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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
The deficit is big because lawmakers actually want those programs for their constituents
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.
https://www.usa.gov/federal-budget-process
That's nice and all if there's independence between congress and exec branch. Exec branch wields total power in this admin and Congress just obeys.
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.
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.
Download this: https://www.whitehouse.gov/wp-content/uploads/2024/03/hist01...
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.
Can you explain why you think spending jumped in 2020?
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.
There is a good analysis (from a corporate perspective) in The Phoenix Project.
Yep, larger government with (arguably) a smaller/tighter mandate.
* 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.
Home inspections are notoriously claimed to be pointless. Until housing turns into a lemon market.
For those not clicking through, DOGE doesn't refer to Dogecoin, it stands for "Department of Government Efficiency."
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.
I don’t think any of the major players involved have any reason not to do those things is the issue.
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.
>legal immigration which suppresses wages so I guess it’s no surprise that what he really wants is to not pay people at all.
Does undocumented immigration suppress wages or not.
If it does, can we say the same thing about the current President and the current VP.
We sure can
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
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.
If so, the American federal government is the most efficient in the world, with no serious competition.
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.
it's the fairest and most wise path.
If employees, even of the government, want to get together to push for a change in their workplace, what right do we have to prevent that?
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.
Do you want a general strike?
> What DOGE should tackle is fraud, which is a known problem.
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.
More regulation does not stop fraud. There’s so many levers already they were to pull them. It’s an enforcement problem. Re-fund the police.
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.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betteridge's_law_of_headline...
Someone needs to come up with a law that any headline can be responded to by pasting this wikipedia link.
Such a cut would trigger a massive recession if not depression.
Repeat after me - a Presidential Task Force like DOGE is NOT a department.
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.
It’s possible to initiate such cuts, but whether they stay cut after the inevitable legal battles remains to be see …
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.
You'd be amazed what the executive branch is legally allowed to do. They don't have to spend a dime.
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.
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.
I'd recommend the AP Gov curriculum for the US.
> 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’?
> And why do your opinions even matter
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.
> My opinions don't matter,…
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.
Not really, the cuts have to be "initiated" by Congress itself.
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.
"Government can't do anything right. Elect us and we'll prove it."
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.
Surely a government office named as part of an insider trading scheme to pump a coin that burns tons of energy to exist will be ultra efficient.
It's named after the meme. The coin is also named after the meme.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doge_(meme)
*not an office of the government.
Put some points into Cope.
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