| This is true. So now let’s look at the substance of what DOGE has actually done: - indiscriminately fire people who have been in long term positions but recently got promoted and so were considered “probationary” - dismantle the CPFB which was a net gain for revenue - dismantle 18F which has a track record of improving government efficiency - fire people who were involved in managing nuclear weapons and bird flu and then try to bring them back - share spreadsheets on Twitter about really old people in the social security system making people think there’s tons of fraud without learning about the 2023 OIG report that already existed that explained this data - make a bunch of noise about cutting a bunch of contracts including a third of which were already fully spent and will save nothing Does this give you confidence that they are genuinely focused on reducing inefficiency and waste? It seems to me like they are rushing in, not bothering to learn what has already been done, arrogantly making assumptions, randomly breaking things and causing chaos, and all for what… a few billion in real savings which is not even a fraction of the proposed increase in spending by the current budget resolutions being worked on by the Republicans in the house? Why should we have ever thought that an operation literally named after a dog meme was serious about anything? |
All of this makes everything more expensive in the future: new contracts are going to have higher overhead to account for new legal and accounting costs, and unless the government will never hire anyone again they’re going to struggle to get skilled employees at all, much less at the same salary, when it’s clear that they’d be signing up to be treated like this. The direct cost is bad but the productivity cost will be even greater and last for decades.