[cuuupid]

There are 5 different existing agencies within the government that all exist for essentially the same purpose -- to track and audit government spending. None of them have been successful in any capacity over the last 20 years.

It's easy to just go online and say "this is wrong these people are idiots" but what is your alternative solution? We have exhausted pretty much every other method at this point, all the big consulting firms have also come in and tried to assist, and the last person to make headway here was Bill Clinton -- who proposed an even more callous approach to cuts.

[acomjean]

Bill Clinton had the "line item veto" which allowed presidents to get rid of things in bills (spending) they didn't like. Ultimately this power was rejected by the courts as unconstitutional. Congress is supposed to allocate and deal with spending.

This line item veto was supposed to stop congress people from attaching things into bills that just benefited their constituents (to get their vote).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Line-item_veto_in_the_United_S...

"Congress granted this power to the president by the Line Item Veto Act of 1996 to control "pork barrel spending", but in 1998 the U.S. Supreme Court ruled the act to be unconstitutional in 6–3 decision in Clinton v. City of New York.

The court found that exercise of the line-item veto is tantamount to a unilateral amendment or repeal by the executive of only parts of statutes authorizing federal spending, and therefore violated the Presentment Clause of the United States Constitution. Thus a federal line-item veto, at least in this particular formulation, would only be possible through a constitutional amendment. Prior to that ruling, President Clinton applied the line-item veto to the federal budget 82 times."

[rat87]

> None of them have been successful in any capacity over the last 20 years.

Citation needed. They do their jobs, problem is politians also do theirs. Making sure military doesnt cut spending in their district even if military leaders think a base or tank factory is not needed.

Its easy to say this is wrong and these people are idiots because thats the case. Actually I wont even say theyre all idiots theyre just malicous and dont care about the damagr they cause. This isnt some sort of careful attempt to make goverment work better. Its axing random groups because they once said something positive about minorities or necause they prosecute political corruption or because they can install their own cronies or outsource it to their company

[ipython]

Wait, you’re alleging Bill Clinton downsized the government by measures more callous than randomly firing workers, forcing them to en masse justify their positions to an unelected billionaire? I was alive then and I don’t remember any of that. Citation needed.

And he actually did manage to balance the budget. Too bad that didn’t last long under Bush.

[rl3]

>It's easy to just go online and say "this is wrong these people are idiots" but what is your alternative solution?

For starters, these people are in fact idiots. They randomly fired people at NNSA with virtually no warning. What the fuck? [0]

In response to your point: Why throw USDS in the trash? That was a great example of an effective, agile non-partisan tech workforce. [1]

Now federal workers are having to submit to political loyalty tests. [2]

Perhaps their true intentions here aren't really cost savings, if that isn't blatantly obvious already.

>We have exhausted pretty much every other method at this point, all the big consulting firms have also come in and tried to assist, ...

That's like trying to cure cancer with cancer, but on the face of it and not in some clever cutting-edge way.

Actual solutions? Take highly effective organizations and copy them. USDS and JSOC come to mind.

I don't buy it. Shucks, we've exhausted every other method—therefore, the solution here is to hand over the reigns to immature, extremely low caliber people with conflicts of interest that are absolutely massive [3], and whose motivations are questionable at best?

Yeah, no thanks. I dislike government waste and inefficiency as much as the next person, but using the guise of cost cutting to rapidly install loyalists at critical power junctures isn't a good thing. Never mind the flagrant disregard for the law that's taking place as this is all unfolding.

[0] https://www.npr.org/2025/02/14/nx-s1-5298190/nuclear-agency-...

[1] https://www.wired.com/story/doge-engineering-director-resign...

[2] https://apnews.com/article/trump-loyalty-white-house-maga-ve...

[3] https://www.nytimes.com/2025/02/11/us/politics/elon-musk-com...

[insane_dreamer]

Lets talk about Clinton's cuts to the federal workforce and compare them to what's happening now.

- 3/4 of those cut were from the Defense Dept, and the whole point was to reduce the defense budget overall, which had become unnecessarily large especially since the Cold War had by then ended

- large swaths of gov employees weren't fired overnight and in the highly immature manner DOGE is doing (the long-term effects of which are yet to be felt)

- it was a more thought-out process, not randomly firing all employees on probationary status, or gutting programs that are actually useful to Americans like the CFPB, reducing NIH research, etc.

- there were no conflicts of interests where Clinton was gutting agencies which oversee private companies which he owned

- he used the savings to balance the budget rather than give a tax cut primarily benefiting the wealthy

There's really no comparison with what is happening now.

[brightball]

Didn’t he fire something like 200,000 people?

[insane_dreamer]

Yes, however:

- they weren't fired overnight and in the highly immature manner DOGE is doing

- it was a measured, thought-out process, not randomly firing all employees on probationary status, or gutting programs that are actually useful to Americans like the CFPB, reducing NIH research, etc.

- most importantly, 3/4 of those were from the Defense Dept, and the whole point was to reduce the defense budget overall, which had become unnecessarily large especially since the Cold War had by then ended.

- he used the savings to balance the budget rather than give a tax cut to the rich

- lastly, there were no conflicts of interests where Clinton was gutting agencies which oversee private companies which he owned

So basically night and day compared to what is happening now.

[cuuupid]

Yes, DOGE is being raked over the coals but only 77k federal employees have taken their severance package. Clinton also famously proposed majority cuts to the federal workforce.

[acdha]

Trump is getting flack for breaking the law. Clinton’s layoffs were done with Congress which avoided all of the concerns about impoundment or other unapproved changes to their directed spending, they spent months planning first to avoid doing the cycle we’re seeing now where they ask people to come back after telling them they were fired, and they worked with the unions.

https://www.politifact.com/article/2025/feb/06/yes-bill-clin...

[possibleworlds]

> There are 5 different existing agencies within the government that all exist for essentially the same purpose -- to track and audit government spending. None of them have been successful in any capacity over the last 20 years.

Provide proof of this claim please.

[cuuupid]

GAO, OMB, CBO, GSA, OIGs (civil agency-specific, DoD OIG, Treasury OIG)

People are acting like I'm making outlandish claims, you can literally just google this! If you are going to go down a rabbit hole I recommend USASpending, which consumes ATOM from FPDS and so is very close to source-of-truth.

[possibleworlds]

I’m confused. USASpending looks to be source-of-truth as you say, so how has the US federal government failed in tracking spending when said source-of-truth is supplied by them?

Skimming OiG audit reports, they appear comprehensive and detailed. How has the government failed in auditing if these audits exist?

Where is the 20 years of failure to audit and track spending you mentioned? I’m not sure what you expect me to google.

[woodruffw]

It isn't particularly correct to say that these agencies have the same purpose. They do similar things, but each has its own remit.

You could maybe instead say that they should be under the same roof, rather than being independent entities. But I don't think this is itself evidence that any of them have been ineffective. Having read some of their reports, OMB and CBO are not ineffective on face value.

(I also don't think any of this is really about curbing government spending.)

[insane_dreamer]

> None of them have been successful in any capacity over the last 20 years.

That's nonsense.

[cuuupid]

GAO, civil OIG's, OMB, CBO, GSA, DoD OIG, Treasury OIG -- none have been successful in any capacity over the last 20 years. This was a bipartisan, consensus take 3 months ago.

[rat87]

Thats not a consensus take. These groups put out incredibly useful reports. Which politicians often ignore.

The current administration doesnt care about waste or corruption. I can think of few things more wasteful or corrupt then "The Wall"

[cuuupid]

When we are all debt slaves to foreign economies I will be sure to reassure my fellow citizens with our treasure troves of useful reports!

[rat87]

This is a fundamental misunderstanding. At most our debt is mildly concerning its not some sort of catastrophe unless we do something stupid tp sabotage ourselves(see DODGE) and most of the debt is owned by americans not foreigners. Also China owns less US debt then Japan. UK owns nearly as much as China and Canada is fifth. UK Japan and Canada are close allies, or were they might not be after Trump is done.

If someone wanted to make an actual good faith effort to make goverment more effecient going over the reports would be the first thing you would do instead of attacking theae agencies.

If someone wanted to randomly cut departments that might object to illegal and corrupt actions the administration might take, or ones that once said nice things about minorites or just so you could stuff the fired positions with incompent cronies (or hire your freinds as contractors) then it would look a lot like DODGE

https://edition.cnn.com/2025/02/14/politics/corruption-justi... > Since Inauguration Day, the Justice Department has paused all investigations into corporate foreign bribery, curtailed enforcement of a foreign agent registration law and deemphasized the criminal prosecutions of Russian oligarchs. And senior administration officials have considered eliminating the Department’s Public Integrity Section, which investigates and prosecutes alleged misconduct by federal, state and local public officials.

[whoitwas]

Simply audit defense spending. It's the vast majority of government spending and hasn't been auditable in ages.

[insane_dreamer]

The problem with the military spending is on Congress, because they set the defense budget, not the White House (and certainly not DOGE).

But defense doesn't get cut because it props up a huge infrastructure across many states. No senator wants to be the ones to vote to cut that in their state.

The US economy is built, to some degree, on the military-industry complex, especially since we offshored all the other manufacturing.

[cuuupid]

Defense spending gets audited frequently, the audits just end in failure. This is primarily due to massive lines in their budget that are totally classified, but also they do lose track of resources. Until recently they did not even know how many warfighters they had!

That being said, at the very least basically everything they do moves towards some outcome. Most folks in the military are incredibly mission-driven. Plus, all their big contracts (50M$+) get regular hearings from Congress.

The same cannot be said for civil at all, they have little to no oversight, everyone is buddy-buddy so internal audits often border on fraud, there are many billion dollar contracts that have never gone thru Congressional approval.

If you want to really lose your shit, you should look up how OTA contract vehicles function. Literally just "trust me bro" spending, and for some reason rampant in civil.

[whoitwas]

Defense isn't auditable and they spend the most by far.

I'm not concerned with government spending. The only reason we have a deficit is because GOP keeps cutting taxes for millionaires.

[cuuupid]

Defense is not only auditable but is regularly audited; publicly by GAO and CBO, and internally by their OIG: https://www.dodig.mil

> they spend the most by far

This is not true and for some reason a common myth that is easily disproven; defense spending is only 13% of the budget, the 54% number people keep throwing around is discretionary spending and not relevant as we should be looking at the entire budget.

DOGE is literally just sorting by percent of budget; Medicaid is 22%, SSA is 20%, interest on our deficit by itself is 11% and on track to exceed our entire defense budget.

> The only reason we have a deficit is because GOP keeps cutting taxes for millionaires.

I mean, the math does not check out at all. We can expect losses of revenue from cuts to be around the same as receipts from audits done by the IRS; we know this number to be only around ~50B$ a year. You are being gaslit into thinking the problem is your fellow citizens not paying more in taxes, when anyone going into government can tell you they are reckless with spending.

Just to put things in perspective, Medicaid is hardly an actual healthcare program as it applies to less than 20% of our population. However it somehow(?) costs more than 4x as much as the entire NHS.

[rl3]

>Just to put things in perspective, Medicaid is hardly an actual healthcare program as it applies to less than 20% of our population.

That's still a cool 70 million people.

>However it somehow(?) costs more than 4x as much as the entire NHS.

Sounds like a good argument for [properly-administered] single-payer, universal healthcare.

[cuuupid]

> That's still a cool 70 million people.

Yes, hence why I'm comparing it to the NHS supporting the UK (~70M pop). Also note the NHS's coverage far exceeds Medicaid.

> Sounds like a good argument for [properly-administered] single-payer, universal healthcare.

The opposite right now! The US government is SO bad at managing healthcare, that they are somehow making the NHS look great.

We need to get our bureaucracy and spending under control. Then definitely yes, government funded healthcare, we can have a system closer to Australia in efficacy.

This is a tangent to this thread but I think in practice we will probably end up with something closer to the Swiss hybrid system.

[whoitwas]

Recently medicaid overtook defense. You're right, but medicaid shouldn't exist and is a symptom of the larger forced government inefficiency that is the health insurance system.

People also claim that social security is a great portion of spending, but it's fully funded through income tax and even more solvent since covid killed so many of it's recipients.