Department of Government Chaos

It's no longer even remotely arguable that the inaptly named "Department of Government Efficiency" (DOGE) has not achieved its mission. 

It's mission, as laid out my Trump and Musk, was to root out not only government inefficiency, but waste and corruption. The original goal was to cut $2 trillion from the budget. This was, on the face of it, a ridiculous target. The total budget for 2024 was around $6.9 trillion, so they were claiming that they could easily trim 29% of government spending simply by making government more efficient and less wasteful, and by identifying corruption. It didn't take long for the target to be reduced to $1 trillion. According to DOGE's own website, they have made close to $150 billion in cuts, which sounds like a lot, but is only around 2.2% of annual budgeted expenditures. Even that $150 billion number is highly suspect. There are numerous claims of savings that involve contracts that had already been cancelled, counting expenditures that are already set to expire, and making ill-informed guesses about expenditures that may not even happen. Over 60% of the alleged savings contain no details -- so probably not real. 

The goal of identifying and eliminating corruption, no matter how you define it and how you count it, simply has not happened. We have a president who has no problem accusing people of imaginary crimes. Do we really think that any actual corruption that had been unearthed wouldn't have resulted in highly publicized "perp walks" led by the increasingly misnamed Department of Justice? What about waste? I have no problem believing that there is a lot of waste in the federal government. But how has waste been defined? Apparently the Trump regime definition is "anything that they don't like". Any Diversity, Equity and Inclusion programs and the employees associated with those initiatives are being classified as wasteful. From a policy perspective, an administration has the right to decide what they will prioritize, but claiming that a whole category of government programs, approved and funded by Congress (and signed by the president) is wasteful is disingenuous. 

Then there is "efficiency" -- it's right there in the name. To make something efficient you look at how you're doing it. Are there superfluous steps? Are there unneeded handoffs? Is the procedure unnecessarily complex? You then trim the process down to the elements that get you to the intended result. This might involve cutting staff. Although the typical businessman's knee-jerk response is almost always to cut payroll, which usually results in bad customer (or in this case, taxpayer) service. DOGE has gone through various departments and cut staff indiscriminately, while the core statutory requirements of the department are unchanged. Sounds like a recipe for inefficiency to me. 

All of this chaos, without any significant, or even insignificant savings. (And I'm not even getting into the Constitutional issues here). 

Trump, without any thought, had deputized someone with no knowledge of how government works to essentially remake the entire government. Should we be surprised at the chaotic results?