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"Faulty intelligence" accepts that DOGE / Russell Vought / Project 2025 are sincerely concerned with government spending. The evidence says that this is delibe

"Faulty intelligence" accepts that DOGE / Russell Vought / Project 2025 are sincerely concerned with government spending. The evidence says that this is deliberate sabotage of government functions to erode public trust. Consider: Douglas Holtz-Eakin (former Republican CBO director) noted DOGE is specifically "going into agencies they disagree with" for ideological reasons, targeting programs that are a tiny fraction of the federal budget. https://thefulcrum.us/governance-legislation/doge-layoffs-trump-administration https://thefulcrum.us/governance-legislation/doge-layoffs-tr... OMB Director Russell Vought explicitly stated his intention for federal workers to be "traumatically affected" - showing disruption is the intended goal. https://www.govexec.com/transition/2025/04/project-2025-wanted-hobble-federal-workforce-doge-has-hastily-done-and-more/404390/ https://www.govexec.com/transition/2025/04/project-2025-want... DOGE cut specialized IRS teams that brought in billions despite small costs. One team of <10 people had recovered $5 billion over four years before being fired. https://www.propublica.org/article/how-doge-irs-cuts-will-cost-more-than-savings-trump-musk-deficit https://www.propublica.org/article/how-doge-irs-cuts-will-co... DOGE has repeatedly made fraud claims that "none have held up under scrutiny" - appearing designed to undermine public trust rather than address actual problems. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Department_of_Government_Efficiency https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Department_of_Government_Effic... The pattern is clear: target high-visibility but relatively low-cost programs (like NSF internships) that provide tangible benefits to citizens. When services deteriorate, people naturally ask "why am I paying taxes for this?" - which is exactly the intended outcome. A $10k internship that launches careers and advances American innovation is precisely the type of program that makes visible the value of government - which is why it's being targeted despite minimal fiscal impact.

Loughla 1y ago
Something, something small enough to drown it in the bathtub. This isn't new. Republicans have always worked to erode government offerings to justify further cuts. What is new is the scale and speed. Is there literally nothing Congress can do or are they just doing nothing?
- breckenedge 1y ago
  They’ve been doing nothing for decades.
  - ethbr1 1y ago
    > They’ve been doing nothing for decades. Here's a list of the 250+ pieces of nothing that the 118th Congress passed. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_acts_of_the_118th_United_States_Congress https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_acts_of_the_118th_Un... If you're going to reach for hyperbole, at least make it defensible.
    - elevation 1y ago
      [flagged]
      - throwup238 1y ago
        > Instead, they consistently cede their legislative authority to bureaucrats by creating office after office of unelected regulators who generate reams of rules with the power of law but with no democratic oversight. The irony of saying that in a thread about the NSF getting gutted is palpable.
      - scheme271 1y ago
        That's clearly not accurate. Congress has passed continuing resolutions in some years but they've also passed budgets. E.g in 2024, they passed this: https://www.congress.gov/bill/118th-congress/house-bill/4366 https://www.congress.gov/bill/118th-congress/house-bill/4366 .
    - zvorygin 1y ago
      The Wikipedia article you link states: > It has been called one of the least productive Congresses since 1951 Let’s not measure productivity in terms of count of bills passed like measuring output by lines of code. Healthcare reform, SS reform, fiscal sustainability, electoral reform, climate, immigration, information environment, cybersecurity, how many of these pressing issues have been tackled and solved by congress?
FrustratedMonky 1y ago
"deliberate sabotage of government functions to erode public trust." Is there any non-dystopian reason to do this? Is the end game really the collapse of the US?
- deleted 1y ago
  [deleted]
- benzible 1y ago
  One person's dystopia is another's Christian nationalist authoritarian paradise. Vought / Project 2025 have been quite explicit in their goals. They believe that they're at war with secular institutions and what they call the "administrative state" - any government function that operates independently of direct political control by the executive branch. That is an explicit goal of doing away with the US Constitutional system. Vought has justified this through conspiratorial nonsense, claiming that the "deep state" has already brought about a "post-Constitutional" order via bureaucratic overreach. Their plan will mean impoverishment of most of the population, as well as removal of a substantial part of the population through deportation but they're not particularly concerned with that. In their eschatology, non-believers (which includes not just atheists but Catholics, Jews, Muslims, and even other Protestant denominations they deem insufficiently pure) are literally destined for eternal torture in hell. Some of the more extreme elements actively look forward to this as divine justice. Their apocalyptic worldview frames everyone outside their narrow in-group as either potential converts or enemies destined for damnation. Why worry about climate change, democratic institutions, or social welfare when the faithful will be raptured away while the unrighteous suffer? This theological framework makes it remarkably easy to dismiss the suffering of others as either deserved or irrelevant in cosmic terms. Musk has a different set of motivations. Some of it is just straightforward corruption - killing off agencies and firing specific individuals who have pushed investigations of his various enterprises, as well as awarding contracts to himself (e.g. the FAA Starlink contract, which is genuinely terrifying). But as far as his motivations to decimate government more generally, I think it's a combination of things. He seems to genuinely believe that dismantling government oversight will unshackle great men such as himself to bring about some techno-libertarian utopia. But I think a lot of it is that his brain has just been pickled by right-wing social media and he's a bit of a useful idiot. The fact that this aligns with Christian nationalist goals is just a convenient overlap. Then there's the Stephen Miller wing, who are primarily motivated by racism (of course, all of these factions are extremeley racist). It's all quite grim.

Loughla 1y ago

Something, something small enough to drown it in the bathtub. This isn't new. Republicans have always worked to erode government offerings to justify further cuts. What is new is the scale and speed. Is there literally nothing Congress can do or are they just doing nothing?

breckenedge 1y ago
They’ve been doing nothing for decades.
- ethbr1 1y ago
  > They’ve been doing nothing for decades. Here's a list of the 250+ pieces of nothing that the 118th Congress passed. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_acts_of_the_118th_United_States_Congress https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_acts_of_the_118th_Un... If you're going to reach for hyperbole, at least make it defensible.
  - elevation 1y ago
    [flagged]
    - throwup238 1y ago
      > Instead, they consistently cede their legislative authority to bureaucrats by creating office after office of unelected regulators who generate reams of rules with the power of law but with no democratic oversight. The irony of saying that in a thread about the NSF getting gutted is palpable.
    - scheme271 1y ago
      That's clearly not accurate. Congress has passed continuing resolutions in some years but they've also passed budgets. E.g in 2024, they passed this: https://www.congress.gov/bill/118th-congress/house-bill/4366 https://www.congress.gov/bill/118th-congress/house-bill/4366 .
  - zvorygin 1y ago
    The Wikipedia article you link states: > It has been called one of the least productive Congresses since 1951 Let’s not measure productivity in terms of count of bills passed like measuring output by lines of code. Healthcare reform, SS reform, fiscal sustainability, electoral reform, climate, immigration, information environment, cybersecurity, how many of these pressing issues have been tackled and solved by congress?

FrustratedMonky 1y ago

"deliberate sabotage of government functions to erode public trust." Is there any non-dystopian reason to do this? Is the end game really the collapse of the US?

deleted 1y ago
[deleted]
benzible 1y ago
One person's dystopia is another's Christian nationalist authoritarian paradise. Vought / Project 2025 have been quite explicit in their goals. They believe that they're at war with secular institutions and what they call the "administrative state" - any government function that operates independently of direct political control by the executive branch. That is an explicit goal of doing away with the US Constitutional system. Vought has justified this through conspiratorial nonsense, claiming that the "deep state" has already brought about a "post-Constitutional" order via bureaucratic overreach. Their plan will mean impoverishment of most of the population, as well as removal of a substantial part of the population through deportation but they're not particularly concerned with that. In their eschatology, non-believers (which includes not just atheists but Catholics, Jews, Muslims, and even other Protestant denominations they deem insufficiently pure) are literally destined for eternal torture in hell. Some of the more extreme elements actively look forward to this as divine justice. Their apocalyptic worldview frames everyone outside their narrow in-group as either potential converts or enemies destined for damnation. Why worry about climate change, democratic institutions, or social welfare when the faithful will be raptured away while the unrighteous suffer? This theological framework makes it remarkably easy to dismiss the suffering of others as either deserved or irrelevant in cosmic terms. Musk has a different set of motivations. Some of it is just straightforward corruption - killing off agencies and firing specific individuals who have pushed investigations of his various enterprises, as well as awarding contracts to himself (e.g. the FAA Starlink contract, which is genuinely terrifying). But as far as his motivations to decimate government more generally, I think it's a combination of things. He seems to genuinely believe that dismantling government oversight will unshackle great men such as himself to bring about some techno-libertarian utopia. But I think a lot of it is that his brain has just been pickled by right-wing social media and he's a bit of a useful idiot. The fact that this aligns with Christian nationalist goals is just a convenient overlap. Then there's the Stephen Miller wing, who are primarily motivated by racism (of course, all of these factions are extremeley racist). It's all quite grim.