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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

#51

Post by juancn »

izend wrote: post #40

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 i…

Well, salaries are about 15% of the federal budget, you don't necessarily need to cut jobs to reduce spending.

You may even increase it and still reduce spending since it's such a small part of the spending.

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

#52

Post by JSDevOps »

skepticATX wrote: post #12

Elon and Vivek have no authority to close a federal agency, and Trump doesn’t either. We’re currently in the bloviating stage of this election cycle; once attention dies down I fully expect DOGE to achieve very little and to die a slow death. The sad part of all of this is that the government could absolutely be more efficient than it currently is, while still providing the same services. But that’d take serious thou…

> I fully expect DOGE to achieve very little

There will be a website on Day 1 that will get overloaded with traffic and then it'll be soon forgotten about.

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

#54

Post by xenospn »

pavel_lishin wrote: post #22
xenospn wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

These people don’t want to understand anything. They also don’t want to change anything. They just want the appearance of a steamroller so they can raise more money. Rinse and repeat.

Which people are you referring to?

Fairly obvious, no?

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

#55

Post by blackeyeblitzar »

mensetmanusman wrote: post #2

I like the framing of agencies as task forces, because it gives clear goals, then it prepares people for knowing it’s temporary. It also provides an off ramp to resist a situation where admin and bureaucracy always grows.

I do like your idea of temporary funding as an automatic off ramp. But my experience is that jurisdiction that have things like temporary levies just end up with voters blindly renewing those levies. Why? Because they’re told a scary story of how the basic services they rely on will be first to go (instead of the agencies cutting out wasteful or non critical spending first). If there’s no choice or competition, you end up being forced to pay for them because of these games.

Even if they’re not temporary though, agencies should have clear goals, metrics, and be held accountable to those. For example how many times have we seen wasteful spending on opaque homelessness programs on the west coast with zero results?

In my opinion we need to rethink how agencies are funded. Why do we need to give a bloated government a big tax check instead of having agencies work hard to win customers and charge them fees? Agencies should also (sometimes but not always) be forced to face competition from alternative private providers to keep the pressure of competition on.

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

#56

Post by piva00 »

some_random wrote: post #46
dpkonofa wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

I'm sorry but Project 2025 still strikes me as fanfiction

What do you mean? There are people who wrote parts of Project 2025 who will be in the next government, or do you think the Heritage Foundation has no ties to the future Trump government at all?

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

#57

Post by alephnerd »

dpkonofa wrote: post #39
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…

>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.

> it can easily and quickly be upgraded to a full-on department

It cannot easily be converted. The house margin is razor thin now that Gaetz and Stefanik gave up their seats for nominations, and filibuster-able.

And Senate leadership is status quo GOP with Sen Thune as Senate Majorty leader, and his allies Grassley and Cornyn, as well as shakey Senators like Collin and Murkowski reducing that majority, and the Senate is still filibuster-able as well.

And given the amount of controversy over a number of Secretary choices, it'll take 6-9 months alone just to go through the Senate Confirmation backlog.

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

#58

Post by dvdhnt »

juancn wrote: post #51
izend wrote: post #40

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 i…

Well, salaries are about 15% of the federal budget, you don't necessarily need to cut jobs to reduce spending. You may even increase it and still reduce spending since it's such a small part of the spending.

While true, the larger the ship, the more difficult it is to turn. I think the idea is that for every salaried individual, you have support staff, equipment, benefits, etc that come along with them. It’s also another cog in the chain of work that needs to be done.

For example, there are at least 1200 positions that need to be confirmed. It can take half the presidency to staff a full cabinet. I think we can agree that’s excessive.

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

#59

Post by probably_wrong »

lambdaba wrote: post #4
stuaxo wrote: post #3

Real scorched earth policy going on over there.

worked for Argentina

For some definition of "worked".

I have friends working for the CS department of one of the main Universities in Argentina. Their salaries are so bad that none of them makes a living - they all have second jobs or international grants. Two of them left to take positions in China and two more are considering it. The list of candidates for open positions is currently empty.

This is a direct result of the president's decision to defund public education at a moment where Argentina ranks 71 out of 79 countries in math (PISA 2023). And if Computer Science is doing that badly, I don't want to think about slightly less marketable careers.

Does Argentina need to reign in corruption? Yes. Was an adjustment necessary? Also yes. But what future are they building and who will benefit from it is far from clear.

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

#60

Post by akmarinov »

As a person who has no idea what most of the agencies do (exactly what Musk and Ramaswamy are):

DHS can easily be folded into the FBI and cuts made

TSA is a non-brainer, they don't really provide much security, let airports handle it on a case by case basis

Do they really need a NSA and a CIA?

Space force - just roll it into the air force

Bam - that's probably like 500 billion right there

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