Summary
Elon Musk, co-head of the Department of Government Efficiency under Donald Trump’s advisory team, revised his claim of finding $2 trillion in federal budget cuts to a “best-case outcome” of $1 trillion.
Musk’s earlier target, dismissed as unrealistic by experts, had included the entire discretionary budget of $1.7 trillion.
While Musk and co-lead Vivek Ramaswamy plan to recommend cuts, specifics remain unclear.
Experts warn savings may require targeting mandatory programs like Medicaid, potentially causing hardships.
Oh? The places he’s looking at actually work fairly efficiently already? Or the inefficiencies are outside their control? The inefficient sections are the places he can’t go, like the DOD?
Any inefficiency likely comes from private industry bending the government over and stealing our wallet. I’ve been paid obscenely better as a contractor than my government counterparts, and I’m probably only seeing half of what my company charges. Entire departments are twenty contractors at a cost of $5 million per year and two actual government employees making a grand total of $60k each. Maybe double that at most by the time you include all the benefits.
But if you try to trim that, you’re cutting into the profits of private industry, and we sure as fuck can’t have that, can we?
And a bunch of bureaucracy in government with budgets, approvals and checks etc were put in place as cost cutting in the first place.
Or they’ve already had their budgets slashed so much that there’s nothing left to slash. Which is pretty common unfortunately.
But those things actually help poor people. Can’t have that, can we?