Yesterday, we launched the Musk Watch DOGE Tracker. This new tool authoritatively demonstrated that Elon Musk had been grossly overstating the cuts implemented by DOGE. While Musk claimed that DOGE had made $105 billion in cuts, the Musk Watch DOGE Tracker revealed that just $8.6 billion of those cuts were verifiable.
more accurately. you can complain about their method to reach their claimed goal… and about the fact that they aren’t reaching it.
IE their claimed goal is to save the government lots of money. Objectively the government spending less is a good thing. However losing things that the government does that help people, is objectively bad.
So yes, it’s both too much bad, and not enough good, if the dodge cuts, slash jobs, wreck social security, medicaid, medicare. Harm scientific research in medical and other aspects of life. Wreck the US’s soft power by killing goodwill programs that help other countries. Wreck projects that help our own people etc…
and so yes, if we wreck all the projects that help people and save lives… AND barely accomplish any savings in the process. That is an extreme double fail, in which something like DOGE can simultaniously be doing far too little, and far too much at the same time. (because they are making a huge negative impact to the quality of life for millions of americans… and they aren’t even close to making a visible scratch in saving money.
I’m gonna have to disagree with you there. Spending more wisely is a good thing. But simply spending less is not.
Agreed, though I think my point is badly phrased.
Ideal is getting the most positive results at the lowest cost, and doge is massively killing positive results, and barely reducing the costs.
Sorry to beat a dead horse, but I don’t even know if that’s the ideal. The most important thing is that the money is spent in a way that guarantees a positive impact on whatever specific problem that agency is attempting to tackle. Spending more than strictly necessary can be the difference between simply ‘kicking the can down the street’ vs picking the can up and getting it to a recycling center.
The only reason I decided to put my two cents in is that I think we need to be aware how much propaganda is getting pushed on the subject of “less is better!! always!!!”, which is simply not true. Remember, the smaller and more “efficient” a government is, the easier and faster it is to corrupt said government (which I realize is kinda tangential, but i think still applies).
They love their chainsaw analogy - this is like going to a surgeon to get an abdominal tumor removed, but the surgeon takes a chainsaw to your foot instead. Now you can’t walk and you still have a tumor. The doctor took both too much and not enough. It’s not hard to understand, but I guess they think it’s clever to pretend they don’t get it.