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Vivek Ramaswamy on X: "Will entire agencies be deleted? Answer: yes

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Re: Vivek Ramaswamy on X: "Will entire agencies be deleted? Answer: yes

#31

Post by dragonwriter »

alephnerd wrote: post #26
relaxatorium wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unless I have missed something (always a real possibility to be fair) there are also no clear details about what DOGE is, what its powers or lack thereof are, what its staffing is, or what its actual processes will be. We’ll find out more when the actual Trump administration starts I guess, but so far it seems like a broad concept that two guys can use for tweets.

> there are also no clear details about what DOGE is, what its powers or lack thereof are It's (edit: going to be after Innauguration Day) a Presidential Task Force Presidential Task Forces have zero power, as they can only give recommendations. All this hyperventilating over DOGE is distracting from actual issues to worry about - like the upcoming showdown between Senate GOP Leadership and the Executive Branch over…

> It's a Presidential Task Force

It can't be a Presidential Task Force in the present tense because Trump isn’t President and Biden didn't establish it.

Re: Vivek Ramaswamy on X: "Will entire agencies be deleted? Answer: yes

#32

Post by alephnerd »

dragonwriter wrote: post #31
alephnerd wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> there are also no clear details about what DOGE is, what its powers or lack thereof are It's (edit: going to be after Innauguration Day) a Presidential Task Force Presidential Task Forces have zero power, as they can only give recommendations. All this hyperventilating over DOGE is distracting from actual issues to worry about - like the upcoming showdown between Senate GOP Leadership and the Executive Branch over…

> It's a Presidential Task Force It can't be a Presidential Task Force in the present tense because Trump isn’t President and Biden didn't establish it.

You are technically correct, the best kind of correct.

Re: Vivek Ramaswamy on X: "Will entire agencies be deleted? Answer: yes

#33

Post by lambdaba »

some_random wrote: post #25

As always I'm putting my money on "nothing ever happens", but I do think it's probably good that we have a serious discussion on what exactly the purpose various agencies serve and refine their missions and processes to actually support them. Will it happen, probably not, but I can dream.

Just some transparency would be great. Democracy can't work if the people are not able to understand their government.

Re: Vivek Ramaswamy on X: "Will entire agencies be deleted? Answer: yes

#34

Post by dpkonofa »

some_random wrote: post #23
steveoscaro wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Didn't a democracy vote in the people that are saying they want to remove some agencies? Isn't that also how the agencies came to be in the first place?

Maybe I wasn't paying close enough attention but deleting agencies was not something I saw discussed at all prior to the election.

For what it's worth, it was part of Project 2025 - something one of the candidates claimed to know nothing about...

Re: Vivek Ramaswamy on X: "Will entire agencies be deleted? Answer: yes

#35

Post by rpcope1 »

There was a related Andy Kessler OpEd in the WSJ recently that shared the same tone (I can't tell if Andy is being sarcastic, but he's full of a lot of bad ideas, so I doubt it). He was advocating for wholesale removal of a lot of agencies, including the FCC, Department of Energy, and Department of Commerce, and made the claim that the FCC could be replaced by a couple of economists. I don't know if they don't understand what all the FCC does and what would happen if you removed the FCC (and just had a spectrum free-for-all), or that a lot of our research prowess comes from DoE grants, or that Department of Commerce runs things like NIST (and that it's laughable to consider disbanding what's likely the source of truth for more than just the US on absolute boatloads of metrology).

I get that there's almost certainly a lot of bloat in the government, but just outright axing stuff doesn't seem like the right way to fix things. I also don't think that we bleed the most money on those anyways, and that entitlements and what to do with them are the real elephant in the room (but of course it's not politically expedient to talk about doing anything to those, at all, ever). Fixing our debt problem (and it's a real problem, no matter what crackpot modern monetary theory believers say) will involve some pain, including likely and unfortunately raising taxes and curtailing benefits somewhere.

Re: Vivek Ramaswamy on X: "Will entire agencies be deleted? Answer: yes

#37

Post by dpkonofa »

nickthegreek wrote: post #17
wufufufu wrote: post #15

There are no clear details about what DOGE will alter. All the information we have so far amounts to outrage-bait one-liners. Where and how are they deciding to make cuts, and which agencies are they planning to change? Cutting is not intrinsically a good or bad idea, but everything I’ve read about this so far makes DOGE seem anti-intellectual.

They wont alter anything, as they are a presidential commission and not a department of the government.

You say this as if Trump will also not be in control of both sides of Congress. All it takes to make this a department of the government is a vote in Congress.

Re: Vivek Ramaswamy on X: "Will entire agencies be deleted? Answer: yes

#38

Post by lolkk »

steveoscaro wrote: post #7
mattgibson wrote: post #5

This looks horribly like failing to understand Chesterton's fence https://thoughtbot.com/blog/chestertons-fence The agencies were democratically put in place for a reason. Removing them with no public discussion of the original reasoning is deeply undemocratic. At the very least, someone thought that the cost of having them in place was less than the cost to society of not having them there. Has that changed?

Didn't a democracy vote in the people that are saying they want to remove some agencies? Isn't that also how the agencies came to be in the first place?

[dead]

Re: Vivek Ramaswamy on X: "Will entire agencies be deleted? Answer: yes

#39

Post by dpkonofa »

alephnerd wrote: post #26
relaxatorium wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unless I have missed something (always a real possibility to be fair) there are also no clear details about what DOGE is, what its powers or lack thereof are, what its staffing is, or what its actual processes will be. We’ll find out more when the actual Trump administration starts I guess, but so far it seems like a broad concept that two guys can use for tweets.

> there are also no clear details about what DOGE is, what its powers or lack thereof are It's (edit: going to be after Innauguration Day) a Presidential Task Force Presidential Task Forces have zero power, as they can only give recommendations. All this hyperventilating over DOGE is distracting from actual issues to worry about - like the upcoming showdown between Senate GOP Leadership and the Executive Branch over…

>All this hyperventilating over DOGE is distracting from actual issues to worry about

It's not hyperventilating. It may start as a task force but it can easily and quickly be upgraded to a full-on department of the federal government by Congress.

Re: Vivek Ramaswamy on X: "Will entire agencies be deleted? Answer: yes

#40

Post by izend »

I am skeptical that Elon/Vivek will actually cut any Federal spending as the only administration to actually reduce the number of Federal gov jobs was President Clinton from 1992 to 1997.

What I find very interesting is that in the early 1990s when the deficit hit 4.5% of GDP (1992) Congress actually viewed it as a major issue and decided to cut spending but now the deficit is above 6%+ of GDP and reducing spending is an extremely controversial topic.

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