The Story of Doge, as Told by Federal Workers

You can't forget what you never knew. Nobody's paying attention and nobody cares. If you disagree, then explain how we got here in the first place.

> I hope people don't forget what was done here

Read some of the LeopardsAteMyFace stories on reddit, and there are tons of federal workers that voted for this, and still are on the Kool-Aid, even as they are financially struggling.

One federal worker that voted for Trump, had his wife die during the mess, crossed multiple layers of hell to be rejected aid, dropped into poverty levels ... he still thinks that it was not Trumps fault. Trump just need "guidance", "temperance"...

Side note: he is also heavily religious so the overlap was not hard to spot, between religion and zealot worshiping.

They were, but the actual cuts needed (to entitlements) are politically impossible to make.

Elon was serious about the debt. Thats why he and Trump don't get along any more. After the initial DOGE efforts, Trump raised the debt ceiling a few trillion dollars and got a new spending bill passed that increase spending like another trillion dollars - obviously not concerned about the debt.

Do you have an example of a cut to something that was investigating Musk? I'm not saying you're wrong - I have no clue and I'm truly curious.

I think the self-dealing and getting rid of oversight was a very welcome bonus, but I think they genuinely thought they were the good guys coming to clean up government. Their methods were tragically ineffective as every serious person predicted.

We have fiscal issues, clearly, and they thought they were doing good work, but it was an absolute failure and many of the issues still remain, and were exacerbated by what DOGE did.

That’s what C- brains bring to a project.

This is a nice story but just doesn't hold up to the evidence of what was "cut".

The reason people lie it as a story is because it makes everything have a logical sense to it. It brings reason to the disorder, and people hate chaos so cling to this Machivaleian mirage of a plan. An evil plan is better than chaos. Even if it is not true.

However there _is_ an underlying reason to _some_ of the DOGE vandalism, and that is that Elon Musk's personal social media feed is a brain destroying fire hose of far right racism and conspiracy theories. One of the big boogey men of the far right racist conspiracy theories was USAID. So that is why USAID was shut down with the consequent loss of thousands upon thousands of lives. Because Musk believes bullshit he reads on the internet.

I suspect Musk didn't know what his own goals were. The whole thing seemed more about emotion than logic.

I believe you're correct that he viewed the bureaucracy as a sort of foe, but that idea is somewhat paradoxical. You need employees to do anything. Fire everyone and Trump ends up nearly powerless.

He sort of figured out the basics of how the government worked as he went along, but a little late at that point: https://www.reddit.com/r/mmt_economics/comments/1jdkz81/elon...

I was working for a federal contractor when we had a release go out that had a problem. Some digital service folks got sent in, arriving about the same day we figured out the environmental problem planted by the previous contractor for the program. The digital services folks were extremely useful in getting us in contact with other gov folks to speed up releasing the fix, but otherwise they didn't do anything. They took all the credit afterward though.

The US Digital Service has done a ton of great work in a thoughtful manner. Thanks Obama!

I hope a similar oral history will be done for 18F – it ran very, very lean.

People are having a tough period where they think their government doesn't care about them, to see so much wastage ignites the hard feelings that the "elite" has prioritised others than their own people.

I believe that is the reason why DOGE was supported by Trump, but I do think something like DOGE is needed but perhaps for better and less egotistical reasons.

Wait, has there actually been a reduction in federal spending in total? Or just in specific agencies?

It was the only thing to be optimistic about in this administration, but it sure didn't last long. We should all know that this was the last attempt that had a chance of addressing the national debt -- the only other way out is extreme inflation.

What metric are you looking at when you say "the size of government has vastly and consistently outgrown the private sector" - AFAICT, excluding 2020 and 2021 (which I think is reasonable), the federal budget has been between 17% and 25% of GDP for the past 50 years (where the fluctuations are more a function of variable GDP).

The number of federal government employees has also remained mostly flat for the past 50 years (and IIRC most growth in overall public sector employment comes from schools).

I don't know if this was in your lifetime, but Bill Clinton reduced government spending through the National Performance Review. Not only did he do it, but he did it in a planned and strategic way, that included an initial phase of research, followed by education and recommendations, which were send to congress for approval.

You'll notice that this approach is consistent with basic project planning and execution principles, and follows the principles of government set out by our constitution. In contrast, DOGE sidestepped the legal and administrative principles of the government, which led to cuts followed by retractions, which are ultimately more costly and wasteful.

Reference: https://govinfo.library.unt.edu/npr/library/papers/bkgrd/bri...

The most incredible piece of logical gymnastics I remember from civics/history class in high school was that during economic downturns, we need government to spend more to help people, and during economic growth we of course also need more government to manage all the new growth. At no point do we cut the spending we've added, because it would always hurt those who have jobs.

People like to criticize DOGE for going after smaller amounts (like hundreds of millions instead of tens of billions) but those are still hundreds of millions that could be put elsewhere, or even returned to the taxpayer or put towards federal debt. The biggest concern with DOGE is that much of the spending is just going to come right back during the next election cycle

> Everyone left and right instinctively knows this

That’s the first sign that a large group of people are going to something thoughtless and destructive.

Looking around at actual data from both gov and think tank sources, this quote from Pew is a good summary: “While the number of federal workers has grown over time, their share of the civilian workforce has generally held steady in recent years.”

But that’s not the whole story. The postal service is shrinking, the vast majority of those federal employees work for the VA, the amount of funding being directed by the federal employees has grown (because of budget growth), federal regulations touch more private sector activity than in the past, and state and local governments employ significantly more people than they used to.

DOGE’s focus on headcount was wrongheaded because the number of federal employees is not the problem. The problem is Congress (budgets and laws) and states.

Conventional wisdom is that federal payroll growth is massive, and that is just wrong.

> the size of the government has vastly and consistently outgrown the private sector in both times of feast and famine

The US government at the start of this administration was roughly the same as it was in 1970[1]. This, despite the addition of new departments (1970 is pre-EPA, for example), many new responsibilities, etc. And obviously the government has to perform all these services for 140 million more people than in 1970, a 70% increase.

Doing more with the same resources is a textbook definition of increasing efficiency.

1 - Seriously, you won't see the growth you describe in the data: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/CES9091000001

> they're also indirectly paying for it through inflation caused by government borrowing beyond their actual tax income.

Don't worry – unless we stop giving out tax cuts as well, we'll still be running deficits until Social Security and Medicare become insolvent. For the average taxpayer, it's about fiscal sustainability - "smaller government" may as well be a feel-good abstraction compared to that.

> DOGE may not be the right answer, but it's the first actual reduction in spending in my lifetime

On what timeline? The week of the first round of RIFs? The first month?

I assure you, as someone who works with in the space where DOGE has played, it will NOT be a reduction in costs in the long run. In fact, costs will go up because of the indiscriminate nature of "cost reduction". When the only people with knowledge of a system are removed, the remaining people cannot run it - no matter what AI they are given. At that point, you have to either hire back the people you fired, with a serious delay of important work, or you stumble for years until it can be figured out at the cost of delays, protests, lawsuits, whatever.

Considering firing everyone a reduction in costs is a shallow, short-term view.

I do not instinctively know this, no. I encourage you to take an evidence-based approach. The deficit has largely grown over the past 25 years because of foreign wars, tax cuts, and pandemic response.

And how much of the work that they did will be out-sourced to private contractors at 5x and cost+ rates, lining the pockets of right-wing donor's corporate coffers?

Even if you don’t give a f*ck about decency, it is simply irrational to do it like that if it were about cost cutting. The only goal of this can be to create trauma and more violence, like one person in the article rightfully quotes. This is to provoke people into violence, plain and simple.

> “The vibe they gave was ‘So, what is it that you do here?’ and ‘Why can’t AI do that?’” —TTS worker

From what I've read, this particular group of children naively thinks "AI" can and should do everything. As in, they think it's literally magic and have no clue how it or computing works. I remember reading about how one was asking on twitter how to use AI to convert word processor documents between formats, when that's a simple classic computing task. I'm afraid the next generation is going to think the only tool they need is a sledgehammer.

> I often find myself guilty of not reading the article but only the comments here myself, so in case this is you: Go take the time and read it, even if it's painful.

The problem isn't that we need another document showing how terrible these people are.

The problem is that we don't have people proposing effective, concrete steps to stop them.

I personally feel like I have done net good for society through my work and and how I’ve treated people and it felt like a slap in the face when Joe Biden personally said that I would be getting fired from my job at a federal contractor because I disagreed with him. I won’t ever forget what he did to me and I feel like people should be talking about this just as much as they talk about DOGE. I won’t speak too much about DOGE but I feel that it’s important to say my truth about the matter and that I feel a form of catharsis and justice in the dismantling of bureaucracy that infringed on my rights as a human being. I welcome anyone who would like to discuss this with me because I have much more to say on the topic.

It is very plainly visible that society has not been benefited much from the public service of many of those people. In fact, it has declined dramatically.

This should be the top comment.

Do your life perspective a favour and read the article.

If you're a US tax payer, do the future of your country a favour and read the article.

Classifying some spending as "mandatory" is a ruse to make people ignore the potential for any savings there.

The largest component of "mandatory" spending is health spending (e.g. Medicare), and it certainly isn't the case that Medicare is fully optimized. For example, is it overpaying for anything? Paying for things that are ineffective or unnecessary? Would it be better to means test certain benefits so that the government isn't making big social assistance payouts to recipients with a net worth over a million dollars? Is there any Medicare fraud?

The next largest and almost as big is social security, so what happens if we means test that program, or even just get rid of the reverse means testing in the existing program which makes larger payouts to people who made more money?

These things would all reduce "mandatory" spending, potentially by a significant amount, and there is nothing preventing that from happening except for the false insistence that it can't be done.