6 ms·

Very nice examples, but why then doesn't DOGE go through every project? Why did Trump end all DEI contracts, why cause the disruption by freezing all outgoing m

by TomK32 2y ago

Very nice examples, but why then doesn't DOGE go through every project? Why did Trump end all DEI contracts, why cause the disruption by freezing all outgoing money, why fire the Inspector Generals that are inspecting their agencies for waste, why fire all probationary workers, and why the fuck do they want to mess with the IRS, the one agency that brings money in at a very successful rate? Clearly no one at Musk's DOGE has spent time in actual government bureaucracy.

cuuupid 2y ago
These are good questions that are easy to answer once you’ve spent time in gov: - it is very hard to go thru every project and generally not worth it, it seems like they are sorting by contract vehicle size. there are 120k+ contracts spit out by the government every fiscal year alone so this is a monumental effort - the DEI programs are probably a PR thing, generally speaking though they accomplish essentially nothing; I would probably go further though and roll up any program staffed by less than 10 people, then furlough 20% of the workforce under the larger program - not all outgoing money has been frozen, idk how this rumor got started, it’s very specific and generally just foreign aid. this is part of trump’s campaign promise so while I don’t agree with it and it is probably going to shatter US hegemony, it is also what people voted for. the government is still spending tons of money, we are still doing more in depth tracking but it seems like only a 3-4% decrease overall - the OIGs deserve to be fired they have not been able to stem any underlying issues for years, the outrage here is all manufactured. let me ask you this, if you hired an accountant and for the last 10 years they can neither tell you how much money you are spending nor find savings, are you going to keep that accountant? - the IRS is not really efficient! first of all a majority of their audits are on the bottom 80% of taxpayers. yes of course the top 20% are still overrepresented correctly, but they are actually losing money for every audit they conduct on the bottom 80%. estimates are around 0.96$ per dollar with ~6k$ per audit, so they’d save $240 per audit they skip on the bottom 80% of taxpayers. it’s true they recover 6$ on average for every dollar spent on the top 20% which cost averages out to a little over 3$ recovered per dollar; however this is actually not much money, around $30B a year total. for such a massive agency and mission they do a pretty terrible job, and is very warranting of disruption People are being gaslit into thinking the government is efficient; in reality it is endlessly bloated.
- TomK32 2y ago
  DEI is not just a PR thing, it forces employers to look at places for candidates they haven't looked before. Not surprising that white women are those who benefit the most from DEI. Even one JD Vance, as a military veteran, profited from a DEI program at Yale https://www.politifact.com/article/2025/feb/19/ask-politifact-did-jd-vance-benefit-from-dei-initi/ https://www.politifact.com/article/2025/feb/19/ask-politifac... If outgoing money isn't frozen, why do farmers not receive money for the binding contracts why fullfill for the government. https://www.reuters.com/world/us/usda-freezes-farmer-funding-some-programs-conservation-contracts-2025-02-08/ https://www.reuters.com/world/us/usda-freezes-farmer-funding... The IGs have be fired in a very specific way that involves informing Congress. It was not done correctly. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2025_dismissals_of_inspectors_general#Legality https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2025_dismissals_of_inspectors_... Cardell Richardson was in office since only May, don't know about you, but I'd give a new IG a year to get his ship running smoother. But looking at his picture I see why he was fired... Regarding the IRS, well then we can expect that from now on only the rich people will get audited?
  - cuuupid 2y ago
    Government contract vehicles are not binding, call orders are but can also be cancelled and provisions are made for doing so. You’re pointing to one hyper specific example of cuts as frozen spending; it is easy to confirm billions have been spent in the last week alone. There is also a case to be made for malicious compliance in many cases with cuts. It sucks these farmers aren’t getting paid, but this is not an uncommon occurrence and if they truly are owed money they will eventually be receipted or they will be able to sue under FAR provisions. Firing IGs without notice isn’t great but if Congress has an issue with it they are free to take it up. I’m not sure why that is relevant to whether or not IGs should be fired. Cardell was an IG for literally two decades. This is like saying a SWE at Facebook for 20 years who now works in Meta’s VR division has only been a SWE for 1 year. OIG at Department of State especially, among all OIGs, deserves mass layoffs. The track record of that office is the absolute worst. It is also typical for SES to get rotated out and replaced during any new administration. 1-2 years in office is totally fair game as not many make it past 3. Regarding the IRS, that’s a campaign promise Trump made and seems to be keen on with his ERS plans. However I doubt it will come to fruition or have meaningful impact, the IRS is hard to disrupt due to longstanding relationships with Congress.
nostrademons 2y ago
Trimming down a bureaucracy is a good example of Gall's Law: "A complex system that works is invariably found to have evolved from a simple system that worked. A complex system that doesn't work cannot be patched up to make it work. You have to start over with a working simple system." The usual reason for this is simply dependencies. At some point in time, somebody took a working system, had some extra budget, and then invented a process that took the existing system as an input and produced some marginally useful work. But then next year, the new process was part of the working system, and they had more budget, and they added more roles and processes based on its output. Now you can't take it away: regardless of how marginally useful it was last year, everything built on top of it will fail. That $10M contract with one user might have just one user, but that one user might be the crucial communication link that determines the budget for a 1000-person department. You might even have a contract with zero users, but without auditing the inner workings of the whole department, how do you know it has zero users and won't just break everything when you terminate it?
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
Sparyjerry 2y ago
It's only cuttable because DEI is not the actual budget line item. Think of it like this 'program gets a budget of $10M' and the people that run it decide the best way to implement that program includes $8M of DEI training. They can instead decide to spend $0 on DEI and the full budget on payroll. This is simply changing the priority of what was effectively an HR function to actual productivity functions.

by TomK32 2y ago

cuuupid 2y ago

These are good questions that are easy to answer once you’ve spent time in gov: - it is very hard to go thru every project and generally not worth it, it seems like they are sorting by contract vehicle size. there are 120k+ contracts spit out by the government every fiscal year alone so this is a monumental effort - the DEI programs are probably a PR thing, generally speaking though they accomplish essentially nothing; I would probably go further though and roll up any program staffed by less than 10 people, then furlough 20% of the workforce under the larger program - not all outgoing money has been frozen, idk how this rumor got started, it’s very specific and generally just foreign aid. this is part of trump’s campaign promise so while I don’t agree with it and it is probably going to shatter US hegemony, it is also what people voted for. the government is still spending tons of money, we are still doing more in depth tracking but it seems like only a 3-4% decrease overall - the OIGs deserve to be fired they have not been able to stem any underlying issues for years, the outrage here is all manufactured. let me ask you this, if you hired an accountant and for the last 10 years they can neither tell you how much money you are spending nor find savings, are you going to keep that accountant? - the IRS is not really efficient! first of all a majority of their audits are on the bottom 80% of taxpayers. yes of course the top 20% are still overrepresented correctly, but they are actually losing money for every audit they conduct on the bottom 80%. estimates are around 0.96$ per dollar with ~6k$ per audit, so they’d save $240 per audit they skip on the bottom 80% of taxpayers. it’s true they recover 6$ on average for every dollar spent on the top 20% which cost averages out to a little over 3$ recovered per dollar; however this is actually not much money, around $30B a year total. for such a massive agency and mission they do a pretty terrible job, and is very warranting of disruption People are being gaslit into thinking the government is efficient; in reality it is endlessly bloated.

TomK32 2y ago
DEI is not just a PR thing, it forces employers to look at places for candidates they haven't looked before. Not surprising that white women are those who benefit the most from DEI. Even one JD Vance, as a military veteran, profited from a DEI program at Yale https://www.politifact.com/article/2025/feb/19/ask-politifact-did-jd-vance-benefit-from-dei-initi/ https://www.politifact.com/article/2025/feb/19/ask-politifac... If outgoing money isn't frozen, why do farmers not receive money for the binding contracts why fullfill for the government. https://www.reuters.com/world/us/usda-freezes-farmer-funding-some-programs-conservation-contracts-2025-02-08/ https://www.reuters.com/world/us/usda-freezes-farmer-funding... The IGs have be fired in a very specific way that involves informing Congress. It was not done correctly. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2025_dismissals_of_inspectors_general#Legality https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2025_dismissals_of_inspectors_... Cardell Richardson was in office since only May, don't know about you, but I'd give a new IG a year to get his ship running smoother. But looking at his picture I see why he was fired... Regarding the IRS, well then we can expect that from now on only the rich people will get audited?
- cuuupid 2y ago
  Government contract vehicles are not binding, call orders are but can also be cancelled and provisions are made for doing so. You’re pointing to one hyper specific example of cuts as frozen spending; it is easy to confirm billions have been spent in the last week alone. There is also a case to be made for malicious compliance in many cases with cuts. It sucks these farmers aren’t getting paid, but this is not an uncommon occurrence and if they truly are owed money they will eventually be receipted or they will be able to sue under FAR provisions. Firing IGs without notice isn’t great but if Congress has an issue with it they are free to take it up. I’m not sure why that is relevant to whether or not IGs should be fired. Cardell was an IG for literally two decades. This is like saying a SWE at Facebook for 20 years who now works in Meta’s VR division has only been a SWE for 1 year. OIG at Department of State especially, among all OIGs, deserves mass layoffs. The track record of that office is the absolute worst. It is also typical for SES to get rotated out and replaced during any new administration. 1-2 years in office is totally fair game as not many make it past 3. Regarding the IRS, that’s a campaign promise Trump made and seems to be keen on with his ERS plans. However I doubt it will come to fruition or have meaningful impact, the IRS is hard to disrupt due to longstanding relationships with Congress.

nostrademons 2y ago

Trimming down a bureaucracy is a good example of Gall's Law: "A complex system that works is invariably found to have evolved from a simple system that worked. A complex system that doesn't work cannot be patched up to make it work. You have to start over with a working simple system." The usual reason for this is simply dependencies. At some point in time, somebody took a working system, had some extra budget, and then invented a process that took the existing system as an input and produced some marginally useful work. But then next year, the new process was part of the working system, and they had more budget, and they added more roles and processes based on its output. Now you can't take it away: regardless of how marginally useful it was last year, everything built on top of it will fail. That $10M contract with one user might have just one user, but that one user might be the crucial communication link that determines the budget for a 1000-person department. You might even have a contract with zero users, but without auditing the inner workings of the whole department, how do you know it has zero users and won't just break everything when you terminate it?

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]

Sparyjerry 2y ago

It's only cuttable because DEI is not the actual budget line item. Think of it like this 'program gets a budget of $10M' and the people that run it decide the best way to implement that program includes $8M of DEI training. They can instead decide to spend $0 on DEI and the full budget on payroll. This is simply changing the priority of what was effectively an HR function to actual productivity functions.