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DOGE is done. What happened to its records?

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Re: DOGE is done. What happened to its records?

#11

Post by bs7280 »

One of my biggest criticisms of DOGE that I have not heard elsewhere is - why can't we have a "Department of Government Transparency". Giving Elon the ability to judge, jury and executioner any congressionally approved spending he wants has its own legal issues, but I do think there is a lot of value in having a massive publicly available dataset on where the money goes.

I envision something similar to a massive sankey diagram like dataset in a public git repo that anyone could access and audit. There is certainly lots of waste, but there is also loads of government spending where the value is not obvious.

Re: DOGE is done. What happened to its records?

#12

Post by mcmcmc »

dgellow wrote: post #4
throw0101d wrote: post #2

Perhaps a GAO look-see is needed? * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Government_Accou... May be worth noting/reminding of the 17 inspectors general that were fired on the first Friday (2025-01-24) of Trump 2.0 administration: * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2025_dismissals_of_U.S._inspec...

Perhaps the current government shouldn’t be in power and everybody involved should get audited and investigated for fraud and corruption

Perhaps that’s what the 2nd Amendment is for

Re: DOGE is done. What happened to its records?

#13

Post by ck2 »

Needless to mention it was 100% theater and absolute destruction of government was simply the point

US Treasury is borrowing $155 billion every month is now paying $24 billion a week in interest

* https://fortune.com/2026/07/10/us-treasury-borrowed-155-bill...

And at least $21 TRILLION of the $40 TRILLION national debt is from militarization

* https://ips-dc.org/report-state-of-insecurity-cost-militariz...

Re: DOGE is done. What happened to its records?

#14

Post by hnuser123456 »

asveikau wrote: post #6

Any time people talk about cutting government spending, they are exploiting naivety of the audience. When you actually cut, nobody likes it. There isn't really much waste in federal spending. Most programs are important to somebody for good reasons. From this perspective, DOGE was always an obvious con.

The 28th amendment was affirmed by Biden near the end of his term, which states that the "Equality of rights under the law shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of sex." DEI programs that offer benefits only to women are unconstitutional.

Re: DOGE is done. What happened to its records?

#16

Post by dfee »

asveikau wrote: post #6

Any time people talk about cutting government spending, they are exploiting naivety of the audience. When you actually cut, nobody likes it. There isn't really much waste in federal spending. Most programs are important to somebody for good reasons. From this perspective, DOGE was always an obvious con.

this is non sequitor.

why isn't there really much waste in federal spending? because when you cut, nobody likes it.

well, no. there is pork.

a better example might be: "Half the money I spend on advertising is wasted; the trouble is I don’t know which half" - John Wanamaker

Re: DOGE is done. What happened to its records?

#17

Post by [deleted] »

asveikau wrote: post #6

Any time people talk about cutting government spending, they are exploiting naivety of the audience. When you actually cut, nobody likes it. There isn't really much waste in federal spending. Most programs are important to somebody for good reasons. From this perspective, DOGE was always an obvious con.

[deleted]

Re: DOGE is done. What happened to its records?

#18

Post by Sohcahtoa82 »

michelb wrote: post #9

In part because of the destruction DOGE has caused any future democratic ruler will have a very tough time. It’s already neigh impossible to undo most of the damage the Trump party has caused, but it’s absolutely impossible to fix what DOGE destroyed, particularly without the evidence. A new democratic government will be burdened by failing institutions, services, missing funds and whatnot, ensuring victories for the…

> A new democratic government will be burdened by failing institutions, services, missing funds and whatnot, ensuring victories for the coming dictators.

And the Republicans will blame them for it, despite them being the cause of it.

If I had a dollar for every time Republicans blamed Democrats for the national debt despite the deficit consistently falling under Democrats and rising under Republicans...

Re: DOGE is done. What happened to its records?

#19

Post by asdff »

bs7280 wrote: post #11

One of my biggest criticisms of DOGE that I have not heard elsewhere is - why can't we have a "Department of Government Transparency". Giving Elon the ability to judge, jury and executioner any congressionally approved spending he wants has its own legal issues, but I do think there is a lot of value in having a massive publicly available dataset on where the money goes. I envision something similar to a massive sank…

The issue is deciding importance and most people are too stupid to understand nth order effects. So that will turn into the usual pitchforks.

Re: DOGE is done. What happened to its records?

#20

Post by georgemcbay »

dgellow wrote: post #4
throw0101d wrote: post #2

Perhaps a GAO look-see is needed? * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Government_Accou... May be worth noting/reminding of the 17 inspectors general that were fired on the first Friday (2025-01-24) of Trump 2.0 administration: * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2025_dismissals_of_U.S._inspec...

Perhaps the current government shouldn’t be in power and everybody involved should get audited and investigated for fraud and corruption

> everybody involved should get audited and investigated for fraud and corruption

This is absolutely what should happen, but what will almost certainly happen is that the most openly corrupt president the US has ever had will blanket pardon everyone who remains loyal to him for the remainder of his term and there will be no federal level criminal legal consequences for any of these people.

And this is kind of the optimistic outcome, the one where the corrupt people in power don't find a way to extend their power indefinitely, which is certainly their plan (their incompetence may stop this from happening).

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