DOGE is a Farce
Unfortunately it is a destructive one.
So, if one cruises over to doge.gov (where hopefully they have fixed their security problem) one will find its Twitter feed, and if one clicks on “Savings” one gets what is screenshot above: “Receipts coming over the weekend!” I am writing this near noon Eastern time on Sunday. I may be nothing more than a simple, retired country political scientist, but by my reckoning, we are deep into the weekend.
You’d think that if all the fraud and waste was so very easy to find and identify the “receipts” would be pouring out. But, of course, this is the gang who claimed that the US was spending $50 million on condoms for Hamas. See the AP, FACT FOCUS: No evidence that $50 million was designated by the US to buy condoms for Hamas.
“USAID procures condoms for around $0.05 apiece,” he wrote. “$50m would be ONE BILLION condoms. What’s going on here is NOT a billion condoms for Gaza. What’s going on is that the bros at DOGE apparently can’t read govt spreadsheets.”
To the point of not knowing what they are looking at, see the BBC, Fact-checking Elon Musk’s claims in the Oval Office.
The reporter asked whether the condoms were actually due to be sent to Gaza Province in Mozambique.
Musk appeared to concede that could be the case, and responded: “I’m not sure we should be sending $50m dollars on condoms anywhere… if it went to Mozambique instead of Gaza, I’m like, OK that’s not as bad, but still you know why are we doing that?”
Several posts on X have highlighted a US commitment to fund an HIV-prevention programme in Gaza, Mozambique.
US government records show that an American-funded scheme for Gaza, Mozambique was awarded $83.5m for “prevention, care, support and treatment interventions within HIV and TB facilities and communities” for a programme running until September 2026.
I suspect we have all been in meetings in which someone thinks they have discovered some error, oddity, or other problem with a report because they did not understand what they were looking at. Maybe that person was us. But making a passing error is one thing while thinking you know enough to rapidly cut spending and policy in numerous agencies is quite another.
I will note, just in case anyone needs to hear it, that there is little doubt in my mind that a careful audit of the federal government could yield some level of useful recommendations and maybe savings. I have doubts, however, that the mythic “fraud, waste, and corruption” that many conservatives have been promising to find since at least my youth will ever be located and excised from Washington.
I will even state that there is almost certainly a need to upgrade and update systems across the federal government, which, over time, would lead to more efficiency and maybe even real savings. The problem is, that such upgrades will require lots of money, time, and expertise.
But neither savings nor improvements to services/the functioning of the federal government will come about from a bunch of amateurs running around and looking at things they don’t understand. I don’t care how much money Elon Musk has or how many high-tech companies he owns, he does not know what he is doing.
To cite one example that James Joyner already noted, allow me to quote Don Moynihan:
Have you heard about the National Nuclear Security Administration before? Probably not. It’s one of those jobs that we hopefully never need to think about, because if we do that means something has gone badly wrong. But it’s also one of those jobs that someone needs to ensure is staffed appropriately to make sure something does not go badly wrong. As a citizen, its fine if you are not aware of NNSA, but bear in mind that when the right attacks wasteful bureaucracy, these sort of invisible agencies performing important tasks are some of what they are talking about.
Apparently DOGE does not know much about the NNSA either. To be fair, when you have zero experience of government, why should you? But if you have zero experience of government, you should also probably not be in the position of firing 300 of the guys who take care of the nukes. CNN reported that the fired staffers included “staff who are on the ground at facilities where nuclear weapons are built. These staff oversee the contractors who build nuclear weapons, and they inspect these weapons.”
After enough members of Congress got upset, the firings were rescinded. Just one problem. DOGE made the firings effective the day they were received (no notice, not severance), immediately shutting down access to government emails. And they did not have contact information to tell NNSA employees they were unfired. This is insanity. This is a fool running around firing people without any understanding of what he is doing. I would love to hear a defense of this. But it is indefensible. And it underscores that as he makes these cuts he is doing damage without any regard whatsoever for outcomes.
In addition,
In the middle of tax season, the IRS was told to lay off thousands of workers hired as part of the rebuilding project.
Part of the DOGE hype is that after they fire everyone, they will figure out better ways to do the job using, uh, AI and such. But there is no second act where it gets better. They don’t have a plan to fix what they are breaking because they don’t understand or care about the damage they are doing. Breaking government is the point. It is not as if DOGE has some magical IRS plan up their sleeve. There is no plan.
This is insanity.
I suggest reading all of Moynihan’s post.
And to those who think this about money or efficiency:
It is a fundamental error to believe that DOGE is a government efficiency project. Cutting 1 in 4 federal employees would cut federal government spending by 1%. Cost savings are incidental. DOGE is a political control project. Firing and terrorizing public employees is a means to weakening state regulation of private interests and strengthening a personalist presidency.
This isn’t saving money; this is destruction.
Anyone who thinks that any of this is going to lead to substantial deficit reduction, let alone have a significant impact on the national debt needs to look at the numbers.
Maybe you should have thought about these things before you spent YEARS applauding…
1. Trying to throw the leader of the other political party in prison.
2. Aggressive censorship of opposing political views.
3. A complete collapse of control on the southern border.
4. A mass conspiracy to hide the mental incapability of the sitting U.S. from the public.
5. U.S law enforcement and the intelligence community conspiring to promote a disinformation campaign to undermine an elected U.S. President.
6. Holding no one accountable for one of the biggest public health failures in national history.
And the list goes on and on and on.
If you don’t want the bad guys to win, it helps a lot to be the good guys. Being just as bad or worse doesn’t.
When the leader of the other political party breaks the law they should be put in prison. Otherwise, they will start to post things like “He who saves his Country does not violate any Law.”
I will continue applauding the prosecution of criminals, thank you very much. As for the other things AThought (or the absence thereof) lists, I’ve never applauded them because they are, all of them, imaginings of a fevered mind. The destruction Steven notes, willfully ignored by the troll, is real.
For no reason at all I’m reminded of Luke Skywalker’s line “Amazing. Every word of what you just said was wrong.”
@AThought: All of this is nonsense.
The only item on your list that is semi-accurate is #1, insofar as said leader broke the law. And, I, personally, don’t think I ever called for him to be jailed. The issue was not calls to throw him in jail, it was calls to have him face justice.
So you admit that the current administration represents the bad guys. At least you understand that.
(And don’t think I don’t recognize the style–I will leave this one up because it is so absurd).
@AThought: BTW, the hateful, angry ignorance is not impressive. Indeed, it is exhausting. Be better.
BTW, this overstates the cost savings, in my opinion. Because, the government services these employees provide will still, for the most part, need to be done. The American People may not understand all that federal employees do, but we know from past government shutdowns that they start to figure it out when the National Parks are shuttered and the checks don’t come out on time. At least some of the 1 in 4 federal employees fired will need to be replaced, likely at similar costs and sometimes at greater cost.
The legal costs for defending against wrongful termination are going to be significant as well.
@AThought: Ha. So regretful Trump voters now realize MAGA is an indefensible disaster — scrambling to deflect blame to those who warned you. Another desperate rightwinger here just tried blame DOGE on Obama lol
Republicans are already out of excuses for those they cheered into power Because Trans Woke DEI Hire Cat-Eating Haitian Migrant Pronoun Drag Shows.
Pretending Trump’s criminal cases are not his fault. Pretending Trump voters oppose censorship when supporting Republicans banning books, pronouns, pride flags, “DEI” cultural programming and on and on. Pretending Trump didn’t kill the bipartisan border bill. Pretending Paul Manafort didn’t publicly admit giving data to the Russians. Pretending those who want accountability for the COVID health failure would re-elect the president responsible for that failure.
All pretense, all lies, all designed to make excuses for those who stupidity voted for a rapist felon who incited the J6 attack.
Yup, Trump and Musk are the bad guys: reckless, incompetent, unethical, careless — his enablers can no longer wash off the stink. And 100% of blame for this horrifically awful Musk presidency lies with selfish, ignorant Trump voters and the amoral, immature, podcast-bro right.
You are not one of the good guys.
“Trying to throw the leader of the other political party in prison.”
You mean like this?
LOCK HER UP! LOCK HER UP! LOCK HER UP!
Or you’re Naomi Wolf, and get corrected on air that you’ve misinterpreted a Victorian era legal term and then based a large part of your book on it.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EdRGOUyu7-k
This assault on her by facts caused her rapid swing into the anti-anti-Trump crazy right orbit, where facts are mere suggestions and other alternative facts can be created as needed. She always had a tenuous grasp on the facts before this, but it really pushed her away from reality.
To be fair, “death recorded” does sound like someone was executed.
In the various Star Wars comics and novels leading up to The Force Awakens, it is revealed that the Emperor had a plan, Operation Cinder, to destroy a lot of the Empire in the event of his death. This seemed ridiculous and over the top.
Trump 2.0 seems like an unhinged revenge tour to get back at America for voting him out in 2020. It’s Operation Cinder.
Call me old fashioned, but I think the easiest way for a political leader to avoid prison is by obeying the law. Which, a quick reminder, he is not above, no matter what he is “truth-socialing”.
@Jen:
But he’ll respond by saying that whatever he does is to save America, so by definition he can’t be breaking any laws.
@AThought:
In addition to the other well-stated responses to your comment, above, I would just like to acknowledge your complete command of the MAGA cult’s talking points. Such memorization skills often belie an IQ in the lower percentiles.
“Aggressive censorship of opposing political views.”
You mean like this.
Donald Trump is afraid of children’s books.
WHAT A COWARD!
@Scott F.: “this overstates the cost savings, in my opinion. Because, the government services these employees provide will still, for the most part, need to be done”
This, in line with the referenced post’s statement that it is a fundamental error to believe that this is a government efficiency project. The Government Efficiency Department is opaquely rummaging through sensitive government data and then attempting to justify their actions by firing some of the easiest-to-fire employees. What the GED is doing is clearly ass-backwards and lazy, and bound to result in lower government efficiency. Months or years of time invested in recruiting, vetting, training, and OJT developing each employee are lost, and the ability of organizations to function will suffer. The functional impacts to organizations such as USAID are felt immediately, but others will be felt over time…as medical research gets thrown into limbo, as tax returns need to be filed, as veterans healthcare needs to be provided, as immigration cases are processed (or not), and on and on…
@Gustopher:
I have forgotten the details, but another conservative “researcher” pored through ads from 19th century newspapers, saw no ads for, or even mentions of, “abortion” and concluded while it may have been legal, it didn’t happen. Someone had to point out to her what the numerous ads for cures for “interrupted menses” meant.
I can only speak for myself, as someone fired on Friday because “The Department has determined that you have failed to demonstrate fitness or qualifications for continued employment because your subject matter knowledge, skills, and abilities do not meet the Department’s current needs, and it is necessary and appropriate to terminate, during the probationary period, your appointment to the position of [x].”
Even if they were to change their minds on Tuesday when everyone comes back from their long weekend and realizes that maybe breaking trust with 500+ Federally-recognized tribes in a single afternoon was an especially bad idea, I’m out. Trust, once broken, etc.
I also think they’ve made an unforced error with their written justification in the official termination letter. There’s no doubt in my mind that the rationale provided to terminate with cause is boilerplate, and there’s no way that claiming that thousands of probationary employees have all failed to demonstrate fitness / qualifications for their position on the same day is going to fly in the long run. I expect that my union, along with many others, is going to fight this.
@CSK: Yeah, that’s what I was getting at with the second sentence. Le sigh.
@Scott F.: Oh, it absolutely overstates the cost savings. In addition to what you’ve pointed out–that the work still needs to be done–they are going to quickly discover that some of these positions and work is essential, and my hunch is that they’ll turn to the private sector rather than admit they did something really, really, monumentally stupid. So you’ll see new government contracts popping up for all kinds of stuff that IS BETTER HANDLED, more cheaply, by government workers.
A quick but poignant example: one of the park service employees who was fired had been involved in several search and rescue operations. People who visit parks are not going to stop getting lost, so who, pray tell, will be doing the searching and rescuing? NPS has jurisdiction. Local LEOs can be brought in, but hey, that costs money too.
These dipsh!ts who do not understand government spreadsheets are making massive decisions that I guarantee are going to end up *costing* us money.
Echoing Kathy, I am for no particular reason remembering Wanda: “Apes do read philosophy, Otto. They just don’t understand it.”
@Gromitt Gunn: So sorry to hear that. Truly.
Good luck navigating this unnecessary disruption of your life.
And just because I am a glutton for punishment I just checked the DOGE site. It is 5:11 EST on Sunday. Still no receipts.
A case, one of many, where “fraud” in the form of 150 year old people collecting SS was gleefully pronounced but turns out to be people not understanding what they were looking at. Seems Musk’s whiz kidz don’t grok COBAL.
Somehow this reminds of our effort to re-form the government of Iraq, documented by Tom Ricks, with a “Children’s Crusade” of youngsters.
@Gromitt Gunn:
I’m really sorry to hear what’s being done to you. You’ve been wronged. The bullshit boilerplate about how you’ve fallen down on the job is all the more galling.
(If memory serves, you recently transitioned from a cc faculty position to this parks service one. Is that right? Forgive me if I’ve messed up the details.)
I know NIH folks who are getting the same treatment and same boilerplate. There does appear to be class action lawsuits ready to fight this. I hope you are able to find a legal path forward.
And I hope you are able to find a personal path forward.
@Gromitt Gunn:
That’s what I was saying about the “Magic Words” the other day. I don’t know about the other lawyers here, but it was early in my litigation career that I learned, you always have to say the Magic Words, but also have to back up the Magic Words with actual supportive facts.
Not saying the Magic Words will get you laughed at by opposing counsel as they get your pleading* stricken. Not backing up the Magic Words with supportive facts will get you yelled at by the Judge AND laughed at by opposing counsel as they both beat you over the head.
What I know about employment law is basically nil, but I know contracts and this is straight pretext straight through. The worst part is I fully expect that courts are going to try and undo a lot of these firings and the Administration is just going to refuse to bring people back (those that want to come back).
Also, my friend works for the IRS. She’s fairly certain she’s going to be fired shortly.
In a shocking twist, each and every one of the agencies Musk eliminated was…. either currently or about to [CFPB due to the X agreement w Visa to process payments] regulate his companies. This is just everyday 1800’s robber baron elimination of regulations.
This isn’t anything about The People, unless of course by people you mean the 5 billionaires who are the only people who actually count, right?
I suppose this goes along with the 1800’s open imperialism.
Which pre-1900 era was exactly when America was Great, anyway? Many are asking.
You have to understand Musk’s theory of management, to dignify it with a label it probably doesn’t deserve. He’s made no secret of it. To achieve optimum efficiency, you slash and burn, forcing the remaining employees to work their guts out. As time goes on, if it proves absolutely essential, you can add a few more. There’s nothing new about this of course; it used to be called “business process re-engineering”. It’s the opposite methodology to that other business school favorite, “continuous improvement”, but the goal is the same: optimum efficiency without any regard to the interests of any other stakeholders, least of all the employees.
Musk warned before the election that things were going to be messy for a while, and that there’d be some pain. But once he’d finished, it would be a new Golden Age. Except perhaps for the millions of people out of work and/or deprived of the government services they once enjoyed.
BTW it’s pathetic to see another thread derailed by people who cannot resist replying to a moronic MAGA troll.
Also BTW, it’s Don Moynihan, not Dan.
@Gromitt Gunn: One of my wife’s coworkers got the same letter. He was just given an outstanding rating on his employee evaluation. Probational employees have more than zero rights. Outside of poor performance, or the government no longer needs the work done by that particular position– I don’t believe you can treat them as private sector at will employees.
There will be big lawsuits over this.
@AThought: Yaaaay! We have a different typing ape to play with! Our usual apes are such a bore now. It’s all–Trump/MAGA = Good & Not Trump/Not MAGA = Bad.
That gets old you know? Surely nothing is ALL good just as nothing is ALL bad. We enjoy sharing bananas with our Apes here but our current crop refuses to eat them– they shove em right up the old poop chute.
Looking forward to sharing with you as well but please remember, bananas typically go in the front end, not the back end.
@Gromitt Gunn:
That’s awful and you have my condolences. Having let people go, that language is deliberately cruel and insulting and it’s impossible to imagine being the type of human behind all of this.
One of the telling things about Musk and Trump is that with all of their money, who the hell envies them? Both seem like wretched unhappy people of no value to anyone alive, and they seem to resent and envy actual humans who matter. I really believe we are plunging into unknown territory. A lot of Americans of all types are on their wavelength and that’s insane.
Musk, like many corporate types, thinks that he can make things leaner by firing a percentage of the workforce and then pressuring the remaining employees to work harder with longer hours.
Government employees are typically paid less than their private employment counterparts. The tradeoff is predictable hours, and decent benefits.
Stripping that away is going to have ramifications.
@Modulo Myself:
And yet 49% of the population said that they wanted these guys to run the place. (And an additional one percent said that they didn’t want the other option no matter what.)
@Gromitt Gunn: my sincere sympathy for getting caught in the gears of the DOGE juggernaut.
As far as I can tell, we’re fighting like mad to keep our provisionals and have succeeded so far.
Anyone who thinks that you can outsource what my agency does is totally brain-dead. Being a patent examiner is a totally different job than a patent attorney prosecuting a patent.
@Gromitt Gunn:
Very sorry to hear that.
@Just nutha ignint cracker: 49% of the 63.9% of eligible voters who bothered to vote.
So basically 77 million out of 245 million or so eligible voters.
About 22% of the total US population (340 million total) voted for Trump.
@Gromitt Gunn:
I regret that you’ve been caught up in this partisan witch hunt. It’s probably of little solice, right now, but I’m sure you’ll land on your feet.
Thanks everyone.
@Mimai: Close. I was being intentionally vague on the new position. I took a job at a Bureau of Indian Education school, attempting to reinvigorate a program that had mostly gone dormant.
I made the choice in the fall between this position and one as a program director for a state university in Texas. I took this position in the end in part because I felt like I could serve a greater good working in tribal education.
@Jim X 32:
I am pretty sure this person is not new.
@Ken_L:
Thanks for noting that. I have to constantly fight the urge to type “Dan” and not “Don” (because my brain cannot see “Moynihan” and not think “Daniel Patrick” and hence my fingers go
“Dan”).
@Matt: Slice and dice it anyway you want to. Your share is still smaller. Ever ask yourself why only ~65% of the eligible population votes?
@Gromitt Gunn:
I am so, so, sorry for you and for the people you serve. Everyone deserved better.
I’ll also note that the site still reads “Reciepts coming over the weekend.” Weird, a pro-Trump commenter assured us that Elon and the DOGE Crew were experts at tough things like “turnarounds”–yet they can’t seem to make their own deadlines.
@Scott F.: When I was in IT sales, the (accurate) pitch was to save 10% on the overall budget, increase the IT budget by 1%
Cutting across the board is the height of Dunning-Kruger policy making.
Now is not the time for Illiberal caution, except for that Nuke thing
DOGE is moving fast & breaking things like they should. When Republican graft is exposed as well, perhaps more eggheads will appreciate this once in a lifetime opportunity to save our Country.
The majority of Americans approve of DOGE exposing all these Wasted Tax Dollars. Why not demand MORE sunlight in every darkened corner of the swamp? [insert Kylo Ren shouting ‘More!’ meme]
“When all is exposed, 98% of Washington will fall.” – Julian Assange
@ElonDoge Bootlicker: They have not exposed any “waste, graft, or corruption.”
If they wanted to do that, they would have kept the Inspectors General (whose job it was to do exactly this), AND they would have hired forensic accountants, not some 19-year-olds who do not know what they are looking at, or for. This has been abundantly clear as they make nincompoop statements about 150 year old people getting social security, only to learn that it’s COBOL programming.
Normally I wouldn’t bother responding, but this is another pattern I’ve noticed–silliness comes in at the last moment and so it looks like they’ve made some mind-altering point that no one has responded to when in actuality, it’s just people responding to dead threads.
@Jen:
You must reside in a mainstream media “Silo” to think that DOGE has not exposed “waste, graft, and corruption.” The government has been wasting Billions and your lack of concern is a symptom of why YOU LOST IN NOVEMBER.
The ‘COBOL programming’ narrative is just that – a narrative formulated to discredit DOGE. It’s FAKE NEWS, not to be trusted until all the facts are verified by the DOGE team. Even if it turns out to be partially true – that is a big red herring. So much spending has been complete horseshit that we, the Taxpayers, should never have allowed in a society with a fair social contract.
Your team has had it’s chance and utterly failed.
PS – calling my post “silliness” is a laugh. This site content and it’s sycophantic reply team are it’s own mini-Reddit.