7 ms·

Vivek Ramaswamy on X: "Will entire agencies be deleted? Answer: yes

36 points by loongloong 2y ago

mensetmanusman 2y ago
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.
- hunbcfgd 2y ago
  What is “temporary” about stopping corporations from poisoning local ecosystems for profit? What is “temporary” about validating new food or pharmaceutical products?
  - thrw42A8N 2y ago
    The way you do it.
    - hunbcfgd 2y ago
      The it do you way.
  - dvdhnt 2y ago
    I’d argue the regulatory unit ought to be temporary while enforcement is ongoing. Permanent organizations are just as ineffective. They did nothing to protect our food supply from ingredients banned in other countries. They did nothing to stop microplastics from taking over the world. So exactly what are they good for while sitting around pontificating for years on end?
    - unsnap_biceps 2y ago
      Don't let perfect be the enemy of good. We have the safest food supply in the entire history of humanity and there still improvements to go, but just removing all that progress because it wasn't perfect seems insane to me. You want more things banned? Removing all existing regulations will not get you there.
      - dvdhnt 2y ago
        Sorry, I didn't mean to remove regulations. I meant that maybe the regulatory side of the agencies should meet as needed with enforcement being the thing that is perpetual.
        unsnap_biceps 2y ago
        Generally the regulatory side is made up of scientists and data analysis folks that build data to back regulatory actions and ensure they're working as intended. How do you envision the regulatory side working? Wait for congress to say, "Hey, look into this?" and then spin up a few thousand temps to crunch numbers and figure out a action? Often times it takes years to build a regulatory stance. If so, how do you forsee holding actions accountable if there isn't a persistent level of folks validating areas of concern across the nation? I totally understand that the government feels bloated and we could cut costs in plenty of areas, but I think it's way more effective to apoint people into leadership positions that can take a real deep look at things and actually cut what makes sense. Any sort of rapid deep cuts is only going to harm us as a society and likely not actually save that much money. No matter how much money you saved, when you spin up something new that is basically starting from scratch, you're going to spend way more then just fixing what exists. I think it's the classic coder's dilemma, The code's shit, do I refactor it in place or do I replace it from scratch. Any small or even medium sized project, replacing it from scratch could be the right thing to do, but when you get into large projects, replacing it is just not the right decision if you're trying to save money. IMHO, refactor the government, don't replace.
    - hunbcfgd 2y ago
      You’re arguing these orgs should have full support and backing of the government to exert total control (“do something about microplastics” and “banning specific imports”) but because we either failed to give them or they failed to use such powers (“did nothing to stop microplastics”) that we should remove all of their power and backing? Look, I’m all for addressing plastics and unhealthy foods, but is that really the outcome you’re predicting from the organization being discussed and the people running it? Their words and past actions lead me to believe they are the “pro plastics” “pro unhealthy foods” people, and their effort, rather than some altruistic motivation you ascribe them, is in fact to remove the last vestiges of guardrails, however weak and inept, against them promoting those sorts of things to an even greater degree.
- blackeyeblitzar 2y ago
  I do like your idea of temporary funding as an automatic off ramp. But my experience is that jurisdiction that have things like temporary levies just end up with voters blindly renewing those levies. Why? Because they’re told a scary story of how the basic services they rely on will be first to go (instead of the agencies cutting out wasteful or non critical spending first). If there’s no choice or competition, you end up being forced to pay for them because of these games. Even if they’re not temporary though, agencies should have clear goals, metrics, and be held accountable to those. For example how many times have we seen wasteful spending on opaque homelessness programs on the west coast with zero results? In my opinion we need to rethink how agencies are funded. Why do we need to give a bloated government a big tax check instead of having agencies work hard to win customers and charge them fees? Agencies should also (sometimes but not always) be forced to face competition from alternative private providers to keep the pressure of competition on.
stuaxo 2y ago
Real scorched earth policy going on over there.
- lambdaba 2y ago
  worked for Argentina
  - deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]
  - orwin 2y ago
    Poverty up 20%, inflation down to 200%.
    - deleted 2y ago
      [deleted]
  - probably_wrong 2y ago
    For some definition of "worked". I have friends working for the CS department of one of the main Universities in Argentina. Their salaries are so bad that none of them makes a living - they all have second jobs or international grants. Two of them left to take positions in China and two more are considering it. The list of candidates for open positions is currently empty. This is a direct result of the president's decision to defund public education at a moment where Argentina ranks 71 out of 79 countries in math (PISA 2023). And if Computer Science is doing that badly, I don't want to think about slightly less marketable careers. Does Argentina need to reign in corruption? Yes. Was an adjustment necessary? Also yes. But what future are they building and who will benefit from it is far from clear.
  - piva00 2y ago
    Worked if you are not part of the unfortunate ones living in the bottom 40%. Then you are wondering if you'll eat next week, every week.
    - deleted 2y ago
mattgibson 2y ago
This looks horribly like failing to understand Chesterton's fence https://thoughtbot.com/blog/chestertons-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?
- steveoscaro 2y ago
  Didn't a democracy vote in the people that are saying they want to remove some agencies? Isn't that also how the agencies came to be in the first place?
  - gwurk 2y ago
    You are right, but america use a two party system, there were only two options, and those options differed in many ways, it is difficult to say if "removing some agencies" was what the people that voted wanted, or if they just preferred that candidate despite them wanting to remove some agencies.
    - d35007 2y ago
      This is a pretty weak argument. Blaming the two-party system might feel good, but I don't think it gives us a better understanding of what happened in this election. People voted for the guy at the top of the ticket, and he was pretty clear about wanting to get rid of some federal agencies. I think we have to conclude that people were receptive to his message. My hot take is that the two-party system isn't anywhere near as bad as people think it is. In countries with multi-party systems, parties often have to form coalitions in order to govern. In countries with two-party systems, parties have to do most of that coalition forming before the election. That's why we see far-left and center-left politicians in the Democratic party instead of having viable left wing parties. One way or another, we get a coalition government. Is it better for those coalitions to be formed before the election or after? If it happens before the election, the electorate can see the results in time to change their decision. If it happens after the election, the fringe parties' arguments probably get discussed more, but there's no guarantee those parties will be part of the governing coalition.
skepticATX 2y ago
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.
- dpkonofa 2y ago
  >Elon and Vivek have no authority to close a federal agency, and Trump doesn’t either. You're right but the Republican-led House and Senate absolutely do have the power to both do that and grant these guys the power to do it.
- JSDevOps 2y ago
  > I fully expect DOGE to achieve very little There will be a website on Day 1 that will get overloaded with traffic and then it'll be soon forgotten about.
wufufufu 2y ago
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.
- nickthegreek 2y ago
  They wont alter anything, as they are a presidential commission and not a department of the government.
  - dpkonofa 2y ago
    You say this as if Trump will also not be in control of both sides of Congress. All it takes to make this a department of the government is a vote in Congress.
    - sundaeofshock 2y ago
      And most of the members of congress (all of the house, 1/3 of the senate)will be up for election in 2 years. Let’s see if they are up for cutting social security and medicare when they have to face the voters just two years later.
      - red-iron-pine 2y ago
        two years is long enough to make deep cuts. there will be no big collapse, no big catastrophe. there won't be a 1991 Berlin Wall event. things will just get shittier and more expensive, and people will go out less, buy less, travel less, have fewer kids, etc.
        sundaeofshock 2y ago
        Let’s break this down. Payments on the debt (10% of budget) are already off the table. SS, Health Insurance (Medicare, Medicaid, ACA, etc) and defense represent about 58% of the budget. If we eliminate everything else, we are going after things like welfare, the VA, and veterans benefits, as well as subsidies to a variety of businesses. Bottom line, even if there wasn’t an economic impact, there will be some very pissed-off powerful constituents. At the end of the day, this whole process shows that Musk and Ramaswamy are clowns.
01HNNWZ0MV43FF 2y ago
I hope the voters learn from this, but I'm ready to be disappointed again
- krapp 2y ago
  Winston Churchill supposedly said "You can always count on Americans to do the right thing - after they've tried everything else." I'm starting to think he was too optimistic.
blackeyeblitzar 2y ago
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.
- kelseyfrog 2y ago
  We have too many states
  - blackeyeblitzar 2y ago
    Can you clarify what you mean?
    - psb217 2y ago
      I'll be deep in the cold, cold ground before I recognize Missouri. -- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZoWc6WRHKEE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZoWc6WRHKEE
    - MrHamburger 2y ago
      Merging states together and centralizing stuff will reduce duplicitous bureaucracy and save money
- rurp 2y ago
  If you're worried about the national debt you're really not going to like the next 4+ years.
danieldevries 2y ago
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.
some_random 2y ago
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.
- lambdaba 2y ago
  Just some transparency would be great. Democracy can't work if the people are not able to understand their government.
  - dpkonofa 2y ago
    Why anyone would think we're going to get more transparency this time around is beyond me. President Obama started the federal Open Data initiative and Trump, almost as quickly, neutered it just short of axing it. If they cared at all about being transparent, they would have worked on the Open Data initiatives rather than shrouding everything in further secrecy.
    - some_random 2y ago
      Oh I am NOT talking about what I expect to happen, just what I wish would happen.
  - unsnap_biceps 2y ago
    There's a ton of information about every agency out there, but people don't read about them. One of the benefits of government is that it allows people to ignore all the details that make modern life possible. On the tech stack, it's like claiming that everyone should understand assembly. It's useful for some folks to know assembly, but the vast majority of folks don't care. They just want to use the stuff that's built upon it.
rpcope1 2y ago
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.
qgin 2y ago
https://webcomicname.com/image/152958755984 https://webcomicname.com/image/152958755984
izend 2y ago
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.
- juancn 2y ago
  Well, salaries are about 15% of the federal budget, you don't necessarily need to cut jobs to reduce spending. You may even increase it and still reduce spending since it's such a small part of the spending.
  - dvdhnt 2y ago
    While true, the larger the ship, the more difficult it is to turn. I think the idea is that for every salaried individual, you have support staff, equipment, benefits, etc that come along with them. It’s also another cog in the chain of work that needs to be done. For example, there are at least 1200 positions that need to be confirmed. It can take half the presidency to staff a full cabinet. I think we can agree that’s excessive.
- scoofy 2y ago
  The idea that we've lived in this "deficits don't matter" fantasy for the last 25 years (45 years?) is that we have a situation in which nobody ever thinks about why the dollar is the world's reserve currency. Aside from simple path dependency, all of the foundational reasons why it became the reserve currency are hardly relevant any longer. So, we sit here driving the debt car as fast as we can, with no idea what is in front of us. Sure, it might work out, but the fact that many financial analysts don't put any risk premium on treasuries at this point just terrifies me.
JSDevOps 2y ago
That's great, He doesn't have the power to do that but whatever.
hondo77 2y ago
It's all billionaire fun and games until they try to close post offices. Have fun with that, boys.
- xnx 2y ago
  I'm surprised Trump hasn't said he'd cancel the contract for new post office electric trucks and give it to Tesla.
  - dragonwriter 2y ago
    Wait until the militarized ethnic cleansing already promised for day one is in full swing, there’ll be plenty of time for nakedly corrupt deals when the public has other things occupying its attention.
akmarinov 2y ago
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
- Volundr 2y ago
  > DHS can easily be folded into the FBI and cuts made Easily? You just folded the Coast Guard, FEMA, Immigration, and the secret service along with many other agencies under the FBI. > Space force - just roll it into the air force Already part of the air force.
  - frumper 2y ago
    They also suggested selling off all the FBI watercraft. This plan is going well.
    - dragonwriter 2y ago
      The only good thing about the plan is it is still probably better (and less corruptly self-serving for those formulating it) than what DOGE will come up with.
- rsynnott 2y ago
  > As a person who has no idea what most of the agencies do "As a person who doesn't know anything about this, here are my ideas" is, er, one approach to things, I suppose (as someone else mentioned, you've just given the FBI a fleet of over 2,000 watercraft, which doesn't seem terribly sensible).
  - akmarinov 2y ago
    The FBI doesn’t need watercraft, just sell them off - this is too easy
energywrangler 2y ago
[dead]
xnx 2y ago
I have to imagine Anduril will do very well with the next administration.
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
ryandvm 2y ago
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...
nunez 2y ago
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.
NautilusWave 2y ago
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.
foogazi 2y ago
Efficiency is not about cutting costs
jfengel 2y ago
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.
loongloong 2y ago
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.)

36 points by loongloong 2y ago

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.

hunbcfgd 2y ago
What is “temporary” about stopping corporations from poisoning local ecosystems for profit? What is “temporary” about validating new food or pharmaceutical products?
- thrw42A8N 2y ago
  The way you do it.
  - hunbcfgd 2y ago
    The it do you way.
- dvdhnt 2y ago
  I’d argue the regulatory unit ought to be temporary while enforcement is ongoing. Permanent organizations are just as ineffective. They did nothing to protect our food supply from ingredients banned in other countries. They did nothing to stop microplastics from taking over the world. So exactly what are they good for while sitting around pontificating for years on end?
  - unsnap_biceps 2y ago
    Don't let perfect be the enemy of good. We have the safest food supply in the entire history of humanity and there still improvements to go, but just removing all that progress because it wasn't perfect seems insane to me. You want more things banned? Removing all existing regulations will not get you there.
    - dvdhnt 2y ago
      Sorry, I didn't mean to remove regulations. I meant that maybe the regulatory side of the agencies should meet as needed with enforcement being the thing that is perpetual.
      - unsnap_biceps 2y ago
        Generally the regulatory side is made up of scientists and data analysis folks that build data to back regulatory actions and ensure they're working as intended. How do you envision the regulatory side working? Wait for congress to say, "Hey, look into this?" and then spin up a few thousand temps to crunch numbers and figure out a action? Often times it takes years to build a regulatory stance. If so, how do you forsee holding actions accountable if there isn't a persistent level of folks validating areas of concern across the nation? I totally understand that the government feels bloated and we could cut costs in plenty of areas, but I think it's way more effective to apoint people into leadership positions that can take a real deep look at things and actually cut what makes sense. Any sort of rapid deep cuts is only going to harm us as a society and likely not actually save that much money. No matter how much money you saved, when you spin up something new that is basically starting from scratch, you're going to spend way more then just fixing what exists. I think it's the classic coder's dilemma, The code's shit, do I refactor it in place or do I replace it from scratch. Any small or even medium sized project, replacing it from scratch could be the right thing to do, but when you get into large projects, replacing it is just not the right decision if you're trying to save money. IMHO, refactor the government, don't replace.
  - hunbcfgd 2y ago
    You’re arguing these orgs should have full support and backing of the government to exert total control (“do something about microplastics” and “banning specific imports”) but because we either failed to give them or they failed to use such powers (“did nothing to stop microplastics”) that we should remove all of their power and backing? Look, I’m all for addressing plastics and unhealthy foods, but is that really the outcome you’re predicting from the organization being discussed and the people running it? Their words and past actions lead me to believe they are the “pro plastics” “pro unhealthy foods” people, and their effort, rather than some altruistic motivation you ascribe them, is in fact to remove the last vestiges of guardrails, however weak and inept, against them promoting those sorts of things to an even greater degree.
blackeyeblitzar 2y ago
I do like your idea of temporary funding as an automatic off ramp. But my experience is that jurisdiction that have things like temporary levies just end up with voters blindly renewing those levies. Why? Because they’re told a scary story of how the basic services they rely on will be first to go (instead of the agencies cutting out wasteful or non critical spending first). If there’s no choice or competition, you end up being forced to pay for them because of these games. Even if they’re not temporary though, agencies should have clear goals, metrics, and be held accountable to those. For example how many times have we seen wasteful spending on opaque homelessness programs on the west coast with zero results? In my opinion we need to rethink how agencies are funded. Why do we need to give a bloated government a big tax check instead of having agencies work hard to win customers and charge them fees? Agencies should also (sometimes but not always) be forced to face competition from alternative private providers to keep the pressure of competition on.

stuaxo 2y ago

Real scorched earth policy going on over there.

lambdaba 2y ago
worked for Argentina
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
- orwin 2y ago
  Poverty up 20%, inflation down to 200%.
  - deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]
- probably_wrong 2y ago
  For some definition of "worked". I have friends working for the CS department of one of the main Universities in Argentina. Their salaries are so bad that none of them makes a living - they all have second jobs or international grants. Two of them left to take positions in China and two more are considering it. The list of candidates for open positions is currently empty. This is a direct result of the president's decision to defund public education at a moment where Argentina ranks 71 out of 79 countries in math (PISA 2023). And if Computer Science is doing that badly, I don't want to think about slightly less marketable careers. Does Argentina need to reign in corruption? Yes. Was an adjustment necessary? Also yes. But what future are they building and who will benefit from it is far from clear.
- piva00 2y ago
  Worked if you are not part of the unfortunate ones living in the bottom 40%. Then you are wondering if you'll eat next week, every week.
  - deleted 2y ago

mattgibson 2y ago

This looks horribly like failing to understand Chesterton's fence https://thoughtbot.com/blog/chestertons-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?

steveoscaro 2y ago
Didn't a democracy vote in the people that are saying they want to remove some agencies? Isn't that also how the agencies came to be in the first place?
- gwurk 2y ago
  You are right, but america use a two party system, there were only two options, and those options differed in many ways, it is difficult to say if "removing some agencies" was what the people that voted wanted, or if they just preferred that candidate despite them wanting to remove some agencies.
  - d35007 2y ago
    This is a pretty weak argument. Blaming the two-party system might feel good, but I don't think it gives us a better understanding of what happened in this election. People voted for the guy at the top of the ticket, and he was pretty clear about wanting to get rid of some federal agencies. I think we have to conclude that people were receptive to his message. My hot take is that the two-party system isn't anywhere near as bad as people think it is. In countries with multi-party systems, parties often have to form coalitions in order to govern. In countries with two-party systems, parties have to do most of that coalition forming before the election. That's why we see far-left and center-left politicians in the Democratic party instead of having viable left wing parties. One way or another, we get a coalition government. Is it better for those coalitions to be formed before the election or after? If it happens before the election, the electorate can see the results in time to change their decision. If it happens after the election, the fringe parties' arguments probably get discussed more, but there's no guarantee those parties will be part of the governing coalition.

skepticATX 2y ago

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.

dpkonofa 2y ago
>Elon and Vivek have no authority to close a federal agency, and Trump doesn’t either. You're right but the Republican-led House and Senate absolutely do have the power to both do that and grant these guys the power to do it.
JSDevOps 2y ago
> I fully expect DOGE to achieve very little There will be a website on Day 1 that will get overloaded with traffic and then it'll be soon forgotten about.

wufufufu 2y ago

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.

nickthegreek 2y ago
They wont alter anything, as they are a presidential commission and not a department of the government.
- dpkonofa 2y ago
  You say this as if Trump will also not be in control of both sides of Congress. All it takes to make this a department of the government is a vote in Congress.
  - sundaeofshock 2y ago
    And most of the members of congress (all of the house, 1/3 of the senate)will be up for election in 2 years. Let’s see if they are up for cutting social security and medicare when they have to face the voters just two years later.
    - red-iron-pine 2y ago
      two years is long enough to make deep cuts. there will be no big collapse, no big catastrophe. there won't be a 1991 Berlin Wall event. things will just get shittier and more expensive, and people will go out less, buy less, travel less, have fewer kids, etc.
      - sundaeofshock 2y ago
        Let’s break this down. Payments on the debt (10% of budget) are already off the table. SS, Health Insurance (Medicare, Medicaid, ACA, etc) and defense represent about 58% of the budget. If we eliminate everything else, we are going after things like welfare, the VA, and veterans benefits, as well as subsidies to a variety of businesses. Bottom line, even if there wasn’t an economic impact, there will be some very pissed-off powerful constituents. At the end of the day, this whole process shows that Musk and Ramaswamy are clowns.

01HNNWZ0MV43FF 2y ago

I hope the voters learn from this, but I'm ready to be disappointed again

krapp 2y ago
Winston Churchill supposedly said "You can always count on Americans to do the right thing - after they've tried everything else." I'm starting to think he was too optimistic.

blackeyeblitzar 2y ago

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.

kelseyfrog 2y ago
We have too many states
- blackeyeblitzar 2y ago
  Can you clarify what you mean?
  - psb217 2y ago
    I'll be deep in the cold, cold ground before I recognize Missouri. -- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZoWc6WRHKEE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZoWc6WRHKEE
  - MrHamburger 2y ago
    Merging states together and centralizing stuff will reduce duplicitous bureaucracy and save money
rurp 2y ago
If you're worried about the national debt you're really not going to like the next 4+ years.

danieldevries 2y ago

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.

some_random 2y ago

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.

lambdaba 2y ago
Just some transparency would be great. Democracy can't work if the people are not able to understand their government.
- dpkonofa 2y ago
  Why anyone would think we're going to get more transparency this time around is beyond me. President Obama started the federal Open Data initiative and Trump, almost as quickly, neutered it just short of axing it. If they cared at all about being transparent, they would have worked on the Open Data initiatives rather than shrouding everything in further secrecy.
  - some_random 2y ago
    Oh I am NOT talking about what I expect to happen, just what I wish would happen.
- unsnap_biceps 2y ago
  There's a ton of information about every agency out there, but people don't read about them. One of the benefits of government is that it allows people to ignore all the details that make modern life possible. On the tech stack, it's like claiming that everyone should understand assembly. It's useful for some folks to know assembly, but the vast majority of folks don't care. They just want to use the stuff that's built upon it.

rpcope1 2y ago

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.

qgin 2y ago

https://webcomicname.com/image/152958755984 https://webcomicname.com/image/152958755984

izend 2y ago

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.

juancn 2y ago
Well, salaries are about 15% of the federal budget, you don't necessarily need to cut jobs to reduce spending. You may even increase it and still reduce spending since it's such a small part of the spending.
- dvdhnt 2y ago
  While true, the larger the ship, the more difficult it is to turn. I think the idea is that for every salaried individual, you have support staff, equipment, benefits, etc that come along with them. It’s also another cog in the chain of work that needs to be done. For example, there are at least 1200 positions that need to be confirmed. It can take half the presidency to staff a full cabinet. I think we can agree that’s excessive.
scoofy 2y ago
The idea that we've lived in this "deficits don't matter" fantasy for the last 25 years (45 years?) is that we have a situation in which nobody ever thinks about why the dollar is the world's reserve currency. Aside from simple path dependency, all of the foundational reasons why it became the reserve currency are hardly relevant any longer. So, we sit here driving the debt car as fast as we can, with no idea what is in front of us. Sure, it might work out, but the fact that many financial analysts don't put any risk premium on treasuries at this point just terrifies me.

JSDevOps 2y ago

That's great, He doesn't have the power to do that but whatever.

hondo77 2y ago

It's all billionaire fun and games until they try to close post offices. Have fun with that, boys.

xnx 2y ago
I'm surprised Trump hasn't said he'd cancel the contract for new post office electric trucks and give it to Tesla.
- dragonwriter 2y ago
  Wait until the militarized ethnic cleansing already promised for day one is in full swing, there’ll be plenty of time for nakedly corrupt deals when the public has other things occupying its attention.

akmarinov 2y ago

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

Volundr 2y ago
> DHS can easily be folded into the FBI and cuts made Easily? You just folded the Coast Guard, FEMA, Immigration, and the secret service along with many other agencies under the FBI. > Space force - just roll it into the air force Already part of the air force.
- frumper 2y ago
  They also suggested selling off all the FBI watercraft. This plan is going well.
  - dragonwriter 2y ago
    The only good thing about the plan is it is still probably better (and less corruptly self-serving for those formulating it) than what DOGE will come up with.
rsynnott 2y ago
> As a person who has no idea what most of the agencies do "As a person who doesn't know anything about this, here are my ideas" is, er, one approach to things, I suppose (as someone else mentioned, you've just given the FBI a fleet of over 2,000 watercraft, which doesn't seem terribly sensible).
- akmarinov 2y ago
  The FBI doesn’t need watercraft, just sell them off - this is too easy

energywrangler 2y ago

[dead]

xnx 2y ago

I have to imagine Anduril will do very well with the next administration.

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]

ryandvm 2y ago

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...

nunez 2y ago

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.

NautilusWave 2y ago

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.

foogazi 2y ago

Efficiency is not about cutting costs

jfengel 2y ago

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.

loongloong 2y ago

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.)