2025 begins a new era in the American Government. New departments, slashing jobs and reducing costs for the common citizen. The U.S. Government remitted an estimated $247 billion in improper payments in FY 2022.
The Trump administration is instituting a brand new department. It is colloquially known as DOGE, or the Department of Government Efficiency. It is being co-headed by Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswami, and they have set some lofty goals for America. It has even inspired a new cryptocurrency. However, we have yet to know exactly how it will be structured and how it will operate.
DOGE has been tasked with basically restructuring much of the government; removing regulations to reduce expenditures and increasing government efficiency. Specifically targeting waste, fraud and abuse. At least, that's the intention.
According to the Washington Post, which published a partial DOGE wish list, some of these lofty goals include shutting down the entire IRS department, ending the Federal Reserve and improving defense spending. Of course, slashing the federal payroll and deleting DEI in education are two of the top priorities.
DOGE will have no official powers but will serve as a strong advisory group on government spending and waste, among other things. The U.S. Government has become bloated and morbidly obese with the amount of pork projects and others that, seemingly, have no practical use or reason.
Detractors say that DOGE is little more than an ineffective think tank.
Some of the incredible programs that taxpayer dollars are currently funding include:
- You've heard of facial recognition software, well the government has spent $6.9M studying “smart toilets” that can recognize an individuals...pucker print.
- $2.3M have been spent on injecting dogs with cocaine.
- $7M of your money was spent on studying “magic”.
- The NIH alone has spent $760M on 'diversity, equity and inclusion'.
- Washington D.C. will spend $2.6M to train Chinese prostitutes to drink more responsibly on the job.
These and nearly 6000 other pork barrel programs have been or are currently being funded. This is one of the reasons our taxes are so high and still growing.
Did you know the U.S. gives out more foreign aid than the next 9 countries combined?
There is significant bi-partisan support for DOGE. However, some on the Democrat side of the aisle, and even a few Republicans, are up in arms against the new program. They cite the fact that, for example, eliminating DEI government-wide would be difficult, if not impossible, to identify and police. They claim that identifying what might be DEI is very subjective and means something different to everyone.
As for now DOGE is basically a mystery machine that could have a drastic effect on eliminating much of the government as we have become accustomed to, or have little effect on anything. Most supporters, obviously, would prefer the former possibility.