DOGE “Receipt” Update
You will be shocked at the news!
The NYT reports: DOGE Quietly Deletes the 5 Biggest Spending Cuts It Celebrated Last Week.*
The main correction (the $8 billion that was, instead, $8 million), I already noted. Here are the other four.
- Three $655 million cuts at the U.S. Agency for International Development. This was actually a single cut that was erroneously counted three times, as first reported by CBS News. That mistake also seemed to reflect a misunderstanding of the way government contracts work; they sometimes have “ceiling values” far in excess of what will be spent. Experts said this cancellation was unlikely to produce anything close to $655 million in savings even once. Now, the site lists a much smaller savings for these three cancellations: $18 million in total.
- A $232 million cut at the Social Security Administration. Here, Mr. Musk’s organization appeared to have mistakenly believed that the agency had canceled a huge information technology contract with the defense contracting giant Leidos. Instead, as reported by The Intercept, it had canceled only a tiny piece of it: a $560,000 project to let users mark their gender as “X.” The DOGE site now shows that small cut instead.
Again, I will note that these are minuscule cuts in the context of the broader goal.
And then there is stuff like this:
The largest savings on the latest version of its list is a $1.9 billion cut at the Treasury Department. But The Times reported last week that this contract was canceled last fall, when Joseph R. Biden Jr. was president — and when DOGE did not yet exist.
The cost-cutting stuff continues to demonstrate that these DOGE folks don’t know what they are doing, don’t understand what they are looking at, and aren’t saving anything consequential.
Further, the personnel stuff is doing the opposite of increasing efficiency.
It is a an utter mess.
*Sorry. I am out of gift links for the month.
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The chief nazi will be attending a cabinet meeting today. This is what came to mind when I heard about it:
“Governor Tarkin, I should’ve expected to find you holding Vader’s leash. I recognized your foul stench when I was brought on board.”
Our history is thick with efforts to weed out “waste, fraud and abuse.” They never amount to a hill of beans. Clinton, in the 90’s, led a sane methodical effort that cut about $145B, although many of the Govt jobs were simply replaced with Contractors in the end.
Still, a minor sliver of the US Budget pie.
We will likely never be told of Musk’s failure, to meet his stated goals, from the Trump administration. They will swear up and down that it was the most successful effort in the history of efforts.
As one of the people who wanted that X, grrr
(The other irony is that while I would personally prefer a third gender marker, transphobes denying me an X are likely going to end up forcing me to go with an F as the only option remaining)
One area of the receipts that is certainly not true is based on the claim that “cancelling contracts” saves the monetary value of the contract. Breach of contract cases are legion in the federal (and state) courts because one party cannot simply cancel a contract without incurring liability for the effects of the cancellation. When Trump/DOGE say they are cancelling every lease for federal office space, every owner of such buildings has a breach claim against the government. Maybe there is a clause in some of the contracts that allows unilateral cancellation, but the lawyer who drew up such a contract better have malpractice insurance…and Pam Bondi better be ready to rehire some of those civil section lawyers to defend those breach of contract suits.
Yesterday Kevin Drum posted asking, What is Elon Musk really up to? Like you, Dr. Taylor, Drum doesn’t see DOGE as serious cost cutting, but the real issue is Musk doesn’t seem to either.
Last Sunday Drum reported his flu and pneumonia were no better. Since then he’s been posting up a storm. I hope this is a sign of improvement.
@Charley in Cleveland: I am curious what happened to this lease cancellation regime. Surely, if it was as advertised, there would be moving trucks at every federal office building (not sure where they would be moving anything to). This should have caused a great noise, but I haven’t heard a word about it since it was announced.
I tend to click on suggested Youtube vids and one of them was a Forbes DOGE found billions in waste video post and it also included reposting a supposed press conference announcement of this fact.
One of the commenters under the story said they were surprised/disappointed that Forbes posted a story that was clearly not true, expecting better of Forbes. It turns out that the conference did not announce any such thing (real evidence of major fraud), rather it was just DOGE telling Congress that they claimed to find indicators that they would be uncovering major fraud (so, they did not find or announce major fraud).
I have to say that the poster has a point about being disappointed with the Forbes Youtube post, as I can appreciate that Forbes might lean Red but I thought Forbes being so associated with tracking wealth, and reporting on the stock market, being an organization so tightly linked to numbers/dollars, that they would know better than to report on a story that was worse than a nothing burger because nothing in their Youtube post was accurate.
The Supremes really need to do the right thing and tell Musk that him and his DOGE buddies need to take a hike. Folks have been saying that Musk has been trying to use DOGE to acquire a massive amount of data that he does not have to pay for (such as having large numbers of Fed workers complete questionnaires on what they did at work over the course of a week, wanting full access to everyones Data via Treasury Dpt and other GOV databases, that type of data) to train his AI product, that is the type of stuff that the don’t tread on me crowd should be beyond angry about.
That crowd is revealing just how much of their movement is utter bullshit, a movement that has been around much longer longer than I have been alive (and I turn 54 this year). None of those folks are putting any effort to tell Musk not to tread on their right to privacy, etc., and quite frankly it makes that crowd/movement look pretty weak and pathetic. I get that the don’t tread on me folks are supposed to be anti-gov and super racist, but it sure seems like all they are now are folks who want to get away with being super racist in public and can care less about being anti-gov as long as Trump is in the White House.
I may not like the don’t tread on me crowd, but it would still be nice to see them stand up for their convictions, as I presume that they are anti-gov because they are supposed to be against Gov types wanting to know intimate details of what they did in the past week of their life, and wanting unfettered access to bank account numbers, and stuff like that.
So many live free or die type folks are just revealing themselves to be all hat and no cattle.
@Joe: I have also been wondering about this. My guess is that either it is taking a while to implement or its on hold because after the big announcement someone pointed out they were breaching a lot fo contracts so they needed some way to deal with it, maybe even not follow through or be selective about it. I tend towards the latter since part of the Trump MO is to make big splashy announcements that never come true, but his cult (of personality) followers believe it’s already done.
Steve
@Joe: @steve: @Charley in Cleveland:
This announcement ran into the wall called Back to Office. In San Antonio, there is a shortage of Federal office space that the BTO orders created and has set Joint Base San Antonio scrambling to find space.
@Scott: That’s the aspect that I was wondering about.
Step 1: cancel office space leases
Step 2: order all WFH employees back to offices
Step 3: fire probationary employees
Where the heck are people supposed to GO back to work in these cases?
I think it’s pretty clear that Musk is hoping to FUBAR the government enough that his companies can gobble up government contracts, lose track of any pending investigations into his work, and evade oversight. That’s what his political contribution bought: access to eff things up.
I think Musk has multiple motivations, some of which he is probably barely aware of. (Does he strike you as a highly self-aware person?). But one of them is genuinely cost cutting, and getting rid of “inefficient” employees.
There is no shortage of people out there who think government workers are lazy and slow, if not downright stupid. I’m sure Musk counts among them, because to him, if you aren’t working 80 hours a week, you are lazy.
He reminds me so much of the people on W’s administration that were looking in Iraq for “weapons of mass destruction”. I’m not so sure Dick Chaney thought they were there, but lots of other people thought they were there.
All that waste, fraud, abuse, and lazy employees. Musk is sure that they are there, and he wants to be the guy to get rid of them, because everything will be much, much better when he does.
Seriously, I think that’s his evil speech of evil. Like Thanos, he’s insane.
@inhumans99: The business rags have always been torn between telling people what they need to hear vs. what they want to hear.
In reading through this thread the general theme seems to be that the notion of available savings is a myth. It’s hard to find a point of departure if that is your mindset. But I find it ludicrous.
I have done operational turnarounds and financial restructurings most of my career. The claim is always made: there are no savings. The truth is always otherwise. This is not unique to government. This disease pervades large corporate as well. It really is just an inherent characteristic of bureaucracies. They grow themselves (more power and control and salaries, and claims of need). But there are always savings available. To deny it is an indication of lack of experience.
I thought this was unfortunate: “There is no shortage of people out there who think government workers are lazy and slow, if not downright stupid”
I don’t think you need to invoke an argument like that. Government simply has different objectives and no sense of profitable objectives. The current hue and cry over metrics, results and accountability tells one that government is from Mars, private sector from Venus. As a final note on this, all costs matter. The argument that DOGE is attacking small potato’s now has some merit, but it’s not a decisive argument.
And so we arrive at SS, Medicare and Medicare. And then the Pentagon. I would suggest that the savings won’t be by eliminating beneficiaries, or benefits, but by how services are delivered and fraud. And WRT the the Pentagon, plain sloppiness. In the long haul, SS and Medicare are structurally unsound, in part due to demographics. As a restructuring guy I would look at financing the baby boom bulge, but using the time to fundamentally change the systems.
@Connor: The idea that government agencies are overrun with waste is a common notion, but no one ever seems to be able to PROVE it. As a state level employee (state senator’s office), I had plenty of occasion to work with state agencies. They were almost always understaffed (this was one area of inefficiency) and rarely had the tools they needed. Their computer equipment was outdated (another area of inefficiency). So, I’ve identified three areas: lack of staff, lack of tools, outdated equipment–that all contributed significantly to inefficiency on the job. Know what? All three of those could only be solved by spending MORE MONEY.
That’s what every time wasting “blue ribbon” panel seems to come up with. Yes, there are areas that could be improved, if you’ll *spend* to get there.
Large corporations are a completely different animal, and I wish people would stop trying to force that equivalency. Musk thinks his “terrify employees so they’ll work insane hours” can transfer from his tech companies to government. This is simply wrong. A six-figure 28 year old tech bro might be willing to work 100 hour weeks, but a 40 year old government employee who is already paid lower than market wages–as a trade off for benefits and better hours–isn’t going to be able to do so.
Elon Musk cannot possibly be stupid enough to not understand this. He will not get a more efficient government with mass layoffs–particularly ones that were not analyzed beforehand.
He is hoping for a mess, and he’s going to get one.
@Connor:
This is not the issue.
The issues are, in simple terms 1) math and 2) process/expertise.
1. Musk’s states goal is eliminating the deficit ($2 trillion). That is not doable at the levels DOGE is operating at.
If you are the financial expert you claim to be, you know this.
2. This is not how serious cost cutting should be done. They don’t even know what they are looking at half the time (and that is being charitable). Again, if you are what you claim to be, you have to know this approach is stupid and counter-productive.
And yes , government is different t than private business for a host of reasons, not the least of which being that, at the moment at least, the federal government controls the world’s reserve currency.
And there is a much longer additional list of differences.
@Jen: To add an example where spending more means more revenue: the IRS.
If there were more IRS agents looking especially at wealthy taxpayers, we would likely get more revenue.
@Connor: As other people have already noted, I think you are mischaracterizing the complaint. That money in any large and diverse enterprise could be used more wisely or to greater effect isn’t the myth. The myth is that such improvements in spending total in the trillions. Or even in the billions. Or hundreds of millions–at which point you need thousands of lines of expenditures to cut.
You know, it was such a stupid move by Truman and Eisenhower not to demand tribute from the European and Asian allies the US saved in WWII, nor to impose crippling reparations on the defeated Axis powers. Do you know how much money that could have raised? And don’t get me started on the Marshall Plan!
@Connor:
Apparently working on reading comprehension should be your first priority, then.
Good thing nobody here is claiming anything of the sort, then.
No shit, Sherlock. Have you just now noticed that the purpose of government is not to turn a profit, but is instead to provide services? To internalize externalities, to leverage economies of scale, to paternalistically provide public goods that individuals might not want to pay for, but are all the better off for?
It’s a first step, I suppose. We’ll believe you are serious about fiscal efficiency when you start criticizing the GOPs in Congress for their unwillingness to fully fund tax collection, which even the GAO admits would return at least 10 dollars of revenue for every dollar spent…
@Steven L. Taylor:
It was established yesterday that the individual to whom you respond cannot add and subtract. So.
@Connor:
IIRC, a significant portion of the blame for that lies in the 40+ years your ilk have spent raiding the underlying investment structure,and changing the rules to benefit private investment and M&A types such as yourself . But then again, I’m the Luddite who believes in workers over robber barons.
Ok, done trolling the troll. Back to your regular program.
@Connor:
You can’t be good at it since you struggle at math. Cutting taxes for billionaires has not ever and will not ever reduce debt. Musk’s mass layoffs aid freezes will not significantly reduce spending.
Instead, what Trump and Republicans are doing will add trillions to the deficit, while increasing the suffering less privilege — and while predatory oligarchs like Trump, Musk, and Bezos continue to collect billions in government largesse.
The claim is always made: conservatives are fiscally responsible and want a balanced budget. The truth is always otherwise.
9 of the 10 poorest states and ~95 of the 100 poorest counties are Republican. Republican presidents create fewer jobs and more deficits than Dem presidents do. Tje right is dedicated to showering corporate socialism on the richest while gutting services for the poor.
Fueling poverty and inequity is no way to increase efficiency, trim debt, or grow a economy. And it won’t.
It’s decisive. Yesterday on its amateurish, hacked website DOGE was forced by math and legal exposure to edit its false claims of billions saved. Because DOGE has found no significant fraud or savings. Instead, ketamine-addled Nazi freak Musk and his unqualified tech kids have increased human suffering with their recklessness, deceit, and incompetence.
Well, Connor, I am an insolvency lawyer, and restructurings (or their counterpart liquidations) is all I do. And no, there aren’t always savings. In fact, many successful restructurings are a result of increased spending on shortcomings of the company, or to bridge through a troubled market cycle.
Where there are savings, it’s at the top. CEOs go without pay, though often it’s a net loss with the addition of a costly CRO and professional fees.
Conversely, plenty of failed restructurings have occured after banks have insisted on staffing cuts that were way too much for the company to manage.
@Connor: Government is not a business. It should not be run like a business. It doesn’t exist to make profit, it exists to provide services, services that in a lot of cases allow other entities to make profits. Sometimes, it’s to address tail risks that no business would pay for, but could be catastrophic if not prepared for. And that’s what the question should be. Not “Can we pay less for thing X?” because the answer is often going to be “Yes, but you’ll also get less of thing X,” and we actually want thing X. We probably want more of thing X.
You can absolutely pay less for meat inspection. And you’re going to have more sick people, and most likely less meat sold, because who is going to buy something with an increased chance of illness? Our food supply is, to the detriment of the animals, focused on cheap supply over all else. And part of what allows that is inspectors making sure that the things we are pushing to their absolute limit don’t tip over into some sort of mass casualty event.
The real question should is “what’s the best way to reach outcome X, and how much does it cost to do it well?” Because the IRS could be a lot more efficient, which they’ve been saying for years, but it needs to modernize its infrastructure, which costs money to do. And they could eliminate a parasitic industry, tax preparers, if they were allowed to, and make life significantly easier for most people.
The ATF could actually use computers to keep track of gun registrations, and not the paper forms they’re required to use by law. Medicare and Medicaid could probably find a lot more fraud (which exists, but is almost always due to doctors/others improperly billing, not employees somehow diverting money somewhere). And of course Medicare/Medicaid could pay a lot less for prescription drugs if they were allowed to negotiate prices, which they were starting to do, but may have to stop because anything the Biden administration did is clearly bad and evil.
But you either know all of this, and are arguing in bad faith, or are actually falling for the nonsense that the Republican Party has been saying for the past 40 years. Saying, not doing, because it’s clear that they don’t care one whit for making government more efficient/addressing the deficit, because every time they’ve had a chance to do either, they’ve instead decided to cut taxes. Any Republican claiming to be the party of responsible government or whatever in the next fifty years should be run out of town on a rail, because it’s a lie. I often get the feeling that Republicans believe there’s so much waste, fraud, and abuse because they can’t imagine people working for the good of others, and that if they had the opportunity to commit the fraud they imagine is happening, they would.