That DOGE Won't Hunt
by Sal Moriarty
“Meet the new boss, same as the old boss.” The Who / Won't Get Fooled Again
Have you heard of DOGE? It's been in the news a lot since the re-election of Donald Trump to the White House. DOGE is an acronym for The Department of Government Efficiency. As acronyms go, it leaves a lot to be desired.
To be clear, DOGE has no real authority. As many have pointed out, it's a think tank. In other words, they can make suggestions. It's up to congress to follow or ignore their advice.
DOGE, of course, is headed by the richest man in the world, Elon Musk, and Vivek Ramaswamy, a not-quite billionaire (Forbes says he's worth nine hundred and fifty million, which isn't bad). They are tasked with finding ways to slice the federal budget.
As with all politicians, they talked a big game before the election. Musk famously claimed, at a Trump rally, DOGE would cut two trillion (with a “t”) dollars from the federal budget, about a third of all dollars spent. That would be a big deal.
However, now that it's put-up or shut-up time, DOGE leadership has set a more modest goal for cutting the budget. The post-election target is five hundred billion (with a “b”) dollars. That's still a lot of money, more than I make in a year.
The problem is the majority of that money goes to pay for stuff most Americans are quite fond of, regardless of political affiliation. About sixty percent of the federal budget goes to health insurance programs (think Medicaid), Social Security (that would be a popular cut), and defense spending (I, for one, enjoy the Super Bowl flyovers).
That leaves about forty percent of the budget for possible cuts. This includes benefits for veterans and economic security programs (food stamps, childcare assistance, aid for neglected children, supplemental income for the low-income elderly, etc.). I don't know anyone who wants to cut veteran's benefits, although I know quite a few in favor of cutting assistance to the poor (not being religious, I support helping the poor).
The problem is if you eliminated both of those categories entirely, they each comprise a small percentage of the overall budget.
There's a lot of talk about cutting the number of federal employees, maybe by half. It's quite popular in some circles – weeding out the deep state, etc. But aside from the fact such a move would simply create more competition for your job, if you cut all federal positions, you're not even at five percent of the federal budget. Again, that's cutting all federal jobs.
Another potential target for spending cuts getting a lot of attention (and applause in some quarters) is eliminating the Department of Education. Alright. That's about five percent of the federal budget.
So, one could fire all federal employees (including those who process your Social Security check) and eliminate the Department of Education and we're all the way up to.... not quite ten percent of overall spending.
In addition, if all funding for transportation, national resources and agriculture, science and medical research, and law enforcement was eliminated, that's only about five percent of the federal budget.
We haven't even discussed interest on the national debt. That's about ten percent of federal dollars spent. With billionaires in charge, I doubt the money lenders are going to get stiffed the next four years.
Sloganeering and chest pounding is easy. Solving problems in a nation of three hundred and thirty million, with real obligations to its citizens, is difficult. The truth of the matter is if Americans are not prepared to pay more in taxes or see cuts to programs they love, or some combination of both, all the talk is nothing more than hyperbolic gas.
Same as always.
