"Ostensibly, the goal of DOGE [the US Department of so-called Government Efficiency] is to cut government spending. ..."Anyone who knows anything about the budget understands that the goals that DOGE has set are basically impossible to reach, and practically nothing it does will significantly impact the debt. As The Economist points out, ... 'no matter how aggressive DOGE is, its actions are focused on barely more than a tenth of the overall federal budget' ..."[E]ven if you let go of 1 in 4 government workers, you’d only reduce federal spending by 1%. You’d need to cut spending by about a quarter to balance the budget, so firing that many people would get you about 4% of the way there....
"But even if DOGE has limited effects on the budget, that doesn’t mean that it won’t have a major policy impact ... the better way to understand DOGE is as a tool to reshape the federal workforce and its activities in accordance with the wishes of Elon Musk and Donald Trump. ...
"We can make an analogy here to the way that ... the Red Army used political commissars who reported directly to the Communist Party to maintain loyalty to Bolshevik ideology, a system that continued after the establishment of the Soviet Union. ...
"DOGE ... maintains direct lines to Trump and Musk, ensuring that departments do not thwart the will of the president and his agenda. Members of the DOGE team have reportedly been conducting short interviews with employees asking them to justify their jobs. This is ostensibly to help the government work better, but in practice this control over personnel selects for loyalty to the administration and a willingness to do its bidding. ...
"Getting past a screening process focused on 'government efficiency', as defined by Trump-Musk ... tells you a lot about a person’s politics.
"We can think of the administration right now as a coalition of three forces: Trump himself, Musk, and the entirety of the conservative movement. Each has its own reasons for being enthusiastic about the DOGE project. Trump would like to be able to do whatever he wants, and not face legal consequences ... Musk in turn has all kinds of business interests before the government, as shown in the figure below. If you’re a federal bureaucrat who makes a decision that goes against the interest of Tesla or SpaceX, good luck keeping your job.
"Conservatives, and probably Musk himself, also want to cut spending. However, that is a fundamentally difficult if not impossible thing to do through the executive branch alone ... DOGE [therefore represents] a scaling back of conservative ambitions. ... Republicans used to dream about cutting Social Security and Medicare and changing the budgetary realities of the federal government at a macro level. Now, they celebrate firing a DEI consultant, which will have no impact on the size of government or our fiscal outlook."~ Richard Hanania from his post 'DOGE as a Control Mechanism of the Trump-Musk Co-Presidency'
Tuesday, 18 February 2025
DOGE represents both a triumph of cronyism & a scaling back of conservative ambitions
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
4 comments:
Peter, I am constantly reminded of a quote attributed to Henry Ford
"Whether you think you can or you think you can’t, you’re right"
In the political world I interpret this as
"Whether you think you its good policy or you think its bad policy, you can find a supporter for your position.
This is a hit piece for one point of view.
With the question of DOGE, lets give it a bit of time to see how it plays out.
3 weeks in is not enough time.
Lets give it 3 months minimum when all the court cases and impacts will be known and better understood.
Further info about DOGE that is ignore by most!
It is acting legally.
I came across a lawyer, Tom Renz, who actually read Trump's
DOGE Executive Order and, expecting some illegal power grab,
found it to be airtight. Turns out Trump and Musk didn't create
anything. Obama did.
Obama created United States Digital Service (USDS) in 2014. It
was meant as a bureaucratic patch job to fix the Obamacare
website meltdown.
Fast forward to 2025. Trump rebrands it DOGE (United States
DOGE Service). Keeps the acronym, keeps the funding, but gives it
a whole new mission: Find the Receipts
Legally untouchable because it was already fully funded and
operational. Trump invokes 5 USC 3161, which allows him to
create temporary hiring authorities. DOGE teams get embedded
inside every single federal agency. Each team consists of a lawyer,
HR rep, a zoomer nerd, and an investigator. They report to DOGE,
not the agency they're embedded in.
But wait, there's more! Trump invokes 44 USC Chapter 35, which
governs federal IT and cybersecurity oversight. Since USDS was
originally an IT oversight body, DOGE now has full access to all
federal data systems. Yes, that's right. All of them.
His executive order is written to block legal challenges. Includes
language that overrides conflicting executive orders. Orders every
agency to comply. Refusal means they violate presidential
authority.
Congress can't defund it because it's not a new program, just a
repurposed one. DOJ can't sue for overreach because Trump used
existing laws exactly as written. Democrats trying to file legal
challenges run into standing issues because DOGE operates
within existing frameworks.
Obama literally built the perfect Administrative (read: Deep) State
IT backdoor. Trump and Musk just hacked the system and took
the admin controls. Musk now has legal oversight of every major
agency's internal systems. The Administrative State can't stop it
without rewriting multiple federal laws.
They legally outplayed the system and there's nothing anyone can
do about it.
Obama created DOGE.
The executive order
https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/01/establishing-and-implementing-the-presidents-department-of-government-efficiency/
Wow! That's outstanding. It is good when these horrible WEFers, neolibs, Marxists, collectivists and the like are outplayed like this. They robbed Americans and used the money to hurt Americans. Not only did they hurt Americans, but they hurt people all around the World while enriching themselves mightily as well.
It is going to be fascinating to see how many other dark and dirty things have been transpiring as the DOGE squaddies yump through the institutions of the government measuring, detecting and reporting what they find as they go. How was it all structured? Where did the money go? Who orchestrated it all? Can the money be recovered? Can the people who did it be bought to account?
Henry J
> This is a hit piece for one point of view.
"Who are you to object? All values are relative!"
;-P
There definitely will be some skeletons coming out of the closet as the result of the work of DOGE.
If all DOGE was limited to was investigative work - digging through the databases and payment systems - that'd be one thing. Done properly - that is, carefully managing the security risks inherent in de-compartmentalizing classified expenditures - it'd be easily defensible. The skeletons it dug up could then be used to de-fund certain programmes, *in a legal manner*, by a Republican-dominated legislature
But it's not. As the authors Peter referenced clearly demonstrate, it's being used as an illegal tool of political control, to the benefit of Trump and Musk personally and financially. You don't have to wait more than three weeks to know that, hell, it was apparent right from the get-go.
Post a Comment