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

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

#171

Post by joe_mamba » Mon, Jul 13, 2026, 5:47 PM UTC

retornam wrote: post #148

flockonus wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> DOGE found an actually highly efficient Federal government Wish we could see the evidence for that.

> What's the evidence for that? If your mandate is to identify fraud or optimize a system, wouldn’t your success or failure be determined by the number of fraudulent cases you successfully prosecuted and won, as well as the amount of money you were able to recover? Their god "genius" and leader promised[1] $2 trillion in cuts, if they haven't been achieve their stated goal, does that not mean that majority of the $2…

>because governments have multiple arms that aren't revenue generating

True, very true. I don't want my government turning a profit, but I do want my government being accountable and efficient on how it spends my taxes and what it gives me back for them. If I keep paying more and more but get less and less quality, I want some audits and changes to be done to fix this. "Government not being revenue generating" is not the answer here.

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

#172

Post by TSiege » Mon, Jul 13, 2026, 5:48 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…

The DOD might be the one exception to federal waste in spending precisely because they cannot be audited. Every single other federal agency is audited nonstop. The DOD due to military and security reasons is not

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

#173

Post by jayGlow » Mon, Jul 13, 2026, 5:50 PM UTC

WalterBright wrote: post #151

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 Department of Education has spent $3 trillion since its inception in 1980, and academic accomplishment has not advanced at all.

test scores have actually gone down in a number of states I don't think whatever the department of education is doing is actually working.

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

#174

Post by MengerSponge » Mon, Jul 13, 2026, 5:50 PM UTC

maximilianburke wrote: post #147

JKCalhoun wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"DOGE found an actually highly efficient Federal government…" Regardless, it had always seemed pretty clear to me that it was never about efficiency anyway.

>Regardless, it had always seemed pretty clear to me that it was never about efficiency anyway. Nope, it was about looting the government's data and delivering retribution to perceived enemies (ie: USAID).

Also about destroying the government's investigative/enforcement capacity. USAID's destruction was ideological, but protecting Tesla and SpaceX was existential.

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

#175

Post by ndsipa_pomu » Mon, Jul 13, 2026, 5:51 PM UTC

BatteryMountain wrote: post #132

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…

And who does this ultimately benefit?...

The billionaires who don't like regulations and like the idea of a semi-starving population that are forced to work in inhumane conditions for the lowest possible wages. Also, destroying democracy seems to be desired by them as they wish to concentrate all the power into their own hands.

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

#176

Post by boscillator » Mon, Jul 13, 2026, 5:52 PM UTC

Jtsummers wrote: post #126

boscillator wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> OCX kept getting funding because running a GPS ground segment is in the government's preview I 100% agree (purview, by the way, not preview). > sometimes you need to update legacy systems I also agree, 100%. The problem with OCX and many similar systems is that they didn't try to update a legacy system, they tried to replace the legacy system. This is a very important distinction. Upgrading should be an in-place th…

Oops, thanks. Stupid dyslexia.

Yah, the government has a big problem with trying to do big upgrades when a ship-of-theseus would work. I suspect this can be traced all the way up to how congressional appropriations work and the acquisitions/sustainment distinction, in addition to usual resume-engineering and second-system-syndrome.

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

#177

Post by baby » Mon, Jul 13, 2026, 5:52 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.

You’re wrong. The execution failed because it was backed by (white supremacist) ideology. COGE is a new attempt at the idea taking place in New York, and much better orchestrated.

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

#178

Post by sarchertech » Mon, Jul 13, 2026, 5:52 PM UTC

parineum wrote: post #158

icedchai wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yep. I’ve worked on some federal contracts and all the waste is in private contractors, not the government itself. There are structural issues with subcontractors many layers deep, each middleman taking a cut for doing little to nothing. It’s sick.

And who is responsible for making sure federal contracts don't go to wasteful contractors?

Yeah but that’s a process issue that would require deep familiarity and probably acts of Congress to fix. That’s not something a few 25 year olds with no relevant experience can come in and fix in 100 days.

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

#179

Post by great_tankard » Mon, Jul 13, 2026, 5:53 PM UTC

WalterBright wrote: post #151

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 Department of Education has spent $3 trillion since its inception in 1980, and academic accomplishment has not advanced at all.

Are you saying that the priorities of the Department of Education have been misplaced, or that it was a mistake to have a Department of Education at all?

"Academic accomplishment has not advanced at all" feels like something people say without expanding on what they mean by it.

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

#180

Post by Havoc » Mon, Jul 13, 2026, 5:53 PM UTC

wnevets wrote: post #75

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...

oh it's much worse. Projections are around 14 million mark. i.e. something around the region of a 100 Hiroshimas

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cx2jjpm7zv8o