People who complain or say "how hard can it be?" without having first-hand knowledge of a problem or area of work frequently fail spectacularly when put in a place of responsibility.
Cuts in appropriations yes… cuts in expenditure can be initiated by just about anyone in the federal government, whether or not they stick for more than a few hours is the question.
Recommendations from Presidential Task Forces like DOGE are non-actionable.
For it to be actionable, it will require congressional approval, as the GAO and the rest of the American civil service's operations are already codified in law - not executive order.
Congress can’t force anyone, not even the lowliest office clerk, to actually spend money though… the appropriated money can just sit in various accounts. (Well they can try to compel expenditures, but that would likely never withstand court scrutiny)
The real question is how the incoming administration plans on effecting such a desire on such a huge number of people.
The people hired to hire those people need to be confirmed by Congress as well.
The US system has been designed this way for over a century after the spoils system became unpopular.
Also, I've bumped into you multiple times on this forum talking about governance, and while I appreciate the zeal PLEASE read an introductory book on Civics - you seem to have a cursory understanding of how governments are designed.
> Also, I've bumped into you multiple times on this forum talking about governance, and while I appreciate the zeal PLEASE read an introductory book on Civics - you seem to have a cursory understanding of how governments are designed.
I'd recommend the AP Gov curriculum for the US.
Who are you to decide for other HN users what they know or don’t know?
And why do your opinions even matter in determining what other HN users know about ‘governance’ or ‘how governments are designed’?
My opinions don't matter, but the fact that you make very basic mistakes around how checks and balances work, as well as how institutions are run in the US seems to show this lack of elementary understanding of civics.
If you just want to kvetch, so be it.
But if you want to have an actual serious discussion about these topics, actually understand these intricacies.
The “Department of Government Efficiency” isn’t a real government office and as such has no actual power. Musk and Ramaswamy won’t be able to do anything, and the budget is controlled by congress, not the executive.
The executive requests the budget. Congress approves it.
The key thing here is the "Due Care Clause." The administration is required to implement our laws with "due care." If there's a law on the books the administration is required to enforce it. The means and expected effectiveness of that enforcement are often not specified.
The House creates the budget, the Senate votes on it, and the president then signs it into law. Usually, the executive branch will come up with a dream budget that can be considered their starting position in budget negotiations.
The Administration creates the budget and submits it to congress. This is why the Administrative office of "Management and Budget" exists. This happens every year and has for as long as I've been alive.
I believe you're referencing "budget resolutions" which are not law and have a more complicated relationship to the process.
The Administration creates the budget and submits it to congress.
... who promptly pronounces it "dead on arrival".
Which isn't actually true. They still use the executive branch proposal as a baseline. They, too, are supposed to authorize payment for the programs that they've passed laws to create. Usually, there's somebody in the room whose constituents benefit, and they can insist that it continue to be funded.
And of course this time around, the President will have a Congress who is controlled by his own party, so the relationship will be less hostile. In all likelihood they will end up putting back some programs instead.
As President, Trump paid no price for shutting down the government because the budget was too small/didn’t include some inefficient spending he said Mexico would pay for. His next will be his fourth shutdown.
this congress will be an extension of the executive, and you know this administration and his legislative and judicial allies don't care about the rules and norms anyways. they feel like their agenda was obstructed last time, they've got a mandate now, and so they're just gonna steamroll anybody standing in their way this time around.
You don’t go against Trump: you infight against someone in government who can’t defend their inefficiency. An Alaskan Senator secures $4m earmark for a small town. Why can’t she support Donald Trump’s vision and the futuristic leadership of the DOGE?
Elon is hiring people that will agree work for free, he is a big proponent of legal immigration which suppresses wages so I guess it’s no surprise that what he really wants is to not pay people at all.
If your goal is to cut spending in the short term, sure, that is easy and can be done. But wait and see where failing public infrastructure and services will lead the country in 5, 10, 25 years and make the balance then.
Just look at where basically every austerity policies lead the countries they were implemented in.
Great article! I fear this will be the country's rude awakening to Chesterton's Fence. The GAO recommendations list is a really great thing to point these DOGE people to. We have literally no reason to assume they're equipped to do this.
Edit: It's apparent most people commenting haven't actually read TFA. You should!
I thought the untimely de-staffing of the CDC office in China was the rude awakening. Their mission was the apparently pointless one to "monitor, respond to, and control human seasonal, avian, and other novel influenza viruses"...
Excellent example. Unfortunately lands in a weird self-contradictory knot on half the country: wasn’t a real problem, was a real problem but China did it on purpose, maybe real but we couldn’t have detected it sooner and also it was China’s responsibility to detect it, and also they lied about the non-existent virus’s existence, etc
Federal spending was $6.7T USD. Cutting 1/3 of that? Probably impossible.
That said, 5% might be possible. That would cover half of the interest payments on the federal debt in a year.
It also depends if they're going for one-time or continuing reductions. Obviously the latter is preferable. And cost-shifting to the future doesn't count.
You have to inflation adjust the 2019 numbers to get the comparables for 2025. And not using the CPI (which is aimed at individuals), but using an index based on what the government actually spends the money on :)
If you want a speedy government and speedy paperwork, it might be worth asking if we could increase headcount to handle tasks, preferably in parallel if possible.
For example, if you require your house to get inspected for code, you may want to increase the size of your planning department so that code inspection can occur within the day.
Can the environmental assessment be done in parallel to other necessary paperwork?
The correct size of a department is probably not 100% utilization of employees, but more like 80% to allow for slack. If you're 100% utilization, the demand is greater than the ability of employees to complete tasks within reasonable time, then you're undersized. At 100%, if demand surge, then waiting time will obviously increases.
If you want a speedy government and speedy paperwork, it might be worth asking if we could increase headcount to handle tasks, preferably in parallel if possible.
A comment like this is kind of bewildering on a tech news site full of software entrepreneurs. Instead of handling more paperwork with more people, why don't we find ways to automate the paperwork processing using computers? Every other competitive industry streamlined their processes decades ago (and continues to do so) - why is the government exempt from this kind of solution as well? Do we have to accept that millions of people must do useless tasks for the US government?
For example, if you require your house to get inspected for code, you may want to increase the size of your planning department so that code inspection can occur within the day. Can the environmental assessment be done in parallel to other necessary paperwork?
It's funny you use this as an analogy, because home inspections are notoriously pointless. They tell you stupid things, such as that the step to the house is 11" from ground, while code is 8" - meanwhile totally missing issues in the crawl space because "it is unsafe for us to go in there". I paid $500 to be lulled into complacency, and no amount of money for more inspectors to do the job "faster" would have convinced someone to find the important issues with the house I was about to buy. I'm not interested in paying even more money for more useless information. That's the point - scrub out these useless checks and parades of stupidity, which there is plenty of in both the home-buying process as well as in government.
* A comment like this is kind of bewildering on a tech news site full of software entrepreneurs. Instead of handling more paperwork with more people, why don't we find ways to automate the paperwork processing using computers? Every other competitive industry streamlined their processes decades ago (and continues to do so) - why is the government exempt from this kind of solution as well? Do we have to accept that millions of people must do useless tasks for the US government?*
Why not both?
Some paperwork aren't boilerplate unnecessary cruft and required human judgement.
There is some paperwork needed but it isn't certainly no paperwork needed.
It's funny you use this as an analogy, because home inspections are notoriously pointless. They tell you stupid things, such as that the step to the house is 11" from ground, while code is 8" - meanwhile totally missing issues in the crawl space because "it is unsafe for us to go in there". I paid $500 to be lulled into complacency, and no amount of money for more inspectors to do the job "faster" would have convinced someone to find the important issues with the house I was about to buy. I'm not interested in paying even more money for more useless information. That's the point - scrub out these useless checks and parades of stupidity, which there is plenty of in both the home-buying process as well as in government.
I am only addressing one part of possibles issues that the government might have. If you want speedy and quality code inspection, you must be willing to staff and pay for it.
Regulation isn't simply a matter of too much or too little but also quality.
Yes, I think we are largely on the same page. Some regulation is good. Some is bad. Let's get rid of the bad, and streamline the good, so that compliance can be achieved with efficiency.
That’s a succinct example of the faulty premise that underlies the much of this discourse.
The government is a vast enterprise in many senses, but it isn’t a business operation in the same way a corporation or an LLC is a business. Applying traditional business thinking to government frequently fails because the purposes and goals are not the same. Government is neither for-profit nor non-profit. Its remit is entirely different from any other kind of structure.
I gotta say I appreciate the enthusiasm of this venture. It’s great to be excited about more efficiency. But I’m really anxious about whether it will be done without screwing over poor people, raising technical debt, or sacrificing long term infrastructure.
The article seems to present the notion that the fundamental measure of efficiency is the administrative quotient viz. the ratio of the number of staff to overall spending.
It follows that the simplest way to improve efficiency is to increase spending whilst keeping headcount the same.
There are endless anecdotal examples in both directions.
American federal government institutions are expected to operate at immense scale while protecting and preserving the rights of the people who have business before it. There’s a certain amount of important inefficiency that this demands. Maintaining humans in the loop is one such thing that some in the tech circles think inefficient, but our government is designed to be by and of the people, for the people, so there’s a strong case to maintain people in the loop.
On the flip side, our laws allow inefficiencies to be introduced at the demand of private parties. Lobbyists have done a fantastic job at curtailing certain kinds of efficiency reforms at the IRS for decades because it served private interests. That is only recently changing, and only for specific populations.
Having been involved in such projects on the corporate level, I do agree that driving efficiency and reducing costs, even when everyone wants and tries to do them, is rather difficult, and very slow to implement. However, once you go down the track and commit to it, a major benefit is it raises the awareness of the importance of frugality and efficiency, and future projects do become more efficient. So maybe if you cannot make a huge dent like $2T, it could help slow down the increase in deficit.
While true for the most part on spending, the deficit arises because we lack a rule requiring revenue to match spending, and we can't agree on what constitutes a fair balance of responsibility for that revenue.
removing collective bargaining would be a fair and gradual upstream strategy the public sector would adapt to and reform itself around.
after spending over a decade consulting in the public sector, I concluded public servants of any kind should not have collective bargaining. it's capture and it creates the perverse incentives at the root of most complaints about it, with existential consequences for the whole society. in several countries, entire agencies get created to get around having to hire unionized staff in existing agencies, and they're just 19th century cartels that aren't fit for purpose.
a rule should state there will be no new unionized positions in departments or agencies funded by the federal budget, and that individuals in existing roles will be allowed to retire, but when they leave, their replacements will not be in a collective bargaining unit. management roles will also not be part of those units, etc.
the government is not a normal employer and it is not a firm that shares equity. it is an exception. while guilds are viable for trades, and professional societies self regulate, employees of the state have no collective interest other than that as citizens. where they act as a corporate body, they are a literal conspiracy to subvert the consent of the governed, and it deprives individuals of their agency to provide honest service to the public. where employees of the state can both vote in elections and have a collective special interest, they become a privileged class that is antithetical to any democratic principle or equality. they know this, and saying it out loud too often is why their candidate lost.
plus, union leadership savagely betrayed their members over the last 5 years thinking they were about to institute the socialism they were originally founded to deliver but accelerating it without needing the actual working class, so I'd bet a good 2/3 of employees would be glad to have the unions out. it's fairer than even/odd SIN cards, smarter than blunt slashing, and creates the opportunity for serious people to get into public service.
This sounds nice, but in my experience public unions invariably capture politicians, engage in corruption, cripple the department they work for, and make life worse for the people who have to deal with that department. I think we do have a right to say no when people want to make our lives worse.
Not only that, we’re entering an administration that will vehemently denounce any whistleblowers. You need a premium X account to apply at DOGE. And whistleblowers will be advised to take their material through X to DOGE, where that material will die, rather than train any pattern recognition.
Trump tax cuts for corporations already hole us $3.8T over 10 years. I bet that will still go through.
Let's get millions unemployed and pass those onto our sweet corporate overlords and give them million dollar per year comp packages. Yay! Make Corporate America Great Again!
75 comments
[ 3.6 ms ] story [ 164 ms ] threadFor it to be actionable, it will require congressional approval, as the GAO and the rest of the American civil service's operations are already codified in law - not executive order.
The real question is how the incoming administration plans on effecting such a desire on such a huge number of people.
The US system has been designed this way for over a century after the spoils system became unpopular.
Also, I've bumped into you multiple times on this forum talking about governance, and while I appreciate the zeal PLEASE read an introductory book on Civics - you seem to have a cursory understanding of how governments are designed.
I'd recommend the AP Gov curriculum for the US.
Who are you to decide for other HN users what they know or don’t know?
And why do your opinions even matter in determining what other HN users know about ‘governance’ or ‘how governments are designed’?
My opinions don't matter, but the fact that you make very basic mistakes around how checks and balances work, as well as how institutions are run in the US seems to show this lack of elementary understanding of civics.
If you just want to kvetch, so be it.
But if you want to have an actual serious discussion about these topics, actually understand these intricacies.
It doesn’t make sense to continue writing the same opinions after self declaring those opinions don’t matter…?
Declaring your opinions are ‘facts’ in an HN reply, doesn’t magically transform or transmute them into bonafide facts…
So this seems about as coherent as random LLM output.
Edit: And I can also declare the above to be a ‘fact’… and it will carry the same weight too.
Now no executive in my lifetime has ever shied away from spending every dime they could squeeze out of Congress, but maybe this one will be different.
You can slap lipstick on a pig, but it's still a pig. Same with presidential task forces.
A Department with actual staffing, budget, personnel, and legal authority can only be created by Congress.
Presidential task forces can only give non-binding advice to a President.
The key thing here is the "Due Care Clause." The administration is required to implement our laws with "due care." If there's a law on the books the administration is required to enforce it. The means and expected effectiveness of that enforcement are often not specified.
I believe you're referencing "budget resolutions" which are not law and have a more complicated relationship to the process.
https://www.usa.gov/federal-budget-process
... who promptly pronounces it "dead on arrival".
Which isn't actually true. They still use the executive branch proposal as a baseline. They, too, are supposed to authorize payment for the programs that they've passed laws to create. Usually, there's somebody in the room whose constituents benefit, and they can insist that it continue to be funded.
And of course this time around, the President will have a Congress who is controlled by his own party, so the relationship will be less hostile. In all likelihood they will end up putting back some programs instead.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doge_(meme)
Does undocumented immigration suppress wages or not.
If it does, can we say the same thing about the current President and the current VP.
Just look at where basically every austerity policies lead the countries they were implemented in.
Edit: It's apparent most people commenting haven't actually read TFA. You should!
That said, 5% might be possible. That would cover half of the interest payments on the federal debt in a year.
It also depends if they're going for one-time or continuing reductions. Obviously the latter is preferable. And cost-shifting to the future doesn't count.
Outlays jumped over $2T in 2020 (3rd column, 127th row). We all know why.
Outlays have not come down to anything close to pre-COVID levels. We all know why.
Cutting $2T from a $6.7T budget would not even return to 2019's pre-COVID outlays.
Seems doable to me.
Federal Net Outlays as Percent of GDP have been around 20% since ~1980:
* https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/FYONGDA188S
They jumped to 30% in 2020, and are on a downward trend, with 2023 being at 22%.
Technically true not down to 20% in 2019, but not as horrendous as many people think.
For example, if you require your house to get inspected for code, you may want to increase the size of your planning department so that code inspection can occur within the day.
Can the environmental assessment be done in parallel to other necessary paperwork?
The correct size of a department is probably not 100% utilization of employees, but more like 80% to allow for slack. If you're 100% utilization, the demand is greater than the ability of employees to complete tasks within reasonable time, then you're undersized. At 100%, if demand surge, then waiting time will obviously increases.
Why not both?
Some paperwork aren't boilerplate unnecessary cruft and required human judgement.
There is some paperwork needed but it isn't certainly no paperwork needed.
It's funny you use this as an analogy, because home inspections are notoriously pointless. They tell you stupid things, such as that the step to the house is 11" from ground, while code is 8" - meanwhile totally missing issues in the crawl space because "it is unsafe for us to go in there". I paid $500 to be lulled into complacency, and no amount of money for more inspectors to do the job "faster" would have convinced someone to find the important issues with the house I was about to buy. I'm not interested in paying even more money for more useless information. That's the point - scrub out these useless checks and parades of stupidity, which there is plenty of in both the home-buying process as well as in government.
I am only addressing one part of possibles issues that the government might have. If you want speedy and quality code inspection, you must be willing to staff and pay for it.
Regulation isn't simply a matter of too much or too little but also quality.
The government is a vast enterprise in many senses, but it isn’t a business operation in the same way a corporation or an LLC is a business. Applying traditional business thinking to government frequently fails because the purposes and goals are not the same. Government is neither for-profit nor non-profit. Its remit is entirely different from any other kind of structure.
It follows that the simplest way to improve efficiency is to increase spending whilst keeping headcount the same.
There are endless anecdotal examples in both directions.
American federal government institutions are expected to operate at immense scale while protecting and preserving the rights of the people who have business before it. There’s a certain amount of important inefficiency that this demands. Maintaining humans in the loop is one such thing that some in the tech circles think inefficient, but our government is designed to be by and of the people, for the people, so there’s a strong case to maintain people in the loop.
On the flip side, our laws allow inefficiencies to be introduced at the demand of private parties. Lobbyists have done a fantastic job at curtailing certain kinds of efficiency reforms at the IRS for decades because it served private interests. That is only recently changing, and only for specific populations.
after spending over a decade consulting in the public sector, I concluded public servants of any kind should not have collective bargaining. it's capture and it creates the perverse incentives at the root of most complaints about it, with existential consequences for the whole society. in several countries, entire agencies get created to get around having to hire unionized staff in existing agencies, and they're just 19th century cartels that aren't fit for purpose.
it's the fairest and most wise path.
the government is not a normal employer and it is not a firm that shares equity. it is an exception. while guilds are viable for trades, and professional societies self regulate, employees of the state have no collective interest other than that as citizens. where they act as a corporate body, they are a literal conspiracy to subvert the consent of the governed, and it deprives individuals of their agency to provide honest service to the public. where employees of the state can both vote in elections and have a collective special interest, they become a privileged class that is antithetical to any democratic principle or equality. they know this, and saying it out loud too often is why their candidate lost.
plus, union leadership savagely betrayed their members over the last 5 years thinking they were about to institute the socialism they were originally founded to deliver but accelerating it without needing the actual working class, so I'd bet a good 2/3 of employees would be glad to have the unions out. it's fairer than even/odd SIN cards, smarter than blunt slashing, and creates the opportunity for serious people to get into public service.
You know how you stop/reduce fraud? More regulation, the exact thing these folks want to avoid.
Some fraud is good, it enables processes to be efficient, so I doubt DOGE will tackle this.
Let's get millions unemployed and pass those onto our sweet corporate overlords and give them million dollar per year comp packages. Yay! Make Corporate America Great Again!