Jon's Soapbox
DOGE and the Subject of Federal Waste Management Efforts
(posted 12/15/2024) - The new president's administration will include a "Department of Government Efficiency" or DOGE, which is to be headed up by two multi-billionaire oligarchs who were big contributers to the president elect's campaign.
The linked article by the economist Paul Krugman is worth reading because it puts into perspective the challenge of making meaningful changes to the federal government's spending allocations and execution of same.
To be clear I don't believe Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy are knowledgeable or capable of producing meaningful spending efficiencies. What I do anticipate is a lot of attempts to gut essential government functions which will produce a fair amount of chaos and pain over time.
Here is the link to the article.
PS - For those who love to tout R. Paul's annual report on federal government wasteful spending (which I might add is produced and published at tax-payer expense): Please note that more than 98 percent of the supposed waste falls into two categories - servicing our bond debt and pentagon spending. All the other myriad entries in the report collectively add to less than 2 cents on the dollar!
You'd never know the truth from reading media reports - which love to itemize a few flashy (but small dollar amount) items, while simultaneously referencing the staggering sum of almost a trillion dollars that the report says are wasted. If you actually look at the top two categories however you will see the false implication - paying public debt is NOT wasteful, and the military budget for Navy coastal protection is not widely thought to be wasted spending. Removing these two items makes the rest of the report a nit-pick in dollar amount.