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DOGE's only public ledger is riddled with mistakes

nytimes.com

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Re: DOGE's only public ledger is riddled with mistakes

#861

Post by insane_dreamer »

cuuupid wrote: post #533
uses wrote: post #205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even if you’re 100% correct, these aren’t the right people and these aren’t the right methods. Completely the opposite actually.

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 co…

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.

Re: DOGE's only public ledger is riddled with mistakes

#862

Post by MathMonkeyMan »

insane_dreamer wrote: post #851
christophilus wrote: post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I spent a few weeks working at a contractor who specialized in VA contracts. I put my two week notice in after the first few weeks. There’s no way I could “work” like that. They had teams and teams of people doing the job of a single person at a normal startup. I’ve never seen such bureaucratic waste anywhere in the private sector. It made my stint at Microsoft look like a lean startup by comparison. I talked to them…

There's no question this exists. But firing a bunch of government employees doesn't fix this problem. Where there is waste, it mostly comes in the form of contractors bilking the government, not the government employees themselves. Is DOGE going after the private sector and their bilking of the government?

Perhaps the private sector and their bilking of the government is what we are witnessing.

Re: DOGE's only public ledger is riddled with mistakes

#863

Post by insane_dreamer »

Sysreq2 wrote: post #230
munchler wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"We spend too much" is a political opinion, rather than a statement of fact. Only Congress can change the amount of money spent by the government, so the executive branch's actions are unconstitutional, no matter how large the crowd cheering it on. This is exactly the sort of mob rule that the Founders wanted to prevent.

I keep harping on this - but two points: 1) Our debt is above GDP and interest is rising faster than GDP growth. Debt is fine when being used as leverage but we are upside down at the moment. 2) We don’t have the ability to issue more debt at the moment. The government has no money. They are using employee pension funds to meet obligations with a promissory note. We have negative cash flow and have run out of the abi…

The military is over half of all Fed discretionary spending.

Another huge expense is servicing our debt.

Those are what we should be addressing, not cutting NIH research.

By the way, we do have the ability to issue more debt -- because thankfully our debt is USD denominated and we can simply print more dollars. It's the only way we've survived this long as the world's largest debtor nation.

Re: DOGE's only public ledger is riddled with mistakes

#864

Post by cuuupid »

jhedwards wrote: post #859
cuuupid wrote: post #84

I think impartial observers have not spent time in actual government bureaucracy. Basically everything will seem like “they’re cutting something important!” Or “they’re stopping critical research!” because every government contract needs justification; so naturally they will all sound good. The data and accounting itself is such bad quality in all cases that it is impossible to be perfect at this; there are entire in…

Could you help clarify something for me? When I looked into the federal workforce, just looking at raw numbers without much insight about the "inside", it doesn't seem particularly bloated or wasteful to me: it runs at ~5% of the federal budget and at 2mil people it is about 0.5% of the population. It looks like you and some other commenters, however, are discussing government contracts, which are projects and progra…

Yes, they are correlated ; contracts are created with budget authority afforded to federal employees. Essentially the only way to get promoted is to amass reports and budget, and use it in some way.

So it’s basically like this: yes, the federal government creates jobs and the cost of those jobs directly is only 5% of the budget. However the real cost of those jobs is in spending, in terms of opportunities they champion, which essentially amounts to all discretionary spending conducted by the federal government — ~30% of the budget.

Re: DOGE's only public ledger is riddled with mistakes

#865

Post by wat10000 »

cuuupid wrote: post #605
yodsanklai wrote: post #201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All organizations are inefficient. My company would send people across the world in business class for a few meetings they could do remotely without problem. I'm pretty sure everyone could come with many anecdotes of waste in the private sector. I also worked in the public sector (not in the US) and frankly, I think it was pretty efficient. Most employees were competent and weren't paid very well. The problem with re…

I see this take a lot in this thread, I think people do not comprehend the scale. Your company sends people in business class needlessly, ok. The government sends people in private jets needlessly -- there are dozens of separate aviation programs just within Dept. of State each with their own planes and contracts to staff and supply those planes. We have hundreds of posts around the world, many people are getting to…

How does that compare to the scale of the federal government as a whole?

Federal revenue in one year is more than the market cap of the most valuable US company. It’s an enormous organization. If waste is as a similar level proportionally, it’ll be similarly enormous. Is it actually more than that?

Re: DOGE's only public ledger is riddled with mistakes

#866

Post by insane_dreamer »

yadaeno wrote: post #407
mandmandam wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Americans cheered for the gutting of USAID because they thought that spending 25% of the federal budget was too much, and should be around 10% instead. The actual spend on foreign aid? Under 1%. Americans are systemically and catastrophically disinformed. Expecting us to be able to assess the real impact of the DOGE team's fuckups is a violation of GIGO.

I agree but condemning government budget cuts because USAID seems reactionary. I think the spirit of cutting budget is still overall popular, and is impossible to do painlessly. Also in the context of federal budget, 1% is a huge number since most of the budget (like social security, interest payments, and Medicaid) is non negotiable. ~30B a year (USAID budget) is enough to make improvements domestically, e.g free co…

> ~30B a year (USAID budget) is enough to make improvements domestically, e.g free college for 10% of students, transportation, housing, etc.

if only that's what they would spend it on. Instead, it's going to go to the military.

Re: DOGE's only public ledger is riddled with mistakes

#867

Post by wat10000 »

croes wrote: post #214
cuuupid wrote: post #84

I think impartial observers have not spent time in actual government bureaucracy. Basically everything will seem like “they’re cutting something important!” Or “they’re stopping critical research!” because every government contract needs justification; so naturally they will all sound good. The data and accounting itself is such bad quality in all cases that it is impossible to be perfect at this; there are entire in…

Imagine you know you are sick. Doge is the one recommending bloodletting and brushing with burning straw. The issue is rarely that neither side can name the problem but what is claimed to be the reason and therefore the solution.

The main problem is that taxes are too low. But even Democrats are afraid to say it now.

Re: DOGE's only public ledger is riddled with mistakes

#868

Post by cuuupid »

insane_dreamer wrote: post #851
christophilus wrote: post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I spent a few weeks working at a contractor who specialized in VA contracts. I put my two week notice in after the first few weeks. There’s no way I could “work” like that. They had teams and teams of people doing the job of a single person at a normal startup. I’ve never seen such bureaucratic waste anywhere in the private sector. It made my stint at Microsoft look like a lean startup by comparison. I talked to them…

There's no question this exists. But firing a bunch of government employees doesn't fix this problem. Where there is waste, it mostly comes in the form of contractors bilking the government, not the government employees themselves. Is DOGE going after the private sector and their bilking of the government?

Who do you think hires contractors and puts out contracts?

The only way to get promoted at and above gs-12 is to amass reports and budget authority. The wasteful spending is not handed down mandatory by congress, it is conducted using budget authority afforded to federal employees.

If you lay off 70% of federal employees especially those in gs-12 to 15 range, you could probably easily cut 70% of discretionary spending with literally no negative impact.

You will never see them reduce their budgets because it reduces their political power; look up “Washington Monument Syndrome” for how they have evaded cuts for the last two decades.

Re: DOGE's only public ledger is riddled with mistakes

#869

Post by mdnahas »

mlsu wrote: post #425
sxyuan wrote: post #248

For those who want to have a substantive discussion on the federal budget and believe these cuts are justified, I have a few questions (putting aside questions of constitutionality for this thread): 1. There are claims that federal spending is out of control. How do you square that with the fact that spending as a percentage of GDP is only slightly elevated compared to the historical average going back to at least th…

Corporate income tax is a bad idea. It should be cut to zero. If you run a corporation, and a larger tax bill comes, you will keep your own salary (hence, wealth) and either pass the tax onto your employees or cut employee benefits/jobs to afford the tax. With corporate tax in effect what you are doing is handing the responsibility of allocating obligations to the owners/controllers of the corporation. They will defi…

Former quant, current economist here.

One policy economists of all stripes agree on is having 0 tax on corporations. We should tax the profits when they show up in the owner’s income. Otherwise, you are taxing owners who are poor.

https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2012/07/19/157047211/six-...

Re: DOGE's only public ledger is riddled with mistakes

#870

Post by ratsbane »

wruza wrote: post #817
SmirkingRevenge wrote: post #609

Earlier quoted context omitted.

DOGE isn't really cutting things to fund others. Many of their cuts are going to be net revenue negative. Many will cost taxpayers more of their money. It's about gutting the civil service and staffing them with loyalists that will do what Trump or Musk want, despite what the law says. It's consolidation of power and corruption. Musk is also crippling many of the agencies that enforce regulations on his businesses.

Why doesn’t anyone do anything? They risk ending up as the rest of the world according to this, and everything they do is talking 1k+ threads. If everything people say here is true, US is in its own version of Perestroika.

Your question contains a clue to the answer: "Why doesn't anyone do anything". Specifically, what? I've been asking myself this since at least 2016 and I'm sure many other people have too. I've made phone calls, donated money, volunteered for campaigns and gone door-to-door. None of that has made any difference. The problem is in figuring out WHAT to do.
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