DOGE is done. What happened to its records? • Hacker News Board

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

#71

Post by yardie » Mon, Jul 13, 2026, 4:50 PM UTC

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…

We already have that in the GAO. We also have personnel who's job is to root out fraud: inspector generals. The budget is constantly audited scrutinized for excess and waste, except 2 departments: defense and Medicare. The former is pork for the politicians' home states. The later is so complex it relies on the healthcare industry to help write the rules. And they can't help making sure they get paid the most.

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

#72

Post by tremon » Mon, Jul 13, 2026, 4:50 PM UTC

BurningFrog wrote: post #48

dgellow wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Overthrowing democratic rule feels like an overreaction.

Calling the current regime "democratic rule" feels like a stretch. Wouldn't democratic rule first require that the ruler respects other democratic institutions such as the press, the courts, and the Constitution?

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

#73

Post by Executor » Mon, Jul 13, 2026, 4:50 PM UTC

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.

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

#74

Post by SubiculumCode » Mon, Jul 13, 2026, 4:50 PM UTC

DOGE fired a whole bunch of NIH staff that processed high scoring grants to get them ready for Notices of Awards (the official document that starts moving funds, etc). Meanwhile, the administration now requires final approval of any grant by non NIH political staff.

Consequently, Science is slowing down (and that is outside of other shenanigans). What used to take 3 months is taking 9 or more.

For the many medical research Institutions where the dominant system for professors is soft money (no or partial tenure, salary is provided by research grants), there is a real crisis.

To try to make up the shortfall,we are submitting any more grants, doing less actual sciencee are submitting even more grants, and exacerbating the staffing issue at NIH.

DOGE found an actually highly efficient Federal government, doing what was lawfully passed legislation asked, and destroyed it anyway (instead of passing legislation to remove programs, the lawful way).

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

#75

Post by wnevets » Mon, Jul 13, 2026, 4:51 PM UTC

I would like to personally thank Elon, "big balls" and the rest of DOGE for causing hundreds of thousands of deaths [1] by shutting down USAID!

Also an honorable for bringing the screwworm to the US. Good job everyone, you guys did it!

[1] https://hsph.harvard.edu/news/usaid-shutdown-has-led-to-hund...

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

#76

Post by bryanrasmussen » Mon, Jul 13, 2026, 4:52 PM UTC

gruez wrote: post #39

yoyohello13 wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

His cuts were actually considered and targeted. He didn’t just hire a billionaire to take a chainsaw to ‘woke’ gov programs.

But the original claim was >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. It sounds like you're arguing for the more narrow claim that Musk did a bad job, which implies that there actually is waste is government spending.

>But the original claim was

>>There isn't really much waste in federal spending.

And your response to the claim "there isn't really much waste in federal spending" is to say "what about 30 years ago, someone you probably liked got rid of a lot of things they said were wasteful"?

in short, if 30 years ago someone got rid of a lot of waste in federal spending it might very well follow that there is not a lot of waste in federal spending.

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

#77

Post by flockonus » Mon, Jul 13, 2026, 4:52 PM UTC

SubiculumCode wrote: post #74

DOGE fired a whole bunch of NIH staff that processed high scoring grants to get them ready for Notices of Awards (the official document that starts moving funds, etc). Meanwhile, the administration now requires final approval of any grant by non NIH political staff. Consequently, Science is slowing down (and that is outside of other shenanigans). What used to take 3 months is taking 9 or more. For the many medical re…

> DOGE found an actually highly efficient Federal government

Wish we could see the evidence for that.

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

#78

Post by boscillator » Mon, Jul 13, 2026, 4:53 PM UTC

Jtsummers wrote: post #23

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.

> There isn't really much waste in federal spending. There's actually a lot of waste. DOGE just didn't go after it. Check out DOD and all the 9- and 10-figure programs that get canceled without delivering anything, and whose work is often useless for follow-on work. OCX is a recent example, costing around $6 billion and took so long that the program it was supposed to replace ended up just doing the work instead. Ess…

Even here, it can be hard to know what to cut. OCX kept getting funding because running a GPS ground segment is in the government's purview, and sometimes you need to update legacy systems. Obviously, OCX was still a disaster, and we still don't have a modern ground segment, but the answer isn't necessarily cutting programs, it's spending the money in those programs more wisely, and empowering civil servants to stop obvious contractor grift. Actually doing that is difficult and may require more money in the short term.

*edit: spelling

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

#79

Post by Executor » Mon, Jul 13, 2026, 4:54 PM UTC

SubiculumCode wrote: post #74

DOGE fired a whole bunch of NIH staff that processed high scoring grants to get them ready for Notices of Awards (the official document that starts moving funds, etc). Meanwhile, the administration now requires final approval of any grant by non NIH political staff. Consequently, Science is slowing down (and that is outside of other shenanigans). What used to take 3 months is taking 9 or more. For the many medical re…

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

#80

Post by ajmurmann » Mon, Jul 13, 2026, 4:55 PM UTC

One of the big issues - assuming good intent - was the dismissing of existing expertise on where the issues really are and jumping to the assumption that everyone in the system is corrupt and ripping off the tax payer. A simplistic model that can feel satisfying to promote on social media but is obviously naive. Jennifer Pahlka has worked on making our government more efficient and gives a much more educated view on what the real issues are. It's always baffling to me how Musk has all the resources one could imaging but loves to talk out of his ass instead of getting himself the maximum-validated information available to argue anyone. https://cnliberalism.org/posts/podcast-making-government-mor...