presidential Task Forces like DOGE are non-actionable. For it to be actionable, it will require congressional approval, as the GAO and the rest of the American civil service's operations are already codified in law - not executive order.
- MichaelZuo 2y agoCongress can’t force anyone, not even the lowliest office clerk, to actually spend money though… the appropriated money can just sit in various accounts. (Well they can try to compel expenditures, but that would likely never withstand court scrutiny) The real question is how the incoming administration plans on effecting such a desire on such a huge number of people.
- alephnerd 2y agoThe people hired to hire those people need to be confirmed by Congress as well. The US system has been designed this way for over a century after the spoils system became unpopular. Also, I've bumped into you multiple times on this forum talking about governance, and while I appreciate the zeal PLEASE read an introductory book on Civics - you seem to have a cursory understanding of how governments are designed. I'd recommend the AP Gov curriculum for the US.
- MichaelZuo 2y ago> Also, I've bumped into you multiple times on this forum talking about governance, and while I appreciate the zeal PLEASE read an introductory book on Civics - you seem to have a cursory understanding of how governments are designed. I'd recommend the AP Gov curriculum for the US. Who are you to decide for other HN users what they know or don’t know? And why do your opinions even matter in determining what other HN users know about ‘governance’ or ‘how governments are designed’?
- alephnerd 2y ago> And why do your opinions even matter My opinions don't matter, but the fact that you make very basic mistakes around how checks and balances work, as well as how institutions are run in the US seems to show this lack of elementary understanding of civics. If you just want to kvetch, so be it. But if you want to have an actual serious discussion about these topics, actually understand these intricacies.
- fallingsquirrel 2y agoFor those not clicking through, DOGE doesn't refer to Dogecoin, it stands for "Department of Government Efficiency."
- alephnerd 2y agoRepeat after me - a Presidential Task Force like DOGE is NOT a department. You can slap lipstick on a pig, but it's still a pig. Same with presidential task forces. A Department with actual staffing, budget, personnel, and legal authority can only be created by Congress. Presidential task forces can only give non-binding advice to a President.
- ttyprintk 2y agoTrump can and will do those things, and argue absolute immunity if he’s even challenged.
- slillibri 2y agoThe “Department of Government Efficiency” isn’t a real government office and as such has no actual power. Musk and Ramaswamy won’t be able to do anything, and the budget is controlled by congress, not the executive.
- akira2501 2y agoThe executive requests the budget. Congress approves it. The key thing here is the "Due Care Clause." The administration is required to implement our laws with "due care." If there's a law on the books the administration is required to enforce it. The means and expected effectiveness of that enforcement are often not specified.
- sundaeofshock 2y agoThe House creates the budget, the Senate votes on it, and the president then signs it into law. Usually, the executive branch will come up with a dream budget that can be considered their starting position in budget negotiations.
- ttyprintk 2y agoAs President, Trump paid no price for shutting down the government because the budget was too small/didn’t include some inefficient spending he said Mexico would pay for. His next will be his fourth shutdown.
- akira2501 2y agoThe Administration creates the budget and submits it to congress. This is why the Administrative office of "Management and Budget" exists. This happens every year and has for as long as I've been alive. I believe you're referencing "budget resolutions" which are not law and have a more complicated relationship to the process. https://www.usa.gov/federal-budget-process https://www.usa.gov/federal-budget-process
- jfengel 2y ago
- cma 2y agoSurely a government office named as part of an insider trading scheme to pump a coin that burns tons of energy to exist will be ultra efficient.
- lylejantzi3rd 2y agoIt's named after the meme. The coin is also named after the meme. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doge_(meme) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doge_(meme)
- nickthegreek 2y ago*not an office of the government.
- pixxel 2y agoPut some points into Cope.
- cjbgkagh 2y agoElon is hiring people that will agree work for free, he is a big proponent of legal immigration which suppresses wages so I guess it’s no surprise that what he really wants is to not pay people at all.
- ivewonyoung 2y ago>legal immigration which suppresses wages so I guess it’s no surprise that what he really wants is to not pay people at all. Does undocumented immigration suppress wages or not. If it does, can we say the same thing about the current President and the current VP.
- cjbgkagh 2y agoWe sure can
- thrance 2y agoIf your goal is to cut spending in the short term, sure, that is easy and can be done. But wait and see where failing public infrastructure and services will lead the country in 5, 10, 25 years and make the balance then. Just look at where basically every austerity policies lead the countries they were implemented in.
- llamaimperative 2y agoGreat article! I fear this will be the country's rude awakening to Chesterton's Fence. The GAO recommendations list is a really great thing to point these DOGE people to. We have literally no reason to assume they're equipped to do this. Edit: It's apparent most people commenting haven't actually read TFA. You should!
- ttyprintk 2y agoThanks for mentioning Chesterton's Fence. This is the only shred of conservatism left: that rapid change in society historically is a net negative.
- jeffbee 2y agoI thought the untimely de-staffing of the CDC office in China was the rude awakening. Their mission was the apparently pointless one to "monitor, respond to, and control human seasonal, avian, and other novel influenza viruses"...
- llamaimperative 2y agoExcellent example. Unfortunately lands in a weird self-contradictory knot on half the country: wasn’t a real problem, was a real problem but China did it on purpose, maybe real but we couldn’t have detected it sooner and also it was China’s responsibility to detect it, and also they lied about the non-existent virus’s existence, etc
- cpseeth9999 2y ago[flagged]
- mannyv 2y agoFederal spending was $6.7T USD. Cutting 1/3 of that? Probably impossible. That said, 5% might be possible. That would cover half of the interest payments on the federal debt in a year. It also depends if they're going for one-time or continuing reductions. Obviously the latter is preferable. And cost-shifting to the future doesn't count.
- fd111 2y agoDownload this: https://www.whitehouse.gov/wp-content/uploads/2024/03/hist01z1_fy2025.xlsx https://www.whitehouse.gov/wp-content/uploads/2024/03/hist01... Outlays jumped over $2T in 2020 (3rd column, 127th row). We all know why. Outlays have not come down to anything close to pre-COVID levels. We all know why. Cutting $2T from a $6.7T budget would not even return to 2019's pre-COVID outlays. Seems doable to me.
- medvezhenok 2y agoYou have to inflation adjust the 2019 numbers to get the comparables for 2025. And not using the CPI (which is aimed at individuals), but using an index based on what the government actually spends the money on :)
- maxerickson 2y agoCan you explain why you think spending jumped in 2020?
- throw0101c 2y ago> Outlays have not come down to anything close to pre-COVID levels. Federal Net Outlays as Percent of GDP have been around 20% since ~1980: * https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/FYONGDA188S https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/FYONGDA188S They jumped to 30% in 2020, and are on a downward trend, with 2023 being at 22%. Technically true not down to 20% in 2019, but not as horrendous as many people think.
- kiba 2y agoIf you want a speedy government and speedy paperwork, it might be worth asking if we could increase headcount to handle tasks, preferably in parallel if possible. For example, if you require your house to get inspected for code, you may want to increase the size of your planning department so that code inspection can occur within the day. Can the environmental assessment be done in parallel to other necessary paperwork? The correct size of a department is probably not 100% utilization of employees, but more like 80% to allow for slack. If you're 100% utilization, the demand is greater than the ability of employees to complete tasks within reasonable time, then you're undersized. At 100%, if demand surge, then waiting time will obviously increases.
- derekp7 2y agoThere is a good analysis (from a corporate perspective) in The Phoenix Project.
- llamaimperative 2y agoYep, larger government with (arguably) a smaller/tighter mandate.
- syndicatedjelly 2y agoIf you want a speedy government and speedy paperwork, it might be worth asking if we could increase headcount to handle tasks, preferably in parallel if possible. A comment like this is kind of bewildering on a tech news site full of software entrepreneurs. Instead of handling more paperwork with more people, why don't we find ways to automate the paperwork processing using computers? Every other competitive industry streamlined their processes decades ago (and continues to do so) - why is the government exempt from this kind of solution as well? Do we have to accept that millions of people must do useless tasks for the US government? For example, if you require your house to get inspected for code, you may want to increase the size of your planning department so that code inspection can occur within the day. Can the environmental assessment be done in parallel to other necessary paperwork? It's funny you use this as an analogy, because home inspections are notoriously pointless. They tell you stupid things, such as that the step to the house is 11" from ground, while code is 8" - meanwhile totally missing issues in the crawl space because "it is unsafe for us to go in there". I paid $500 to be lulled into complacency, and no amount of money for more inspectors to do the job "faster" would have convinced someone to find the important issues with the house I was about to buy. I'm not interested in paying even more money for more useless information. That's the point - scrub out these useless checks and parades of stupidity, which there is plenty of in both the home-buying process as well as in government.
- travisporter 2y agoI gotta say I appreciate the enthusiasm of this venture. It’s great to be excited about more efficiency. But I’m really anxious about whether it will be done without screwing over poor people, raising technical debt, or sacrificing long term infrastructure.
- BriggyDwiggs42 2y agoI don’t think any of the major players involved have any reason not to do those things is the issue.
- ttyprintk 2y agoRight, the incentives are to make all such initiatives creditable back to Trump, while positioning the DOGE as too big to fail.
- inopinatus 2y agoThe article seems to present the notion that the fundamental measure of efficiency is the administrative quotient viz. the ratio of the number of staff to overall spending. It follows that the simplest way to improve efficiency is to increase spending whilst keeping headcount the same.
- jeffbee 2y agoIf so, the American federal government is the most efficient in the world, with no serious competition.
- TheNewsIsHere 2y agoIn some respects it is, and others it is not. There are endless anecdotal examples in both directions. American federal government institutions are expected to operate at immense scale while protecting and preserving the rights of the people who have business before it. There’s a certain amount of important inefficiency that this demands. Maintaining humans in the loop is one such thing that some in the tech circles think inefficient, but our government is designed to be by and of the people, for the people, so there’s a strong case to maintain people in the loop. On the flip side, our laws allow inefficiencies to be introduced at the demand of private parties. Lobbyists have done a fantastic job at curtailing certain kinds of efficiency reforms at the IRS for decades because it served private interests. That is only recently changing, and only for specific populations.
- notfried 2y agoHaving been involved in such projects on the corporate level, I do agree that driving efficiency and reducing costs, even when everyone wants and tries to do them, is rather difficult, and very slow to implement. However, once you go down the track and commit to it, a major benefit is it raises the awareness of the importance of frugality and efficiency, and future projects do become more efficient. So maybe if you cannot make a huge dent like $2T, it could help slow down the increase in deficit.
- llamaimperative 2y agoThe deficit is big because lawmakers actually want those programs for their constituents
- kmacleod 2y agoWhile true for the most part on spending, the deficit arises because we lack a rule requiring revenue to match spending, and we can't agree on what constitutes a fair balance of responsibility for that revenue.
- motohagiography 2y agoremoving collective bargaining would be a fair and gradual upstream strategy the public sector would adapt to and reform itself around. after spending over a decade consulting in the public sector, I concluded public servants of any kind should not have collective bargaining. it's capture and it creates the perverse incentives at the root of most complaints about it, with existential consequences for the whole society. in several countries, entire agencies get created to get around having to hire unionized staff in existing agencies, and they're just 19th century cartels that aren't fit for purpose. it's the fairest and most wise path.
- BriggyDwiggs42 2y agoIf employees, even of the government, want to get together to push for a change in their workplace, what right do we have to prevent that?
- motohagiography 2y agoa rule should state there will be no new unionized positions in departments or agencies funded by the federal budget, and that individuals in existing roles will be allowed to retire, but when they leave, their replacements will not be in a collective bargaining unit. management roles will also not be part of those units, etc. the government is not a normal employer and it is not a firm that shares equity. it is an exception. while guilds are viable for trades, and professional societies self regulate, employees of the state have no collective interest other than that as citizens. where they act as a corporate body, they are a literal conspiracy to subvert the consent of the governed, and it deprives individuals of their agency to provide honest service to the public. where employees of the state can both vote in elections and have a collective special interest, they become a privileged class that is antithetical to any democratic principle or equality. they know this, and saying it out loud too often is why their candidate lost. plus, union leadership savagely betrayed their members over the last 5 years thinking they were about to institute the socialism they were originally founded to deliver but accelerating it without needing the actual working class, so I'd bet a good 2/3 of employees would be glad to have the unions out. it's fairer than even/odd SIN cards, smarter than blunt slashing, and creates the opportunity for serious people to get into public service.
- 7e 2y agoSuch a cut would trigger a massive recession if not depression.
- calderwoodra 2y ago> What DOGE should tackle is fraud, which is a known problem. You know how you stop/reduce fraud? More regulation, the exact thing these folks want to avoid. Some fraud is good, it enables processes to be efficient, so I doubt DOGE will tackle this.
- goalieca 2y agoMore regulation does not stop fraud. There’s so many levers already they were to pull them. It’s an enforcement problem. Re-fund the police.
- llamaimperative 2y agoWhich is... the exact opposite of what Republicans have proposed. They go after the GAO's budget every chance they get.
- ttyprintk 2y agoNot only that, we’re entering an administration that will vehemently denounce any whistleblowers. You need a premium X account to apply at DOGE. And whistleblowers will be advised to take their material through X to DOGE, where that material will die, rather than train any pattern recognition.
- nojvek 2y agoTrump tax cuts for corporations already hole us $3.8T over 10 years. I bet that will still go through. Let's get millions unemployed and pass those onto our sweet corporate overlords and give them million dollar per year comp packages. Yay! Make Corporate America Great Again!