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PaperclipPerfector  1mo ago (text post)   35009 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of March 3, 2025

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As predicted last month, expect to see DOGE working with and through, not around or over, the Cabinet Secretaries. Expect DOGE to shift from government destabilizer (your employees owe reports to us... or else) to external consultant (DOGE comes in, looks at data, and proposes things that the heads may or may not take up). DOGE will not go away, but it's relationship to agencies, and thus their federal employees, will change.

This should have happened in the first place, but now its becoming more likely I think DOGE will have less impact on reducing spending going forward. Department budgets are like this entrenched Gordian knot and without a strong disruptor I don't see how they can be moderated.

(Assuming the leak is true, which is a big IF) Marco pushing back on cutting USAID is a case in point. Rubio, seeing USAID under his purview as Sect of State wants control of any cuts. So now you've got one more point of failure in the cost cutting. Marco would cut less than Elon suggests, probably wishing to keep 'soft power' elements and other things that give the State Dept more power or influence.

Department budgets are like this entrenched Gordian knot and without a strong disruptor I don't see how they can be moderated.

Non-defence discretionary spending is the easiest part of the budget to cut, grows slower than the economy over the medium term, and has been successfully cut several times, most recently the Obama-era sequestration.

You don't need DOGE to cut the discretionary budget - you need DOGE to make sure you still have a functional government after you cut the discretionary budget. And the so-called DOGE being led by Elon Musk as a private citizen with the ear of the President is noticeably not doing that. And if you are serious about cutting waste, fraud and abuse, you start with military procurement and Medicare - not with Politico Pro subscriptions and Bloomberg terminals.

I assume Senator Rick Scott will take the lead in fighting Medicare fraud - he has considerable experience of the area, having bilked Medicare for $2 billion as CEO of Columbia/HCA. The leading healthcare expert in Trump's OMB, Don Dempsey, has similarly relevant expertise, having been the head lobbyist for the Medicare Advantage providers who are the worst leeches in the system.

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