What I want to understand is how much smaller will it be, and why are they targeting what they are at the moment? The administrations they've cut back only make up fractions of a percent of the overall spending, and make virtually no difference for the average person. One of them actually put more money back into the pockets of taxpayers than it cost them, and seems to have made no sense to discard. Why not target major cost centres?
They also stopped $489 million of food aid to leave it to rot, which it has. That level of waste is not aligned with their mission statement to reduce waste. So the statement can't be trusted.
If you are ignorant to widely-reported news, it's curious to dismiss it as anecdotal.
It's also curious to paint this an accident (before you knew anything about it) when it's the intended result of the order and an inspector was fired for attempting to raise effort to correct it.
The philosophy behind what they're doing comes from Curtis Yarvin. JD Vance is a fan.
Yarvin believes American democracy is a failed project and it should be replaced with an American monarchy. He thinks all of society should be organized like a corporation and a CEO of America should call the shots, no elections necessary:
They've been thinking about it for years, including preparing themselves to ignore court rulings.
To quote JD Vance from the Vanity Fair article: “I think Trump is going to run again in 2024,” [Vance] said. “I think that what Trump should do, if I was giving him one piece of advice: Fire every single midlevel bureaucrat, every civil servant in the administrative state, replace them with our people.” “And when the courts stop you,” he went on, “stand before the country, and say—” he quoted Andrew Jackson, giving a challenge to the entire constitutional order—“the chief justice has made his ruling. Now let him enforce it.”