The agencies were democratically put in place for a reason. Removing them with no public discussion of the original reasoning is deeply undemocratic. At the very least, someone thought that the cost of having them in place was less than the cost to society of not having them there. Has that changed?
Angela Merkel was great at that — even when she had a majority anyway, she'd take care to act in such a fashion that ~half of the opposition voters approved.
“Deleting entire agencies” was not part of Donald trumps campaign afaict, his platform page is still live: https://www.donaldjtrump.com/platform
>>Has that changed?
'that' 'reason' for any government is to ensure its own survival till eternity. Though eternity might not be possible. Its really more on the lines that governments exist to ensure their own survival, and the survival of their interests. Its often a misunderstanding that Government work for the people, they just work for themselves. To that extent, unless the government is going down due to this very reason, Im guessing it doesn't make any sense to chop departments whole sale this way.
Another factor is budgets just don't work the way these people imagine, its not that budgets would reduce or that they would return some money back to the treasury. These sort of actions just mean that budgeting just goes on as is, the money that now is saved will be used up by the other departments. Im guessing the armed forces.
I think they know very well that the fences of democracy are in their way. That's why they want to dismantle the guardrails.
The danger in this situation is that the DOGE will dismantle the safety mechanisms of the state, some of which depend on the state inertia, i.e. it's much harder to execute a coup when there are 4 agencies with overlapping duties.
Time will tell, but it is an end of something for sure IMHO.
What I find very interesting is that in the early 1990s when the deficit hit 4.5% of GDP (1992) Congress actually viewed it as a major issue and decided to cut spending but now the deficit is above 6%+ of GDP and reducing spending is an extremely controversial topic.
You may even increase it and still reduce spending since it's such a small part of the spending.
For example, there are at least 1200 positions that need to be confirmed. It can take half the presidency to staff a full cabinet. I think we can agree that’s excessive.
We’ll find out more when the actual Trump administration starts I guess, but so far it seems like a broad concept that two guys can use for tweets.
It's (edit: going to be after Innauguration Day) a Presidential Task Force
Presidential Task Forces have zero power, as they can only give recommendations.
All this hyperventilating over DOGE is distracting from actual issues to worry about - like the upcoming showdown between Senate GOP Leadership and the Executive Branch over a number of confirmations.
What is “temporary” about validating new food or pharmaceutical products?
So exactly what are they good for while sitting around pontificating for years on end?
Even if they’re not temporary though, agencies should have clear goals, metrics, and be held accountable to those. For example how many times have we seen wasteful spending on opaque homelessness programs on the west coast with zero results?
In my opinion we need to rethink how agencies are funded. Why do we need to give a bloated government a big tax check instead of having agencies work hard to win customers and charge them fees? Agencies should also (sometimes but not always) be forced to face competition from alternative private providers to keep the pressure of competition on.
On the tech stack, it's like claiming that everyone should understand assembly. It's useful for some folks to know assembly, but the vast majority of folks don't care. They just want to use the stuff that's built upon it.
I have friends working for the CS department of one of the main Universities in Argentina. Their salaries are so bad that none of them makes a living - they all have second jobs or international grants. Two of them left to take positions in China and two more are considering it. The list of candidates for open positions is currently empty.
This is a direct result of the president's decision to defund public education at a moment where Argentina ranks 71 out of 79 countries in math (PISA 2023). And if Computer Science is doing that badly, I don't want to think about slightly less marketable careers.
Does Argentina need to reign in corruption? Yes. Was an adjustment necessary? Also yes. But what future are they building and who will benefit from it is far from clear.
I worry about cuts to departments that is on clean energy, EV, sustainability in general. (For thinking that Musk is in that industry so it wouldn't happen, there's consideration that cuts on Govt support in that area will actually benefit the one that's ahead.. that's Tesla for the charging network, the EV sales, the peaker plant replacements, etc.)
I get that there's almost certainly a lot of bloat in the government, but just outright axing stuff doesn't seem like the right way to fix things. I also don't think that we bleed the most money on those anyways, and that entitlements and what to do with them are the real elephant in the room (but of course it's not politically expedient to talk about doing anything to those, at all, ever). Fixing our debt problem (and it's a real problem, no matter what crackpot modern monetary theory believers say) will involve some pain, including likely and unfortunately raising taxes and curtailing benefits somewhere.
DHS can easily be folded into the FBI and cuts made
TSA is a non-brainer, they don't really provide much security, let airports handle it on a case by case basis
Do they really need a NSA and a CIA?
Space force - just roll it into the air force
Bam - that's probably like 500 billion right there
"As a person who doesn't know anything about this, here are my ideas" is, er, one approach to things, I suppose (as someone else mentioned, you've just given the FBI a fleet of over 2,000 watercraft, which doesn't seem terribly sensible).
The reverse might make a tiny, miniscule amount of sense, but that way it is just silly. FBI is a subunit of DOJ with ~35,000 employees; DHS is an organizational peer to DOJ with ~260,000 employees; the active duty uniformed component of the Coast Guard — one unit of DHS — is around ~45,000 people.
Easily? You just folded the Coast Guard, FEMA, Immigration, and the secret service along with many other agencies under the FBI.
> Space force - just roll it into the air force
Already part of the air force.
We’re currently in the bloviating stage of this election cycle; once attention dies down I fully expect DOGE to achieve very little and to die a slow death.
The sad part of all of this is that the government could absolutely be more efficient than it currently is, while still providing the same services. But that’d take serious thought and consensus building, which the incoming administration has no desire to engage in.
There will be a website on Day 1 that will get overloaded with traffic and then it'll be soon forgotten about.
You're right but the Republican-led House and Senate absolutely do have the power to both do that and grant these guys the power to do it.
Everybody who stayed home, and decided that they'd be fine with a Trump Presidency... this is your fault. I know your whole litany of excuses. Let them keep you warm, while the greater of two evils actually does the evils they said they were going to do.
My hot take is that the two-party system isn't anywhere near as bad as people think it is. In countries with multi-party systems, parties often have to form coalitions in order to govern. In countries with two-party systems, parties have to do most of that coalition forming before the election. That's why we see far-left and center-left politicians in the Democratic party instead of having viable left wing parties.
One way or another, we get a coalition government. Is it better for those coalitions to be formed before the election or after? If it happens before the election, the electorate can see the results in time to change their decision. If it happens after the election, the fringe parties' arguments probably get discussed more, but there's no guarantee those parties will be part of the governing coalition.
What I should have said, is that as an outsider: I see lots of interviews with people who state that they are going to vote for trump (at time of interview), and they all seem to pick and choose from the things that trump says, some they take at face value, and others they consider to be just "the way he talk", campaign speech, or something along those lines.
Now, I don't know, maybe the majority of the people that voted for him actually want to dismantle institutions, maybe they don't and just saw it as an exaggerated way of saying that there should be some cutbacks. I don't know, I just don't think that it is an obvious conclusion from the result.
Exactly. This is really obvious but no one seems to acknowledge it. I even think the coalition dynamic can become a huge distraction from governance on its own. Could we think of tweaks to the process to make things better? Sure. But a wholesale rethink or uncritical mimicry is unlikely to produce something better.
there will be no big collapse, no big catastrophe. there won't be a 1991 Berlin Wall event.
things will just get shittier and more expensive, and people will go out less, buy less, travel less, have fewer kids, etc.
At the end of the day, this whole process shows that Musk and Ramaswamy are clowns.
Look, I’m all for addressing plastics and unhealthy foods, but is that really the outcome you’re predicting from the organization being discussed and the people running it?
Their words and past actions lead me to believe they are the “pro plastics” “pro unhealthy foods” people, and their effort, rather than some altruistic motivation you ascribe them, is in fact to remove the last vestiges of guardrails, however weak and inept, against them promoting those sorts of things to an even greater degree.
You want more things banned? Removing all existing regulations will not get you there.
I totally understand that the government feels bloated and we could cut costs in plenty of areas, but I think it's way more effective to apoint people into leadership positions that can take a real deep look at things and actually cut what makes sense. Any sort of rapid deep cuts is only going to harm us as a society and likely not actually save that much money. No matter how much money you saved, when you spin up something new that is basically starting from scratch, you're going to spend way more then just fixing what exists.
I think it's the classic coder's dilemma, The code's shit, do I refactor it in place or do I replace it from scratch. Any small or even medium sized project, replacing it from scratch could be the right thing to do, but when you get into large projects, replacing it is just not the right decision if you're trying to save money.
IMHO, refactor the government, don't replace.
Therefore…?
several of the authors have already received / been earmarked for appointments.
if someone says "i'm going to blow up a building", and then starts buying a ton of dynamite, it's pretty reasonable to assume they're gonna blow up that building.
https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/documents/2024-republican-pa...
Trump also mentioned it frequently in his speeches: " 'I say it all the time, I’m dying to get back to do this. We will ultimately eliminate the federal Department of Education,' he said in September during a rally in Wisconsin. "
https://www.cnn.com/2024/09/20/politics/department-of-educat...
That's puzzling because every time in the past few years that anyone in Congress has tried to take up addressing the projected insolvency of the Social Security trust fund in ~2033 Republicans have rejected any approach other than raising the retirement age.
It's not hyperventilating. It may start as a task force but it can easily and quickly be upgraded to a full-on department of the federal government by Congress.
It cannot easily be converted. The house margin is razor thin now that Gaetz and Stefanik gave up their seats for nominations, and filibuster-able.
And Senate leadership is status quo GOP with Sen Thune as Senate Majorty leader, and his allies Grassley and Cornyn, as well as shakey Senators like Collin and Murkowski reducing that majority, and the Senate is still filibuster-able as well.
And given the amount of controversy over a number of Secretary choices, it'll take 6-9 months alone just to go through the Senate Confirmation backlog.
For example, SR 15 in the 113th Congress ultimately removed the filibuster for judicial appointments (see: https://www.congress.gov/bill/113th-congress/senate-resoluti...).
That may be a moot point with regard to cabinet positions should the incoming Republican Senate go along with Trump's request for recess appointments, though.
It can't be a Presidential Task Force in the present tense because Trump isn’t President and Biden didn't establish it.
A lot of people who weren't paying attention are going to be saying "I didn't know", "How could've I known", "Why didn't anyone tell me", in the coming months and years.
It's unfortunate so many will suffer at the hands of the disengaged and the misinformed / poorly informed voters of this country.
I'd like to think they'll pay attention after this, but I thought the same thing last time around.
Partaking in the revolving door (early-mid Obama 2 era) and chatting with friends of mine who still work on the Hill about these kinds of topics.
> Even with the thin margins, there are ways for them to achieve their goals quickly.
What ways? Thin margins BY DEFAULT slow everything down. The house is functionally split 218-215 now that Gaetz and Stefanik have been nominated.
Just 3 defection means House votes fail, and managing a caucus is DIFFICULT - especially given how split the GOP is.
Rule changes can occur any time, but except for the initial adoption of the rules by a majority vote by each House at the opening of each Congress are, themselves, subject to the rules adopted by that House for that Congress, which may impose additional process.
> It can be removed with a simple majority vote
It absolutely can, but both sides steer away from doing so due to situations like this - either party inevitably becomes the minority as some point in the Senate, so Senate leadership in both parties prefer to maintain it.
> That may be a moot point with regard to cabinet positions should the incoming Republican Senate go along with Trump's request for recess appointments, though
And that's my point. With Thune as Senate majority leader, Recess Appointments are basically moot.
The whole point of Recess Appointments is to undermine the power of the Senate, which much of the Senate obviously opposes.