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.
