So lets flip this around, Lets say Harris had won and Mark Cuban was appointed to lead a similar government efficiency program. He starts auditing government programs and departments with his young tech geniuses, with all full security clearances necessary to review sensitive information (like Musk and the DOGE team), and finds all kinds of opportunities to reduce government spending, which President Harris is happy to cut. Are we equally as upset at Mark Cuban and his team of young tech geniuses?
Or do we not want any spending cuts or audits of government programs looking for savings opportunities?
I want to know, are we upset with the messenger (Musk and DOGE) or the message (we have a $2 trillion dollar annual federal budget deficit that is a hair on fire spending emergency)?
This feels like a hair on fire debt emergency, per MMM himself. The federal debt is currently $36 Trillion with annual revenue of $5 trillion with spending of $7 trillion. Imagine a case study with a family in $360k of debt, making $50k a year and spending $70k a year, they would be absolutely roasted and ripped to shreds. What would we want to see to help them with their case study? A line by line accounting of their spending looking for opportunities to cut spending and then look for ways to increase their income.
In what world does the government NOT already do audits?
You also may have heard of an institution called the Office of the Inspector General (OIG). You should read some of their reports sometimes. Sometimes the reports get ignored; many times they are acted upon. It doesn't really make the social media cycle.
Let's do a thought experiment. One hypothesis is that this is an honest audit of government looking for fraud waste and abuse. The other hypothesis is that this is a naked power grab designed to consolidate political power, punish political enemies, illegally sideline Congress, reduce regulation of Elon Musk's companies specifically, and give additional power to other political donors.
Here's two potential actions. Which supports the first hypothesis and which supports the second?
a) The OIG is suddenly the most important office in the US government.
b) Key members of the OIG are dismissed without warning.
Which of these actions supports the first hypothesis and which supports the second:
a) Cost savings are documented in normal government databases that track such contracts in an auditable fashion that aligns with government accounting principals.
b) Cost savings are broadcast over social media. The website used to track it is riddled with errors and overstatements, and data cannot be tied back to other data sources. Attempts to document the savings largely find the social media posts are demonstrably bullshit.
You make the claim that this is about cost savings and deficit reduction. If that were true would you expect:
1) IRS funding to go up, which increases collections and reduces the deficit.
2) IRS agents to be laid off, which reduces audits of mostly wealthy Americans/political donors, and decreases government revenue.
Also related to deficit reduction, if this was about deficit reduction, would you expect the budget framework the president just bullied Congress into passing to
1) Decrease the deficit over 10 years
2) Keep the deficit relatively constant over 10 years
3) Increase the deficit by ~$2T over 10 years
