[Covzire]

What's certainly not going away is that Government waste and bloat is a home-run bipartisan issue where the size of the government has vastly and consistently outgrown the private sector in both times of feast and famine.

Everyone left and right instinctively knows this is, that it's a problem that they're both taxed directly for and (I hope) many people know they're also indirectly paying for it through inflation caused by government borrowing beyond their actual tax income.

DOGE may not be the right answer, but it's the first actual reduction in spending in my lifetime.

[jhedwards]

I don't know if this was in your lifetime, but Bill Clinton reduced government spending through the National Performance Review. Not only did he do it, but he did it in a planned and strategic way, that included an initial phase of research, followed by education and recommendations, which were send to congress for approval.

You'll notice that this approach is consistent with basic project planning and execution principles, and follows the principles of government set out by our constitution. In contrast, DOGE sidestepped the legal and administrative principles of the government, which led to cuts followed by retractions, which are ultimately more costly and wasteful.

Reference: https://govinfo.library.unt.edu/npr/library/papers/bkgrd/bri...

[Covzire]

That's true, although that also took an act of congress so it was very much a bi-partisan effort, something we're sorely lacking today.

[terribleperson]

The Republican party is literally in control of Congress and the presidency. Copying Clinton is something they could do. The fact that they don't appear to have made a serious effort to increase revenues and reduce spending in a sane and organized way raises questions.

[phkahler]

The Republicans have this idea that cutting taxes and increasing spending will reduce the ratio of debt/gdp by increasing the denominator. It does increase GDP but I think it increases the debt faster, so it can't work. Happy to be proven wrong.

[jeffbee]

They do not actually believe that. What they believe is that cutting taxes will give them the short-term means to acquire assets that will become much more valuable after the nation has been destroyed, to which the escalating debt contributes. The crisis is a feature for them.

[delusional]

> raises questions.

It doesn't "raises questions" it "answers questions". Anybody who believes the republicans in America are "the party of fiscal responsibility" is a joke.

[pstuart]

> The Republican party is literally in control of Congress and the presidency

And SCOTUS. They have seized power of all three branches and "checks and balances" are but a memory.

[SV_BubbleTime]

> They have seized power

Interesting way to say “they won a bunch of elections”.

[pstuart]

That's not what I was saying. And "winning" elections implies legitimacy but when that comes via gerrymandering, voter disenfranchisement, and possible vote tampering that claim rings hollow.

If you actually believe in democracy and what it stands for you might have some concern, rather than just cheering on the team whose jersey you wear.

[zugi]

The Senate still requires 60 votes to close debate and pass legislation, with rare weird exceptions like reconciliation. The 1990s had more bipartisanship, so Clinton skillfully got enough Republicans to support some of his moves.

Whereas these days any Democrat supporting any Republican action is likely to get primaried at the next election, and vice versa.

[JackYoustra]

> Whereas these days any Democrat supporting any Republican action is likely to get primaried at the next election, and vice versa.

Biden passed the bipartisan infrastructure act as well as USICA subsidies. The first step act was bipartisan. The deficit reduction in Obama's time was bipartisan. The american rescue plan wasn't bipartisan, but republicans claim credit for its effects. You don't really have much evidence here.

[hn_acc1]

And whose fault is that? Hint: one party has specifically focused on eliminating ANYTHING resembling bi-partisanship..

[shermantanktop]

> Everyone left and right instinctively knows this

That’s the first sign that a large group of people are going to something thoughtless and destructive.

Looking around at actual data from both gov and think tank sources, this quote from Pew is a good summary: “While the number of federal workers has grown over time, their share of the civilian workforce has generally held steady in recent years.”

But that’s not the whole story. The postal service is shrinking, the vast majority of those federal employees work for the VA, the amount of funding being directed by the federal employees has grown (because of budget growth), federal regulations touch more private sector activity than in the past, and state and local governments employ significantly more people than they used to.

DOGE’s focus on headcount was wrongheaded because the number of federal employees is not the problem. The problem is Congress (budgets and laws) and states.

Conventional wisdom is that federal payroll growth is massive, and that is just wrong.

[mixmastamyk]

Somewhat agreed, however they use contractors to make headcounts seem lower than they actually are.

[shepardrtc]

> DOGE may not be the right answer, but it's the first actual reduction in spending in my lifetime

On what timeline? The week of the first round of RIFs? The first month?

I assure you, as someone who works with in the space where DOGE has played, it will NOT be a reduction in costs in the long run. In fact, costs will go up because of the indiscriminate nature of "cost reduction". When the only people with knowledge of a system are removed, the remaining people cannot run it - no matter what AI they are given. At that point, you have to either hire back the people you fired, with a serious delay of important work, or you stumble for years until it can be figured out at the cost of delays, protests, lawsuits, whatever.

Considering firing everyone a reduction in costs is a shallow, short-term view.

[runako]

> the size of the government has vastly and consistently outgrown the private sector in both times of feast and famine

The US government at the start of this administration was roughly the same as it was in 1970[1]. This, despite the addition of new departments (1970 is pre-EPA, for example), many new responsibilities, etc. And obviously the government has to perform all these services for 140 million more people than in 1970, a 70% increase.

Doing more with the same resources is a textbook definition of increasing efficiency.

1 - Seriously, you won't see the growth you describe in the data: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/CES9091000001

[matteotom]

What metric are you looking at when you say "the size of government has vastly and consistently outgrown the private sector" - AFAICT, excluding 2020 and 2021 (which I think is reasonable), the federal budget has been between 17% and 25% of GDP for the past 50 years (where the fluctuations are more a function of variable GDP).

The number of federal government employees has also remained mostly flat for the past 50 years (and IIRC most growth in overall public sector employment comes from schools).

[mondrian]

Comparing it to GDP doesn’t seem to make sense. Maybe to government revenue.

[AnimalMuppet]

No, the claim was that it has outgrown the private sector. GDP is in fact a good proxy for that claim.

Outgrowing government revenue is a different claim.

[neffy]

No, it does make sense. Most of the purported growth in government spending is just using raw figures, and not correcting for either inflation or monetary expansion. It is a convenient mistake.

[nxobject]

> they're also indirectly paying for it through inflation caused by government borrowing beyond their actual tax income.

Don't worry – unless we stop giving out tax cuts as well, we'll still be running deficits until Social Security and Medicare become insolvent. For the average taxpayer, it's about fiscal sustainability - "smaller government" may as well be a feel-good abstraction compared to that.

[jonstewart]

I do not instinctively know this, no. I encourage you to take an evidence-based approach. The deficit has largely grown over the past 25 years because of foreign wars, tax cuts, and pandemic response.

[amanaplanacanal]

Wait, has there actually been a reduction in federal spending in total? Or just in specific agencies?

[kube-system]

No, federal spending is up by $376 billion.

https://fiscaldata.treasury.gov/americas-finance-guide/feder...

[hn_acc1]

And how much of the work that they did will be out-sourced to private contractors at 5x and cost+ rates, lining the pockets of right-wing donor's corporate coffers?

[ChocolateGod]

People are having a tough period where they think their government doesn't care about them, to see so much wastage ignites the hard feelings that the "elite" has prioritised others than their own people.

I believe that is the reason why DOGE was supported by Trump, but I do think something like DOGE is needed but perhaps for better and less egotistical reasons.

[walls]

> People are having a tough period where they think their government doesn't care about them, to see so much wastage ignites the hard feelings that the "elite" has prioritised others than their own people.

Have you considered that maybe a segment of the population feels that way because of decades of propaganda targeted at dismantling the government?

[ChocolateGod]

At least in the UK we had a decade of austerity done under the guise it was needed to "improve economic growth" or "balance the books" and that we were living beyond our means.

It achieved neither of that.

[actionfromafar]

And there was.

[lend000]

It was the only thing to be optimistic about in this administration, but it sure didn't last long. We should all know that this was the last attempt that had a chance of addressing the national debt -- the only other way out is extreme inflation.

[amanaplanacanal]

They didn't make any attempt to address the national debt. They lied to you. It was all bullshit.

It's probably time to rethink where you are getting your news and analysis from.

[lend000]

Which news sources do you recommend?

[ThrowMeAway1618]

https://www.csmonitor.com/

https://www.dw.com/en/top-stories/s-9097

https://www.economist.com/

There are many more. But why not start with these?

[AlexandrB]

Musk was absolutely the wrong guy for the job. He doesn't have the patience to spend 4 years carefully poring over government expenses, nor the security clearance (AFAIK) to address pentagon spending. Plus, I don't think he's humble enough to bring in people who actually know what to look for.

[guywithahat]

The most incredible piece of logical gymnastics I remember from civics/history class in high school was that during economic downturns, we need government to spend more to help people, and during economic growth we of course also need more government to manage all the new growth. At no point do we cut the spending we've added, because it would always hurt those who have jobs.

People like to criticize DOGE for going after smaller amounts (like hundreds of millions instead of tens of billions) but those are still hundreds of millions that could be put elsewhere, or even returned to the taxpayer or put towards federal debt. The biggest concern with DOGE is that much of the spending is just going to come right back during the next election cycle

[mattkrause]

That's not a fair---or accurate---summary of Keynes.

The claim is that the government should act as a stabilizer: spending to drive aggregate demand during downswings (especially ones caused by external shocks) and regulating during up-swings.

In other words, "more" refers to different things and in different proportions in different phases of the business cycle; it's emphatically not a "heads-I-win-tails-you-lose" sort of thing.

[kube-system]

> The biggest concern with DOGE is that much of the spending is just going to come right back during the next election cycle

In many cases, because they're slashing things that we are realizing that we do need, and we're going to pay even more to reconstruct the things they've destroyed.

The only way to effectively reducing spending and waste is by doing things slowly and carefully, evaluating the impact of the changes you are going to make carefully. This happened successfully in the 90s, but DOGE is not doing things that way.

[guywithahat]

The OMB has been trying to slowly and thoughtfully cut spending since the 70's, and they've struggled to see success. I think in terms of cutting spending, the slower it happens the less likely anything productive will come from it. It's why companies tend to cut whole departments at once, and the government desperately needs a way to cut funding from things that aren't working to reallocate it where the money is needed.

From what I've seen the DOGE cuts have been incredibly efficient in isolating poorly spent (or corrupt) money. Lots of corrupt foreign programs or government donations into partisan political groups. Most of the time when someone says they shouldn't have cut money, they're talking about an NGO or some research that benefits their particular partisanship at the cost of fairness or scientific rigor; which is exactly what we shouldn't be funding.

[kube-system]

The Clinton admin was successful in the 90s. They cut costs enough to pull the US entirely out of the deficit. They did things slowly and methodically over 5 years, making sure the things they cut were unnecessary before cutting them. They also followed the law, avoiding the legal issues and consequential costs that DOGE is incurring.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economic_policy_of_the_Clinton...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Partnership_for_Reinv...

Federal spending is up during this administration, the deficit is at modern-day averages, and the bills recently passed by this administration are going to increase it even further. The slash-and-burn style of cuts that DOGE is sloppy and ineffective. They are Chesterton's fencing themselves -- cutting things that they later find to be important. And on the other hand, not spending the time to actually seek out waste that is hard to find. A tech company works very differently than the government does, and they are slowly starting to discover that the hard way.

[psunavy03]

> They are Chesterton's fencing themselves

Which is incredibly ironic for people who claim to be "conservative."

[amanaplanacanal]

MAGA isn't anything like conservative. They just claim the title to dupe people.

[actionfromafar]

Another incredible thing you maybe didn't study in civics class is that the US had an "exorbitant privilege" it's now pissing away. The ability to borrow at extremely low rates from the rest of the world, because the US was so productive. We will miss it when it's gone.

[nobody9999]

>People like to criticize DOGE for going after smaller amounts (like hundreds of millions instead of tens of billions) but those are still hundreds of millions that could be put elsewhere, or even returned to the taxpayer or put towards federal debt. The biggest concern with DOGE is that much of the spending is just going to come right back during the next election cycle

Right. And those hundreds of millions went to tax cuts/benefits for the wealthiest (top 10%) among us, and less benefit to the bottom 10%, as well as trillions (3.8, in fact[0]) more in debt to actually pay for those cuts.

Yeah. We need more of that, right?

[0] https://www.cbo.gov/system/files/2025-05/61422-Reconciliatio...

[SantalBlush]

You didn't learn that in civics/history class; you made it up.