SHALL WE STATE THE TRUTH?

www.reuters.com/world/us/musk-cuts-based...EMRzUAaoqAJdeQ%3D%3D



Musk cost-cutting targets agencies disliked by conservatives, not major budget contributors
DOGE claims $37.69 billion savings to date - a fraction of its $2 trillion target
Nine of the government agencies in Musk's sights were mentioned in Project 2025 report, including Education Department

WASHINGTON, Feb 12 (Reuters) - The first phase of the rapid-fire effort by Tesla (TSLA.O)
, opens new tab CEO Elon Musk and President Donald Trump to cut waste from government agencies appears driven more by an ideological assault on federal agencies long hated by conservatives than a good-faith effort to save taxpayer dollars, according to two veteran Republican budget experts.
Since Trump's inauguration on January 20, Musk has dispatched members of his Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) to scrutinize sensitive personnel and payment information in government computer systems and led a successful drive to dismantle two agencies - one that provides a lifeline to the world's needy and another that protects Americans from unscrupulous lenders.
But Douglas Holtz-Eakin, a former Republican director of the Congressional Budget Office (CBO), said the agencies Musk and Trump have targeted to date account for a tiny fraction of the overall federal budget, which is projected to reach $7 trillion this fiscal year, according to the CBO.
"They are not going to go into agencies that are doing things they like. They are going into agencies they disagree with," Holtz-Eakin, who has participated in past tax and spending negotiations in Congress, told Reuters.
Trump, a Republican, says he is "very proud" of what he describes as a vital initiative to turn off the spigot of wasteful spending. With Musk standing behind him in the Oval Office, Trump signed an executive order on Tuesday broadening DOGE's remit, telling government agencies to work with DOGE to cut staff and limit hiring.
Speaking to reporters, Musk responded to critics who say he is an unelected official who has been granted unprecedented authority by the president to dismantle parts of the U.S. government. "You can't have an autonomous federal bureaucracy. You have to have one that's responsive to the people," Musk said.
He pledged to find $1 trillion in savings through his efforts to identify fraud and waste in the government.
An online DOGE "live tracker" claimed on Tuesday that the department has saved taxpayers $37.69 billion since it began work on January 20 but did not provide evidence of how that figure was reached.
Of the 15 agencies Musk's team have targeted so far, nine were singled out for elimination or downsizing in Project 2025, a controversial 900-page blueprint compiled by conservative think-tanks to remake the U.S. government. The document claims many federal government agencies have been taken over by a left-wing elite who use taxpayer dollars to push a liberal agenda that is "weaponized against conservative values".
Trump distanced himself from the project during the 2024 election after an uproar over some of its more far-reaching proposals, but a number of the authors are now in his administration.
Bill Hoagland, a former Republican staffer and director of the Senate Budget Committee for more than 20 years, said the cost-cutting efforts so far have been designed to play to Trump's base, and have been "low hanging fruit for ideological reasons."
"The playbook has not been for the dollar savings, but more for the philosophical and ideological differences conservatives have with the work these agencies do," Hoagland said.
CONSERVATIVE TARGETS
There is little disagreement in Washington on the need to cut waste and fraud and make the U.S. government more efficient. The complaint by federal workers and Democratic lawmakers is the blunt force approach favored by Musk has upended the lives of thousands of public servants overnight.
Musk's team have taken over or sent DOGE workers into the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), charged with providing weather forecasting and climate data; the Department of Education, whose mandate includes prohibiting discrimination in schools and colleges; the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, which protects consumers from exploitative lenders; the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), the government's main foreign aid organization; and the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), which responds to natural disasters.
Many Republicans have long seen these agencies as pushing liberal agendas that are harmful to U.S. interests. Together they constitute a fraction of federal spending. USAID disbursed about $72 billion in aid in fiscal year 2023, according to government figures, or around 1% of total federal outlays.

what??? NO RESPONSE?? the TRUTH is out there, yet u ( collectively) think i am blowing smoke...TRUMP IS AND THE SMOKE SCREEN IS WORKING.....when the haze clears out, u will see a
the damage......the L.A. fires will not be the headlines and their damage will not be the worst.

It has always been very hard to cut back on government spending. The program you want to cut will cry out to the sympathetic media we are only a tiny share of the budget, don't cut us! You can save much more by cutting entitlements or the defense budget!

Why I think the solution is that you don't allow the budgets to increase every year. Baseline budgeting currently let's everyone's budget increase every year. If they took off every year from doing that, we could achieve real savings. The bureaucrats would get to decide which of their programs would be the first to go.

Elon Musk and Donald Trump have been too slow in reducing spending? I am surprised that got any spending cut when all these Biden appointed judges are acting as saboteurs!

Any cuts are a good thing compared to the Bidenflationary spending of the last four years!

Why I think the solution is that you don't allow the budgets to increase every year. Baseline budgeting currently let's everyone's budget increase every year. If they took off every year from doing that, we could achieve real savings. The bureaucrats would get to decide which of their programs would be the first to go. FRED.....THAT WOULD BE TOO LOGICAL AND CORPORATIONS AND GOV. DO NOT ADHERE TO LOGIC.

homeagain wrote: what??? NO RESPONSE?? the TRUTH is out there, yet u ( collectively) think i am blowing smoke...TRUMP IS AND THE SMOKE SCREEN IS WORKING.....when the haze clears out, u will see a
the damage......the L.A. fires will not be the headlines and their damage will not be the worst.

You make a long post that's just a cut and paste... you don't comment on your copied post... a couple hours later you whine about no response. Even in this little nugget you say absolutely nothing. You talk about a smoke screen and damage, yet you give no details, as usual.

This isn't worth a response because you don't take the time to read your own articles and then summarize your own articles. BORING... do better.

Rick wrote:

homeagain wrote: what??? NO RESPONSE?? the TRUTH is out there, yet u ( collectively) think i am blowing smoke...TRUMP IS AND THE SMOKE SCREEN IS WORKING.....when the haze clears out, u will see a
the damage......the L.A. fires will not be the headlines and their damage will not be the worst.

You make a long post that's just a cut and paste... you don't comment on your copied post... a couple hours later you whine about no response. Even in this little nugget you say absolutely nothing. You talk about a smoke screen and damage, yet you give no details, as usual.

This isn't worth a response because you don't take the time to read your own articles and then summarize your own articles. BORING... do better.

YA I'm sure it isn't worth it to u.....because it tells another side of the story, which does NOT adhere to your version.....IT SPEAKS FOR ITSELF...NO INTERPRETATION NEEDED.

amazing THAT THE FUTURE is vague for u.....

homeagain wrote:
YA I'm sure it isn't worth it to u.....because it tells another side of the story, which does NOT adhere to your version.....IT SPEAKS FOR ITSELF...NO INTERPRETATION NEEDED.

amazing THAT THE FUTURE is vague for u.....

Again, you just put a bunch of words together and said nothing. You post a bunch of crap and say it needs no interpretation... that's because you are unable to articulate and summarize anything you post. It feels like you are a 12 year old in a late 70's body.

What harm is Trump and his team doing, specifically, that makes rooting out fraud and waste so bad? If you don't have the ability to answer that question with your own words, then you are far too uninformed or you're not mentally capable of completing that simple task.

U know, IF the reading capabilities r just to scan a post or article, then your question to me is understandable... WHAT HARM? reread the post (any post about Trump's go fast and break things....)

I KNOW OF WHAT I SPEAK OF.......personal experience gives me that prerogative (just as a side note, IF the trend is to attack the poster. ....IT WILL GO TO TH RING. ENOUGH SAID.

homeagain wrote: Why I think the solution is that you don't allow the budgets to increase every year. Baseline budgeting currently let's everyone's budget increase every year. If they took off every year from doing that, we could achieve real savings. The bureaucrats would get to decide which of their programs would be the first to go. FRED.....THAT WOULD BE TOO LOGICAL AND CORPORATIONS AND GOV. DO NOT ADHERE TO LOGIC.

Which is why, to paraphrase Reagan, the closest thing to immortality known to man is a federal government program. None get eliminated, more are added, and the cost for each and every one of them goes up every year.

Fully 3/5th of the federal budget each and every year consists of individual welfare "entitlement" programs, that are nothing more, and nothing less, than the federal government levying and collecting taxes for the express purpose of providing individual charity to individual citizens and residents in the Union. That's not anything approaching the mandate given to, and the limits placed upon, the federal government by the federal Constitution.

To stop the federal waste, fraud and abuse, the individual welfare programs funded and overseen at the federal level must be eliminated. It can never be said enough times . . . the United States government doesn't have a revenue problem, it has a spending problem.