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Every day that passes offers new credibility and excitement for the public if they are following the new Department of Government Efficiency. Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy are championing the cause. Even better, we are learning more about the plans for the Department:
Leaders on the House Oversight and Accountability Committee announced plans this week to form a DOGE subcommittee in the next Congress. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) will serve as the subcommittee’s chairwoman.
The formation of the new subcommittee ensures that the activities of DOGE will not only get a great deal of attention, but its activities will be transparent to the public.
Although having Marjorie Taylor Green as the subcommittee chair may raise some questions due to her reputation as a rabble-rouser, she may be just the thorn to stick in the side of the other members to keep them on task:
‘No topic will be off the table,’ she said. ‘The goal of DOGE is to bring accountability and GUT useless government agencies.’ Greene said she expects the subcommittee’s work ‘will expose people who need to be fired.’ ‘The bureaucrats who don’t do their job, fail audits like in the Pentagon and don’t know where billions of dollars are going, will be getting a pink slip,’ Greene said. ‘Chairman [James] Comer and I are focused on delivering the mandate voters sent on Nov. 5th, and I can’t wait to get to work.’
Given her focus on pink slips, the question has come up about firing employees. But in his first term, President Trump was in the process of creating a new employment classification:
The executive order Trump signed in October 2020 made it possible for agencies to reclassify certain career federal workers in policy-related roles to a new “Schedule F” category of employment. If the order had been fully implemented, any employees moved into the new Schedule F classification would have seen their civil service protections removed, making them at-will employees and giving agencies much more flexibility to fire them. But because Trump signed the order just a few weeks before the November 2020 election, the policy didn’t see much light of day. President Joe Biden, after winning the election, revoked the Schedule F executive order during his first month in office. The reappearance of a policy similar to Schedule F is likely, but it would look different in a second Trump term. Robert Shea, a former associate director at the Office of Management and Budget during the George W. Bush administration, said a main distinction would be its arrival at the beginning, rather than the end, of the term.
Of course, we can count on the naysayers who will condemn the DOGE actions:
Oversight Committee Ranking Member Jamie Raskin (D-Md.), however, criticized the GOP-led committee’s plans for the new subcommittee. Greene ‘will chair a subcommittee to work with two unvetted billionaires who stand to receive billions more in government contracts and subsidies from the government under Trump,’ Raskin said. ‘That’s why Democrats will stay focused on waste, fraud, abuse and corruption. The government belongs to the people, not the billionaire oligarchs.’
One can only shake one’s head in wonder at the audacity of Jamie Raskin.
My hope is that this subcommittee, teaming with DOGE, will closely engage some key legislators who will energetically promote and celebrate the accomplishments of DOGE, keep the public abreast of their work, and help bring common sense to the management of government.
Discussion (34)
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Yes, of course it will. Just like it followed the money through the various Biden shell corporations, right Jamie?
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I posted this on X and Facebook:
"And all we are getting is another day older and deeper in debt. How much deeper in debt? 36 trillion dollars deep; 36 thousand billion dollars deep. (For context, we "only" spend about 900 billion dollars annually on defense.) We are the brokest nation in the history of broke nations and our current path is both reckless and unsustainable. It is time for change; real, substantive change; and a Department of Government Efficiency is a very good place to start."
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I join every American who wants a smaller yet more efficient government.
The fact that the Pentagon has no idea where over 800 million dollars has gone is a matter worthy of intense scrutiny. Then when Assistant Defense Secretary Hicks attempts to whitewash the matter by stating that the in's and out's of different divisions within the DoD are simply to complex for a determination of where monies have gone, it's easy to see that something needs to be done.
However, my fear is that with Elon, who reigns supreme as the Ultimate Big Tech, AI God Above All Else, now in charge of DOGE and with millions of "tech savvy" syncophants chanting "AI! AI!," we could end up with a much worse predicament than what we face now.
One example: Right now, if the IRS is concerned about my 1040 for 2023, they send a letter. I can address the matter & once I get thru a minor phone menu, I talk to a human being. This is a good feature. So I hope to heaven and back that human contact at various agencies like the VA, MediCare and Social Security will not be replaced with Elon's patented version of AI.
Here is where my concerns come from: Currently AI is ruining my interactions with other businesses. Triple A here in Calif recently got rid of having people immediately answer a call for roadside assistance. So I am at a truck stop, phone in hand, trying to hear a menu but background noises made it almost impossible to hear the menu choices. Whoever set up the AI program forgot to think about the real life conditions people face when trying to attempt this. It took me 20 minutes before I got through to a real person, as opposed to a wait time of ~4 minutes prior to this change.
Meanwhile I have received a non-requested package from my health insurer. Out of "courtesy and consideration" they have sent a small kit with enclosed butt swab tool so that someone in the household can provide a way for the colon cancer people to decide if I or my spouse have colon cancer. (Where is scatalogical comic Ali Wong when I need her?)
Within a day of that package, an AI generated automated phone message begins to contact us. Even pushing my phone volume control to its highest limit, I can't make out what is being said. I'm not sure if it is a scam related to some "e-check" service or if it is about the health care package. The recorded voice speaks too rapidly and too softly. In any event, at the end of the message I am given a phone number to call. Except it is not possible to make out the first two digits of the area code.
Days later, I find that this caller has left one message on our machine but despite repeatedly playing back the message, I can't make out the area code.
One thing this shows me is that in the rush to eliminate "inefficient, costly warm bodies" the companies doing this do not even bother to field test their AI substitutes to see if the new-fangled method helps out us consumers or is actually a total fail.
I notice how often Elon is glib about his impressive level of genius abilities. He also made a statement recently that people with high IQ's know what the end of any speaker's final words in a sentence happen to be before the speaker has spoken them. So he knows he doesn't need to listen to the full statement.
It's no wonder that given that attitude, despite possessing the genius IQ that he has, he has failed at marriage and with at least one of his adult children. Hopefully someone working with him at DOGE will be able to refine his thinking on the way forward before that way forward becomes a way backwards!
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I find that most of the time, the number I'm given to call is the number the call came from. So I can just look at the Caller ID, or simply press the button to "dial" that number.
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The calls to the house come over a land line, as is true for many residents in my rural community. We just don't get clear cell reception due to hills surrounding us.
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