Trump’s ‘Terminator’ as presidential adviser
Well, he’s not the Terminator, but Elon Musk’s recent photo, wearing dark sunglasses, a black leather coat and black T-shirt, with the acronym DOGE in front of him, certainly makes him look like the Terminator. Perhaps this is Musk’s DOGE version of carrying his sink through the halls of government to “let this sink in,” as he did at Twitter when he fired 80% of the staff.
Trump has called entrepreneurs Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy to head up a new team called the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), which plans to reduce the number of federal employees and eliminate entire federal agencies in some cases. Ramaswamy was asked if they might also relocate certain federal agencies headquarters outside the District of Columbia, making bureaucracy more responsive to the American people. He responded, “It’s funny you bring up this point. ‘Yes,’ is the answer, but here’s why – they’ll say, ‘what happens to the people who live in Washington, D.C.?’ Here’s a dirty little secret in the federal bureaucracy today: Most people don’t even show up for work.”
Does Washington, D.C., just consist of people receiving salaries who do not show up for work? That might explain why D.C. has voted Democrat for at least 60 years.
In a video interview, Ramaswamy stated, “We expect certain agencies to be deleted outright. We expect mass reductions in force in areas of the federal government that are bloated. We expect cuts among federal contractors and others who were over-billing the federal government. So yes, we expect all of the above, and I think people will be surprised by, I think, by how quickly we will be able to move, given the legal backdrop the Supreme Court has given us.”
In response to Ramaswamy, Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., said, “I feel like I am at a revival meeting and I can say, ‘Amen, Vivek! Amen! I’m with ya.'”
Paul stated that he has already sent DOGE 2,000 pages of waste that could be cut. The senator said, “We have never had a president and team like Vivek Ramaswamy and Elon Musk that have this degree of momentum and decisiveness and frankly energy and drive to do it. That’s what it takes. It’s a monster. It’s a leviathan. But can you cut? Sure you can cut.”
Paul seems to think one of the ways to get through the red tape of making these cuts is a process called “rescission.”
“‘Rescission’ is when the money is sent over and the president says, ‘We don’t need this much money and we don’t need this many people, we’d like to send some back.’ This has to be voted on by Congress and that is a ‘rescission package,’ but it gets special privilege [that means you get a vote] and is only a simple majority. So, if rescission would work and all the Republicans stay together, you could cut billions, if not trillions of dollars in spending. … I think a lot could get done. We have never had an administration, including the previous Trump administration, I think, that was this aggressive. I’m all for it and the sooner we get started the better.”
So, of what kind of government waste are we speaking? Paul pointed out some recent government spending where the government spent $100,000 giving either tequila or gin to fish to see which one made them more aggressive. Then nearly a million dollars was spent determining whether or not giving cocaine to Japanese quail made them more sexually promiscuous. Then $750,000 was spent to determine what Neal Armstrong said when he first stepped on the moon. Was it “one step for man” or “one step for a man”? After spending all that money, they concluded that they could not tell.
So, obviously, we need more money for more research, right?
Every year Rand Paul publishes The Festivus Report. In 2023, the report tallied $900 billion in wasteful government spending “including an NIH grant to study Russian cats walking on a treadmill, Barbies [their faces] used as proof of ID for receiving COVID Paycheck Protection Program funds, $6 million to provide tourism in Egypt, and $200 million to ‘struggling artists’ like Post Malone, Chris Brown, and Lil Wayne.”
Being a struggling artist myself, I wish I had known about this, for I am in need of a ski boat.
The report said that when Congress approved the $800 billion in COVID Paycheck Protection (PPP) funds, Paul felt it would be a fiscal disaster, but then he says, “using Barbie’s face as proof of identity to steal taxpayer dollars was not on my COVID waste bingo card.”
Trump says that DOGE will be “The Manhattan Project of our time.” The plan is to cut roughly $2 trillion from the federal budget, or 30% of annual federal government spending.
The Epoch Times reported that in 2023 alone, “federal agencies self-reported roughly $236 billion in improper payments that either shouldn’t have been issued, were made in the incorrect amount, or did not have proper supporting documentation.” The U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) has a full report.
From 2002 to 2022 there was $2.9 trillion in improper spending, according to an Open The Books oversight report.
RealClear Investigations reported that in 2023 alone, the federal government mistakenly paid $1.3 billion to dead people.
I wonder if they also voted Democrat.
The Department of Government Efficiency, working as an advisory board outside the federal government, is long over due. My question is, is it enough to merely fire these people and eliminate these agencies? Normally, stealing is thought to be illegal. If people don’t go to jail – or worse – over some of this massive taxpayer theft, then what is to prevent them from setting it all back up under the next Democratic administration?
Maybe we do need the Terminator.