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DOGE is BS. Civilian bureaucrats - in fact pretty much all discretionary spending - are line noise in the federal budget. By far the largest components of spe

by rgmerk 2y ago

DOGE is BS. Civilian bureaucrats - in fact pretty much all discretionary spending - are line noise in the federal budget. By far the largest components of spending are Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security, and defence. Cutting social security means that old people get less money in their retirement, no ifs, ands or buts. Good luck with that one. By American standards, Medicaid and Medicare are pretty efficient. So any cuts are going to mean that either doctors get paid less or fewer health services are provided. Yes, politically, Republicans can get away with cutting Medicaid, but it’s the much smaller piece of the pie compared to Medicare. Good luck with either one of the options above with Medicare. As for defence, procurement is a giant money tree for defence contractors, but a large part of the reason why it remains a giant money tree for contractors is that they build plants in every single congressional district there is, so trying to apply some sanity to the defence procurement process is politically untenable. Beyond that, are you going to be the one to tell the Marines they don’t need their own aircraft carriers? Of course, tanking the American economy by removing a significant chunk of its labor force (undocumented immigrants) and increasing costs (by putting tariffs on things) is just going to make the problem harder by crunching revenue. The right of politics has forever claimed that they can painlessly cut taxes, and it’s always nonsense.

lovecg 2y ago
> Cutting social security means that old people get less money in their retirement, no ifs, ands or buts. Good luck with that one. But surely that’s the only way out? Figure out some sane taper scheme by age or something. Social security was created when the old people population was a tiny fraction of what it is now, no way it would have ever passed it with today’s numbers. We’ll have to rip off the bandaid or face the consequences.
- akamaka 2y ago
  Taking money from one group of people and giving it to another isn’t “government waste”, though. It’s essentially zero-sum (unless you get way down into the details of the economic effects of how that money gets spent or saved.)
  - PaulDavisThe1st 2y ago
    If you had told people when SS was passed that "granny doesn't die of hunger" is "zero sum", you might have needed martial arts skills to avoid the pitchforks coming your way. And that's not "way down into the details of the economic effects" - it's the raison d'etre of SS.
    - akamaka 2y ago
      I’m replying to the parent commenter and giving him the benefit of the doubt, assuming that he’s talking only about social security payments which are beyond the essential, and which could “safely” be cut back. I recommend to you to also interpret comments generously before replying.
chillingeffect 2y ago
>Cutting social security means that old people get less money in their retirement, no ifs, ands or buts. Good luck with that one. Some ppl collecting SSI have other income over $400k. They won't miss $30k of SSI. The dem's plan was to tax that overage - not even remove it altogether - to maintain SSI, but "they're eating the dogs and cats" won and now the unelected guy who made his fortune on government contracts is in charge of choosing who to cut off from that government money supply.
khazhoux 2y ago
> DOGE is BS. Civilian bureaucrats - in fact pretty much all discretionary spending - are line noise in the federal budget. It took me years to understand that this line of reasoning is why Trump won (twice). I noticed in my own job, that whenever someone would propose an moderate but still-obvious improvement, someone else would smack them down saying "that's not the highest priority!" In the end, nothing ever gets fixed. I think people see Trump as that guy who steamrolls the naysayers and gets shit done. Now, I disagree that Trump really gets any useful thing done, but I definitely recognize that constant naysaying against any improvement is a real actual problem.
- PaulDavisThe1st 2y ago
  The party Trump ran as a candidate for has spent at least 40 and perhaps 70 years insisting the government is your enemny and government cannot get things done. The fact that is rather difficult to make changes to the government so that it runs more efficiently and gets better stuff done might - just might - be related to the fact that one of the two major political parties in the USA is absolutely bound to the "fact" that this is not possible.
  - lazyasciiart 2y ago
    It's like when an entire slate of candidates running on "elect me for a pure and uninformed outsider take!" get elected to the city council and suddenly you spend a year with council meetings turning into 101 lessons from the city staff on what the fuck the council is responsible for.
- the_gastropod 2y ago
  I disagree with this. Here are a few tidy Republican stances: - Gun violence? Eh. Nothing we can do there. Best to just get used to it. Thoughts and prayers. - Climate change? Nothing to see there. Drill baby, drill! - Covid? Best to just ignore it, let it run rampant, let the weak die. No biggie. - Universal healthcare? It'd totally suck. Wait times. Higher taxes. Pay no attention to the nearly 100 other countries successfully pulling this off. The Republican Party is the party of maintaining the status-quo, insisting solved problems are unsolvable. Since Ronald Reagan, the Republican Party's central thesis is: Government is inept. Let's neuter it as much as possible. Many of us see DOGE just as a cringely-named continuation of this mission.
lenkite 2y ago
> By far the largest components of spending are Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security, and defence. Sure..and all hidden waste projects can be fit into those 3 categories. Things like federal funding on hotels for illegal immigrants, including many millions on unused hotel rooms. ~$400 per person per night for illegal aliens. ~$80+ million USD in a few months. > DOGE is BS. Basically DOGE is only BS if you think fraud and waste are not BS. Why don't you actually look at the large number of waste projects on https://x.com/DOGE https://x.com/DOGE before saying it is BS ?
- rgmerk 2y ago
  US federal budget expenditures in 2023 were a little over six trillion dollars. Eighty million dollars isn’t even sufficient to count as a rounding error in that context.
  - lenkite 2y ago
    Good lord - No its not a rounding error. How did you even get that ? Here is the cost of illegal immigration to taxpayers: https://budget.house.gov/download/the-cost-of-illegal-immigration-to-taxpayers https://budget.house.gov/download/the-cost-of-illegal-immigr... It is ~42 billion for welfame, $70 billion USD for schooling, $7.5 billion for the uninsured, etc, totaling to around ~150 billion. This is also around the figure confirmed by DOGE. It would be nice if you can refute the data on facts.
    - rgmerk 2y ago
      It’s not an official figure. It’s a figure calculated by an anti-immigration “think tank”. And even taking their numbers as gospel, it’s 1.1% of the federal budget - and it’s not like you can claw back that 1.1% either, because the enforcement mechanisms required to expel and keep illegal immigrants out of the USA would cost very substantial amounts.
    - etc-hosts 2y ago
      That study is from CIS. CIS' founder was https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Tanton https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Tanton then you should look up "Jared Taylor". Then look up "American Renaissance"
refurb 2y ago
> DOGE is BS. Are you suggesting there is no possible way to make the government more efficient in a way that reduces costs by some significant amount? That seems like an extreme statement.
- Arn_Thor 2y ago
  That is a straw man, and an ugly one at that. Every system has inefficiencies, including the government. The fallacy is to assume that businesses inherently have less inefficiencies than government and/or that a government’s cost/benefit equation improves if it’s run as a business. Often, their functions overlap and this can be the case. Automated traffic monitoring is cheaper than having people count cars. But beware privatization that promises efficiency and lower costs—the result is almost always worse services, maintainable debt and in time a government bailout. Often, their functions do not overlap. The purpose of social security is not to tighten spending as much as possible, it is to improve quality of life as much as possible.
  - refurb 2y ago
    Funny you'd accuse me of a straw man then go on about claims I never made. Nothing has changed yet. No plans have been rolled out. We could wait and see what the plan is before claiming it's a failure already?
    - Arn_Thor 2y ago
      Let me quote you: "Are you suggesting there is no possible way to make the government more efficient in a way that reduces costs by some significant amount?" The poster said no such thing.
      - refurb 2y ago
        The poster said "DOGE is BS". DOGE is looking to make the government more efficient, so the poster said "making the government more efficient is BS". Thus my question seems like a pretty good rephrasing.

by rgmerk 2y ago

lovecg 2y ago

> Cutting social security means that old people get less money in their retirement, no ifs, ands or buts. Good luck with that one. But surely that’s the only way out? Figure out some sane taper scheme by age or something. Social security was created when the old people population was a tiny fraction of what it is now, no way it would have ever passed it with today’s numbers. We’ll have to rip off the bandaid or face the consequences.

akamaka 2y ago
Taking money from one group of people and giving it to another isn’t “government waste”, though. It’s essentially zero-sum (unless you get way down into the details of the economic effects of how that money gets spent or saved.)
- PaulDavisThe1st 2y ago
  If you had told people when SS was passed that "granny doesn't die of hunger" is "zero sum", you might have needed martial arts skills to avoid the pitchforks coming your way. And that's not "way down into the details of the economic effects" - it's the raison d'etre of SS.
  - akamaka 2y ago
    I’m replying to the parent commenter and giving him the benefit of the doubt, assuming that he’s talking only about social security payments which are beyond the essential, and which could “safely” be cut back. I recommend to you to also interpret comments generously before replying.

chillingeffect 2y ago

>Cutting social security means that old people get less money in their retirement, no ifs, ands or buts. Good luck with that one. Some ppl collecting SSI have other income over $400k. They won't miss $30k of SSI. The dem's plan was to tax that overage - not even remove it altogether - to maintain SSI, but "they're eating the dogs and cats" won and now the unelected guy who made his fortune on government contracts is in charge of choosing who to cut off from that government money supply.

khazhoux 2y ago

> DOGE is BS. Civilian bureaucrats - in fact pretty much all discretionary spending - are line noise in the federal budget. It took me years to understand that this line of reasoning is why Trump won (twice). I noticed in my own job, that whenever someone would propose an moderate but still-obvious improvement, someone else would smack them down saying "that's not the highest priority!" In the end, nothing ever gets fixed. I think people see Trump as that guy who steamrolls the naysayers and gets shit done. Now, I disagree that Trump really gets any useful thing done, but I definitely recognize that constant naysaying against any improvement is a real actual problem.

PaulDavisThe1st 2y ago
The party Trump ran as a candidate for has spent at least 40 and perhaps 70 years insisting the government is your enemny and government cannot get things done. The fact that is rather difficult to make changes to the government so that it runs more efficiently and gets better stuff done might - just might - be related to the fact that one of the two major political parties in the USA is absolutely bound to the "fact" that this is not possible.
- lazyasciiart 2y ago
  It's like when an entire slate of candidates running on "elect me for a pure and uninformed outsider take!" get elected to the city council and suddenly you spend a year with council meetings turning into 101 lessons from the city staff on what the fuck the council is responsible for.
the_gastropod 2y ago
I disagree with this. Here are a few tidy Republican stances: - Gun violence? Eh. Nothing we can do there. Best to just get used to it. Thoughts and prayers. - Climate change? Nothing to see there. Drill baby, drill! - Covid? Best to just ignore it, let it run rampant, let the weak die. No biggie. - Universal healthcare? It'd totally suck. Wait times. Higher taxes. Pay no attention to the nearly 100 other countries successfully pulling this off. The Republican Party is the party of maintaining the status-quo, insisting solved problems are unsolvable. Since Ronald Reagan, the Republican Party's central thesis is: Government is inept. Let's neuter it as much as possible. Many of us see DOGE just as a cringely-named continuation of this mission.

lenkite 2y ago

> By far the largest components of spending are Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security, and defence. Sure..and all hidden waste projects can be fit into those 3 categories. Things like federal funding on hotels for illegal immigrants, including many millions on unused hotel rooms. ~$400 per person per night for illegal aliens. ~$80+ million USD in a few months. > DOGE is BS. Basically DOGE is only BS if you think fraud and waste are not BS. Why don't you actually look at the large number of waste projects on https://x.com/DOGE https://x.com/DOGE before saying it is BS ?

rgmerk 2y ago
US federal budget expenditures in 2023 were a little over six trillion dollars. Eighty million dollars isn’t even sufficient to count as a rounding error in that context.
- lenkite 2y ago
  Good lord - No its not a rounding error. How did you even get that ? Here is the cost of illegal immigration to taxpayers: https://budget.house.gov/download/the-cost-of-illegal-immigration-to-taxpayers https://budget.house.gov/download/the-cost-of-illegal-immigr... It is ~42 billion for welfame, $70 billion USD for schooling, $7.5 billion for the uninsured, etc, totaling to around ~150 billion. This is also around the figure confirmed by DOGE. It would be nice if you can refute the data on facts.
  - rgmerk 2y ago
    It’s not an official figure. It’s a figure calculated by an anti-immigration “think tank”. And even taking their numbers as gospel, it’s 1.1% of the federal budget - and it’s not like you can claw back that 1.1% either, because the enforcement mechanisms required to expel and keep illegal immigrants out of the USA would cost very substantial amounts.
  - etc-hosts 2y ago
    That study is from CIS. CIS' founder was https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Tanton https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Tanton then you should look up "Jared Taylor". Then look up "American Renaissance"

refurb 2y ago

> DOGE is BS. Are you suggesting there is no possible way to make the government more efficient in a way that reduces costs by some significant amount? That seems like an extreme statement.

Arn_Thor 2y ago
That is a straw man, and an ugly one at that. Every system has inefficiencies, including the government. The fallacy is to assume that businesses inherently have less inefficiencies than government and/or that a government’s cost/benefit equation improves if it’s run as a business. Often, their functions overlap and this can be the case. Automated traffic monitoring is cheaper than having people count cars. But beware privatization that promises efficiency and lower costs—the result is almost always worse services, maintainable debt and in time a government bailout. Often, their functions do not overlap. The purpose of social security is not to tighten spending as much as possible, it is to improve quality of life as much as possible.
- refurb 2y ago
  Funny you'd accuse me of a straw man then go on about claims I never made. Nothing has changed yet. No plans have been rolled out. We could wait and see what the plan is before claiming it's a failure already?
  - Arn_Thor 2y ago
    Let me quote you: "Are you suggesting there is no possible way to make the government more efficient in a way that reduces costs by some significant amount?" The poster said no such thing.
    - refurb 2y ago
      The poster said "DOGE is BS". DOGE is looking to make the government more efficient, so the poster said "making the government more efficient is BS". Thus my question seems like a pretty good rephrasing.