[HN Gopher] DOGE puts $1 spending limit on government employee c...
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DOGE puts $1 spending limit on government employee credit cards
Author : impish9208
Score : 128 points
Date : 2025-02-20 21:10 UTC (1 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.wired.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.wired.com)
| wewewedxfgdf wrote:
| I felt a great disturbance in The Force, like a million SAAS and
| cloud companies crying out.
| bagels wrote:
| Who administers these cards?
| AlotOfReading wrote:
| The GSA system works through Citibank and U S. Bank, which
| take a small percentage off the top.
| codingwagie wrote:
| There have been alot of companies getting funded to create SAAS
| for the government.
| factorialboy wrote:
| Magazines and news media will suffer most. SaaS / B2B contracts
| larger than a certain amount won't be on employee credit cards.
| AlotOfReading wrote:
| Using cards is the preferred procurement method for expenses
| under the $10k threshold. I suspect that covers a _lot_ more
| than magazines and news.
| factorialboy wrote:
| Not employee cards
| AlotOfReading wrote:
| The article directly states that this applies to the GSA
| smartpay cards. Those are limited to approved purchases
| under the micro procurement threshold under GSA
| directives.
| factorialboy wrote:
| Exactly my point. Micro-Purchases.
| AlotOfReading wrote:
| The micro threshold is $10k, as I said earlier.
| factorialboy wrote:
| Yes, I get that. You may be underestimating the size of
| typical PubSec deals.
| AlotOfReading wrote:
| I'm not talking about the multibillion dollar agency
| deals, I'm talking about day to day procurement like
| equipment, printing costs, office supplies, etc. You
| know, the routine purchases that keep the government
| running.
| heylook wrote:
| Orrrrrrr you misunderstood and have been doubling down
| repeatedly when the real numbers are literally on the
| same screen as your comment.
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43121043
|
| >>>>>>>>>
|
| Guess what? You can see all this information, because of
| government transparency (not DOGE):
|
| https://smartpay.gsa.gov/about/statistics/
|
| >> GSA SmartPay statistics for fiscal year 2024:
| $39.7 billion in total program spend. $506
| million in refunds earned by agencies/organizations.
| $441 was spent on average for each transaction.
| iAMkenough wrote:
| How do you figure? Is this conjecture based on the propaganda
| out of DOGE? The media spend they're purporting are also over
| that certain amount.
| factorialboy wrote:
| No. Employee cards are not used for significant purchases.
| They are for employee expenses.
| alaithea wrote:
| Not exactly. They can be and are often used for larger
| provisional purchases. For example, when we wanted to get
| Slack or any SaaS, it was put on a charge card so we
| could start using it quickly, but that would start the
| clock ticking on an official procurement, which entailed
| legal and security reviews, etc.
| factorialboy wrote:
| Exactly my point. Serious pubsec procurement is not done
| on employee cards.
| iAMkenough wrote:
| That is incorrect. They are for business expenses, like
| buying gas to fill your company car while traveling.
| BobaFloutist wrote:
| That seems pretty low.
| factorialboy wrote:
| Magazines and news media will suffer most. SaaS / B2B contracts
| larger than a certain amount won't be on employee credit cards.
| tartoran wrote:
| > larger than a certain amount
|
| Larger than $1 is in this case zero, there's nothing one can
| buy for $1 on a credit card. I'm not sure why they chose this
| amount and didn't just set it to 0. Not sure when this is
| coming but soon government employees will need to bring their
| own paper and other needed officeware from home, unless they'll
| have to bring toilet paper and soap as well if the cut is too
| deep. At the same time the billionaire class has nearly doubled
| their wealth and nobody is batting an eye for it. Strange times
| we're living indeed.
| eitally wrote:
| Afaict, they're doing everything the easy way. I wouldn't be
| surprised if the CC bank doesn't allow a $0 option, but DOGE
| doesn't want to actually administratively cancel all cards,
| either, so they're left with this.
| alaithea wrote:
| Government workers were already making do with a lot less
| than is generally accepted in the private sector, especially
| after the GSA conference scandal of somewhat over a decade
| ago.[1] During my time as a federal employee, many government
| offices had no soap at the kitchenettes, and some had no
| coffee. Folks tended to bring in their own drip-coffee pots
| for the office.
|
| [1]: https://www.npr.org/sections/itsallpolitics/2012/04/03/1
| 4993...
| jamesgreenleaf wrote:
| https://web.archive.org/web/20250220174125/https://www.wired...
|
| I forget where I read this, but shutting off the cards was part
| of the playbook when Musk took ownership of Twitter. If I
| remember correctly, they shut off the cards and waited to see who
| complained. Apparently they discovered a bunch of subscription
| services that no one had even signed into or used at all, just
| paying out for years.
| lelandfe wrote:
| Couldn't find much.
|
| https://www.businessinsider.com/elon-musk-ends-many-twitter-...
|
| > _Twitter will no longer be covering several costs or paying
| for a number of perks made available to employees, some for
| many years, for example. And the maximum amount allotted for
| work-related trips has been limited, as those trips are also
| set to become rarer._
|
| > _The allowance for a mobile phone bill is now $50 per month
| and the daily allowance for food while on a work trip is now
| $75... Meanwhile, the overall limit on expenses for any kind of
| work-related travel has been "revised" by seniority level_
|
| Searched for things like "expenses," "cards," "subscriptions,"
| etc.
| tecleandor wrote:
| Yeah, you don't even have to look on employees perks. Can
| easily go to the list of hundred (or hundreds already) of
| SaaS and similar stuff available in my company, and see
| contracts in the hundreds of thousands a year that nobody
| know who's using it. Or multiple contracts with the same
| function. Or Hashicorp contracts. :P
| alaithea wrote:
| That sounds like more of a failure of management than of the
| employee charge card system. They should be screening those
| charges and periodically reviewing contracts anyway.
| _DeadFred_ wrote:
| Or instead of guessing we an take them at their word:
|
| "We want the bureaucrats to be traumatically affected. When
| they wake up in the morning, we want them to not want to go to
| work"
|
| https://www.nytimes.com/2025/01/11/books/review/administrati...
| duxup wrote:
| DODGE is that new middle manager who thinks they know how
| everything works but doesn't... and isn't smart enough to ask.
| rqtwteye wrote:
| And gets a big bonus for the "savings". And gets promoted
| before the consequences are seen.
| duxup wrote:
| I wonder what the DODGE credit cards look like...
| alaithea wrote:
| Dumbest change ever. The employee charge cards are there to get
| rid of red tape. Now workers will have to spend $100 of their
| time filling out forms to buy $50 worth of office supplies.
| eitally wrote:
| This is the equivalent level of pettiness as removing free
| coffee from offices.
| alaithea wrote:
| Many government offices had no free coffee already. This was
| the case in the mid-teens at the Eisenhower Executive Office
| Building, which houses the Office of Science and Technology
| Policy (OSTP), where the federal CTO and CIO sit, and the
| National Security Council, just to name a couple.
| vonmoltke wrote:
| I spent the first 9.5 years of my career at a large defense
| contractor. We never had free coffee.
| sitkack wrote:
| Just one person taking a coffee break to go get coffee
| obviates any savings. The free coffee isn't there for the
| staff, it is there to save the org money.
| selectodude wrote:
| The federal government is so worried about the appearance
| of spending excess taxpayer money that employees set up
| water clubs and coffee clubs where the employees all chip
| in for a water cooler and a coffee machine every month.
| TheCoelacanth wrote:
| Even dumber than that. The cards are there to make sure that
| the federal government doesn't pay state taxes.
|
| This is literally going to cost the government more money.
| alabastervlog wrote:
| When all the options that would effectively reduce the
| deficit[0] with minimal pain (best cost/benefit) are off the
| table because you're pretending they're not real (i.e. you're
| operating from a model of reality that is fiction) all you're
| left with are performance, lies, and excessively-painful-for-
| their-benefit options, so that's what we're getting. All
| (more or less) of their actions may be expected to fall into
| one or more of those categories, because it's just about all
| they've got, by their own decisions (about how to relate to
| reality).
|
| This is _activity_ so they can pretend they 're doing
| effective things. That they're not effective, or even getting
| them _farther_ from their stated goals, doesn 't matter to
| them. Doing effective things isn't an option when you've
| ruled all those options out up front. Headlines demonstrating
| to some segment of society that they're doing stuff is what
| they're after, not efficacy (they can just lie about the
| efficacy, and have been)
|
| Checking up on wacky stuff like this to make sure claimed
| "savings measures" aren't actually costing _more_ money is
| something the independent IGs Trump illegally fired at the
| beginning of this term might do, and have done. Firing them,
| especially given why we even have them in the first place
| (Nixon--whose fall is also the trigger for all this we 're
| dealing with now, a faction of Republicans decided they were
| going to work toward a place where their guy couldn't get
| taken down so easily, even for grossly illegal activity, and
| here we are, they did it) should have set off every alarm
| bell there is.
|
| [0] Read CBO and GAO reports some time if you have an
| interest in what _good_ ideas for this might look like.
| Spoiler alert: it 's gonna become clear after a lot of boring
| reading that no serious plan won't have something akin to
| "restore taxes to 1990s levels" right at the top, #1.
| duxup wrote:
| I worked for a company that at one point was worried about
| wasteful expenses.
|
| Eventually to solve this resulted in a system where a $40 pizza
| lunch went to a committee of completely disconnected morons who
| debated it and would then forward it to a VP to make the final
| call. Probably a couple thousands in time costs with the
| paperwork and people time involved ... for $40 of pizza. Oh and
| they had lunch while they debated.
|
| I got an email from the committee once, I told them to forget
| it and I would buy my team pizza with my own money.... they
| actually tried to get me in trouble for that.
|
| These kinda dumbass middle manager politics sound like they
| help (to people with no work experience...) but they're more
| costly in the end.
|
| Thankfully we were bought and the new CEO did away with it.
| sitkack wrote:
| That is exactly why there are discretionary spending limits,
| if the overhead for sending the $40 pizza to a committee
| isn't priced in, then every cost will blown out.
|
| Every meeting should have a, "this costs $$$ per hour to run
| this meeting" clock.
|
| They don't care, destruction of the federal government is the
| point. Congress needs to do their job.
| Henchman21 wrote:
| The majority in Congress have -- rather obviously -- been
| paid off with luxury trips and RVs and _trips to Russia_.
|
| We are truly fucked, you know?
| duxup wrote:
| Hey man Thomas is totally proud of that RV he paid for
| .... well didn't pay for... also didn't pay to park it...
| hunter-gatherer wrote:
| Yeah, I was telling my wife last night that if we live
| long enough we might get to read some really interesting
| books from (to be) former SVR/GRU types about the time
| they made assets from most of th oval office.
| tgsovlerkhgsel wrote:
| No. Now workers will not spend the $50 on office supplies,
| either paying for them out of their own pocket, or doing
| without.
|
| Either way, they're saving $50, either by stealing it from the
| employees who'd rather pay themselves to be able to do their
| job, or by causing hundreds of dollars worth of damage to the
| productivity because someone spends 2 hours hunting for an
| unused pen instead of just grabbing one from the supply box in
| the corner.
| lenerdenator wrote:
| That's the point.
|
| These are people who want to prove, regardless of anything,
| that government is less efficient than private enterprises...
| particularly _their_ private enterprises, who would be happy to
| help you with your problem, dear citizen, for a nominal fee.
| asah wrote:
| there's a bit of legit thinking that it'll scare employees into
| not charging things, to avoid the paperwork...
| rgbrgb wrote:
| Worth noting that it is not at all dumb if your objective is to
| degrade the power and effectiveness of the US government. There
| are effective people in charge this time who know exactly what
| they're doing here.
| jpcom wrote:
| If you want to fund government employees you can do so from your
| own pocketbook at any time, there's no law preventing you from
| doing so. Taxpayers, however, require accountability for the
| taxes they pay in a functioning democratic republic.
| grayhatter wrote:
| huh? what idea are you trying to convey?
| subjectsigma wrote:
| How the fuck does kneecapping the ability of government
| employees to purchase things on a credit card increase
| accountability? Either they're monitoring purchases or they
| aren't, it isn't any more difficult to do so with a credit
| card.
|
| Like, you do understand that all purchases on a CC are
| inherently digital and thus logged by default?
| jpcom wrote:
| Lots of things are logged. Like 290 year olds getting social
| security benefits. Logging is a strong start, but by itself
| not enough.
| throwway120385 wrote:
| > Like 290 year olds getting social security benefits.
|
| Please do share what you're referring to here.
| pizza wrote:
| Have you considered that DOGE is an opaque, unaccountable
| bureaucracy that is motivated to optimize for ragebait? Who
| don't seem to know the consequences of their actions, or have
| any skin in the game if they make mistakes? Who have been given
| alarmingly high level of control over some of the most
| sensitive pieces of information and governance of our
| government, and never made any effort to assure the public that
| they aren't acting carelessly? And for some of these services
| they have basically left broken, there is an obvious conflict
| of interest when Musk suggests that the government buys
| replacement services from him?
|
| You're asking the people to act in good faith but it doesn't
| seem like DOGE either understands or cares that there are a lot
| of people who have basically had their contributions and
| service to the country basically shattered overnight, because
| Elon wants to get x amount of likes from a certain culture war
| faction.
| briandear wrote:
| Nobody cried for the Keystone pipeline workers that lost
| their jobs. There wasn't much of a whimper when Bill Clinton
| cut 400,000 government jobs. The duplicity is obnoxious. Even
| Jon Favreau, former Obama speechwriter lamented that Obama's
| team should have done some of what DOGE is doing.
|
| https://www.yahoo.com/news/obama-bros-doge-stuff-
| ve-14192594...
| dkjaudyeqooe wrote:
| You don't seem to get that the money is spent when Congress
| allocates it, not when a public servant puts it on a credit
| card. You want accountability talk to your representative.
|
| This will just make government less efficient as it goes
| through extra steps to request invoices and post payment, or
| perhaps even spending petty cash.
|
| It will exclude government from buying certain products where
| this isn't possible.
|
| Of course this is all quite irrelevant, since it's a publicity
| stunt for the people who are not interested in saving taxpayer
| money but hating and destroying.
| jpcom wrote:
| If they need more they can get an increase, what's the issue
| lenerdenator wrote:
| Obtaining that increase implies further bureaucratic
| overhead. That's time (and thus money) that they didn't
| used to have to spend in order to get a job done.
|
| You're also positing that the people in a position to grant
| the increase will do so in good faith. That's the opposite
| of Musk and Trump and their M.O.
| dkjaudyeqooe wrote:
| Again, wrong end of the pipeline. It's just more busywork
| to do. The staff is already responsible for what is spent
| on the card and to match it to approved spending and their
| budget.
|
| Just building in more red tape and expense to a system.
| 8note wrote:
| as a taxpayer, id like the costs of each of these broad actions
| to be analyzed add shared for public review before doing them.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > Taxpayers, however, require accountability for the taxes they
| pay in a functioning democratic republic.
|
| Accountability to taxpayers is a really weird excuse for
| _bypassing_ Congress on changes in whether and how money
| Congress has directed with law is actually spent.
|
| And by "weird" I mean really "war is peace, freedom is slavery,
| ignorance is strength"-level abuse of language.
| throwway120385 wrote:
| They're just angry because sometimes people in Congress spend
| money on things they don't like in places they've never been
| to to serve constituencies they're not part of. And they look
| at the $4/month or whatever that that costs and they would
| rather have the extra cup of coffee than see bags of food go
| to Africa or Gaza.
| resist_futility wrote:
| This is just adding to the bureaucracy, instead of approving
| all purchases on the card at once now they have to get approval
| for each and every purchase.
| jpcom wrote:
| Bureaucrats revel and rejoice in paperwork
| johnnyanmac wrote:
| [delayed]
| johnnyanmac wrote:
| >Taxpayers, however, require accountability
|
| What do you think is unaccounted for? Especially on an
| electronic credit card?
| ryandrake wrote:
| It's almost as if, instead of "rooting out waste and corruption,"
| they are really just griefing workers, doing all sorts of big and
| small things to make their lives uncertain and miserable...
|
| If they were really attacking waste, why haven't they so much as
| made a peep about military spending?
| mzarate06 wrote:
| We are in fact seeing press attention regarding military budget
| cuts the Trump Administration's looking to enact:
|
| https://www.cnn.com/2025/02/19/politics/hegseth-military-maj...
| vacuity wrote:
| Indeed. It's moreso the case that they view everything as
| "waste and corruption" and are making everyone miserable, but
| if you look at the (currently) top thread[1], it's a
| deliberate move at that.
|
| [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43120677
| amelius wrote:
| This whole situation makes me think of a child who says "If I
| were president for a day, I would ..."
| physhster wrote:
| Anybody would do a better jobs than these clowns.
| morkalork wrote:
| Nah, this is like saying a child could make a Jackson Pollock
| or Basquait painting. It looks like random chaos but is most
| definitely intentional.
| alabastervlog wrote:
| Trump's platform the first time he ran was practically "what do
| bumpkins in country diners say the government should do?" Those
| of us with connections to those kinds of people and places
| recognized shit like "build the wall!" because we'd been
| hearing "they ought to just build a wall" for _decades_ from
| our dumber associates. (though half the time this took the form
| of "they should just place landmines the whole length of the
| border" and at least he didn't pick _that_ part up)
|
| This did have the interesting effect of making some of his
| positions cross-party populist, like his neoliberalism- and
| free-trade-skepticism. Normal republican voters hate that stuff
| and will tell you so, as do lots of left-wingers, but both
| parties (from about 1980 to 2016) loved all of it. He also
| talked some weirdly leftist talk, a few times, about
| healthcare, but with no specifics or clear plan, and that
| wasn't something he ended up taking action on. Same reason,
| though: Republicans have been told to hate "Obamacare", so they
| do, but lots of them also hate our existing healthcare system
| and insurance companies especially. Another gap between the
| voters and what their own party's officials were delivering,
| for him to exploit. They'd 100% eat up universal healthcare if
| a Republican promoted it, it's all in the letter next to the
| name.
|
| It's why I figured he'd at least get the R nomination, if not
| win the whole thing, well before most folks considered him
| anything but a joke candidate.
| tdeck wrote:
| Except most children have empathy.
| koch wrote:
| I'm reminded of the story of the Air Force designing cockpits for
| the "average" pilot, only to find that
|
| > out of 4,063 pilots, not a single airman fit within the average
| range on all 10 dimensions [0]
|
| Surely, there are so many employees in general that probationary
| employees aren't needed. And surely, most government employees
| don't need to purchase things on a daily basis, so we can inhibit
| their credit card use. And most contracts about XYZ aren't
| crucial, so we can cancel them.
|
| But, my goodness, there is so much nuance and breadth to the
| things a government does, let alone the government that is
| responsible for the largest military and that props up a big part
| of the world economy, that compounding these rash decisions will
| have far-reaching and serious blowback. I'm all about efficiency,
| but why be stupid about it?
|
| The plane that we're all on is being dismantled midair, the
| engines have been turned off, and we're just gliding now. Gliding
| or falling, anyway
|
| [0] https://www.thestar.com/news/insight/when-u-s-air-force-
| disc...
| UncleMeat wrote:
| Because this isn't about efficiency.
|
| The people radicalized to these actions are trying to _destroy
| the government_. They haven 't been especially subtle about it
| in their writing. The ideal outcome is not the same government
| outcomes but at 70% of the cost. The ideal outcome is the
| collapse of the federal bureaucracy so that the lords of
| capital can scoop things up and create their little kingdoms.
| WesolyKubeczek wrote:
| Is the US going the way the aftermath of which is described
| in Neuromancer, or is it going to be Snow Crash, complete
| with visas to every city state, and the "US" part that's left
| deluded that they are in control?
| Joel_Mckay wrote:
| The film describes the "Despotism" (1946) cycle, and
| ultimate conclusion:
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WdVB-R6Duso
|
| Keep in mind people voted for this knowing the plan, but
| this book documents human behavior in general politics
| under a new ruler:
|
| "The Dictator's Handbook: Why Bad Behavior is Almost Always
| Good Politics" (Bruce Bueno de Mesquita, Alastair Smith)
|
| https://www.amazon.com/Dictators-Handbook-Behavior-Almost-
| Po...
|
| Removing political guardrails and community due-process is
| what is happening.
|
| A king and his fool is unsustainable, thus... people with
| brains and money will simply start to vote with their feet
| and leave while they are able. Have a great day =3
| kibwen wrote:
| _> people with brains and money will simply start to vote
| with their feet and leave while they are able_
|
| That worked in 1935. It doesn't work in 2025, in a world
| with nuclear-tipped ICBMs. We're all stuck on this planet
| together now; there's no escaping from a US with a mad
| king at the helm.
| Joel_Mckay wrote:
| "nuclear-tipped ICBMs"
|
| Not unless someone is suicidal, the ultimate glass-cannon
| is practically only an economic-weapon designed to
| bankrupt anyone foolish enough to compete in such
| programs.
|
| Besides, there are rumors of far worse things now like
| geriatric Fox media. lol =3
| rbetts wrote:
| Lately, I feel like I'm living in the William Gibson
| "Bridge" trilogy meets Douglas Adam's Zaphod Beeblebrox
| timeline.
| averageRoyalty wrote:
| I haven't seen anyone in such a position write such a thing.
| Can you provide a link please? I'd love to read up.
| gaganyaan wrote:
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_2025
| skyyler wrote:
| Yeah, the plans have been laid out in the public for a
| while.
|
| We're seeing it happen in real time.
| alabastervlog wrote:
| There are also various public talks and other published
| pieces by members of the admin, laying out exactly what
| they're planning to do (and now are doing) and why.
|
| I dunno when they figured out they can just conduct
| conspiracies in public and nobody will call them on it,
| so there's little reason to bother with secrecy, but
| that's how they work now, and it's been weird to watch. I
| first noticed it with Bush II when prominent members of
| his administration published multiple pieces (before he
| was elected) calling for war with Iraq, and stating that
| the US should take essentially any half-decent excuse to
| go to war with Iraq even if that excuse itself is bad,
| then... did exactly that! And got away with it!
| Inexplicably, the media would interview them on the topic
| of going to war with Iraq and _didn 't_ make all the
| questions about that. It was barely a footnote to media
| coverage of the run-up to the war, which was so damn
| weird when anyone could just go read the text of these
| pieces themselves, with familiar names on them, telling
| us exactly how they were planning to fuck us. Didn't
| matter, they could just straight-up publish "here's how
| we're going to screw the public" and then screw the
| public exactly that way, and laugh all the way to the
| goddamn bank (literally, in many cases--they made so
| friggin' much money off the post-9/11 security apparatus
| and the wars)
| dgb23 wrote:
| There's a website that mockingly tracks the p2025
| progress. I can't say whether it's accurate or fully
| honest.
|
| I assume it's exaggerating but is pointing at some red
| flags and parallels:
|
| https://www.project2025.observer/
| pizza wrote:
| Not sure how true this all is, but it's a centralized
| discussion of different systems of thinking I've seen
| associated with the current administration's tack
| https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2024/07/18/jd-
| vance-w...
| alaithea wrote:
| If you prefer video, this explains it pretty well.
|
| https://youtu.be/5RpPTRcz1no
| calimariae wrote:
| That video is terrifying.
| sundaeofshock wrote:
| If what happened to USAID isn't evidence enough for you, I
| suggest you go and read up on Project 2025. Below is a link
| to the chapter on the commerce department where they call
| for the dismantling of NOAA. As the head of the Office of
| Management and Budget, Russel Vought is one of the most
| powerful men in the executive branch and was one of the
| main architects of Project 2025.
|
| Enjoy your reading.
|
| https://static.project2025.org/2025_MandateForLeadership_CH
| A...
| lelandfe wrote:
| This isn't comprehensive but has been helpful:
| https://www.project2025.observer/
| _DeadFred_ wrote:
| "We want the bureaucrats to be traumatically affected. When
| they wake up in the morning, we want them to not want to go
| to work"
|
| https://www.nytimes.com/2025/01/11/books/review/administrat
| i...
| nas wrote:
| The "starve the beast" strategy
| (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Starve_the_beast) has been
| around for a long time and is something that some right
| wing conservative people want to do. E.g. Norquist's quote
| that "My goal is to cut government in half in twenty-five
| years, to get it down to the size where we can drown it in
| the bathtub.".
|
| As someone else mentioned, this isn't only about improving
| efficiency of the government but also about it doing less.
| So things that currently you would be getting from the
| government you would no longer be getting. You might agree
| or disagree with this idea.
|
| Predicting what Trump is going to do is not easy. I don't
| think he really knows himself each day what he will get up
| to. Mostly draw a lot of attention to himself, seems the
| main goal. He's doing fantastic on that front. Regarding
| policy, he is a lot more purposeful vs his previous term
| and he is pretty closely following the Project 2025
| playbook:
|
| https://old.reddit.com/r/OutOfTheLoop/comments/1itd7xq/what
| s...
|
| https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1RHMnJmuv82n6OuY8KYm
| J...
|
| Enacting government policy primarily through executive
| orders is an "interesting" approach. I would say that's not
| how you want a government to work. Maybe Trump's extreme
| use of EOs will prompt some reform or maybe it will become
| the new norm. The other branches of the US government don't
| seem very interested in actually performing their job.
| throwway120385 wrote:
| The congress in 2021 seemed very interested in doing
| their job but the minority in the Senate did a really
| good job of obstructing anything and everything using the
| pocket filibuster.
| UncleMeat wrote:
| Yarvin's writing as Moldbug is very clear on the subject.
| Both Thiel and Vance are public admirers and have reflected
| Yarvin's RAGE (Retire All Government Employees) in public.
| Thiel acolytes and admirers are staffing DOGE, drawn from
| tech communities and web forums.
|
| They do not believe in functioning democracy but instead in
| a Randian "utopia" where the lords of capital run regions
| of the country as kings and the poor are turned into
| "biofuel."
| SigmundA wrote:
| >Because this isn't about efficiency.
|
| Being alive and happy is not effcient.
| AStonesThrow wrote:
| [delayed]
| _DeadFred_ wrote:
| We're going to get a great lesson on why 'command economy'
| style top down management doesn't work, from the guys who hate
| command economies.
| tw_wankette wrote:
| Aren't they taking away the 'command' part of the government?
| No government, no command.
| exe34 wrote:
| they will simply migrate the responsibility into the hands
| of a few billionaires who will act in their own best
| interest.
| kibwen wrote:
| This is committing the classic mistake of forgetting that a
| government is just a corporation with an army behind it.
| "The government" isn't going away; just the one where you
| had any semblance of say in its operation.
| akmiller wrote:
| > that probationary employees aren't needed
|
| Remember that "probationary" doesn't mean new. I just learned
| this, but apparently when getting a promotion it puts you back
| into the "probationary" period at your new role. So people with
| 10+ years of service are being let go because they had recently
| been promoted.
| hn_throwaway_99 wrote:
| Saw posts of national park rangers with 10+ years of
| experience who were fired for being "probationary" employees
| because they were recently promoted.
|
| It's really, really hard to believe I have anything in common
| with people cheering on this cruel incompetence.
| hunter-gatherer wrote:
| Hmm... interesting. Different departments might have
| different meanings then? I was in DIA nit ages ago and
| probationary only meant < 2 years.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| Yeah, probationary in most civil service systems is attached
| to a particular class, so if you move up promotionally, or
| (in many cases) into a new career path, you retain seniority
| but are in probationary status again for some period of time.
| Usually, failing probation at the new level without
| additional problems means that you have reinstatement rights
| at your last non-probationary class.
| akmiller wrote:
| Yes, and this example right here tells you how much
| research DOGE does (with anything they are doing). Highly
| inept people if measured by what their stated goal
| is...although we all know what the real goal is.
| kibwen wrote:
| There's a certain sort of anti-intellectualism that revels in
| the idea that if there doesn't exist a simple solution, then
| there must not exist any solution. It is either an inability to
| grasp the notion of complexity, or a childish refusal to.
| Therefore, any system that is too complex for them to
| understand must be demonized and destroyed.
| the_snooze wrote:
| It's a like the old McNamara fallacy. It's especially
| tempting for technically-minded people to fall into.
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McNamara_fallacy
| NetOpWibby wrote:
| Beautifully said
| scarab92 wrote:
| SpaceX flies rockets that are just good enough, according to
| their modelling and the specs of the parts, knowing that
| they'll lose a few discovering which areas need to be unproved.
|
| This is a significantly better approach to designing a
| lightweight rocket as you do just enough to succeed instead of
| overengineering.
|
| It's the same with firing people and hiring them back.
| Performance metrics are unreliable, but firing and then hiring
| back who you miss isn't.
|
| It's the same with cancelling charge cards, it forces people to
| make the case for which cards should be re-enabled.
|
| Progressives will hate all of this out of a hatred of Musk, but
| from a leadership perspective it's a brilliant strategy that is
| starting to be adopted by other leaders.
| avelis wrote:
| Ok. So for Musk I would like to cap the money borrowed against
| his stock portfolio to also be $1.
| azan_ wrote:
| I wonder what effect DOGE will have on attracting talent to
| government jobs. It was already challenging to recruit qualified
| individuals to government positions; with these changes, I
| believe the situation will worsen significantly.
| MattPalmer1086 wrote:
| The intended one I imagine. They said they want to create
| trauma for government workers.
| _DeadFred_ wrote:
| "We want the bureaucrats to be traumatically affected. When
| they wake up in the morning, we want them to not want to go
| to work"
|
| https://www.nytimes.com/2025/01/11/books/review/administrati.
| ..
| threeseed wrote:
| There is a podcast from New York Times with interviews from
| government workers [1].
|
| From all accounts the firing was incompletely indiscriminate
| and so many people who you would think would never be fired
| were e.g. US Army Corp of Engineers working on flood
| prevention.
|
| And so I can't imagine anyone wanting to join the government
| when there is a strong chance you will be fired in the medium
| term with no notice and with no reason. All after you've
| physically moved you/family to Washington because remote work
| is no longer available.
|
| [1] https://www.nytimes.com/2025/02/19/podcasts/the-
| daily/trump-...
| lenerdenator wrote:
| > I wonder what effect DOGE will have on attracting talent to
| government jobs. It was already challenging to recruit
| qualified individuals to government positions; with these
| changes, I believe the situation will worsen significantly.
|
| The idea is to replace these government positions with private
| positions.
|
| Remember feudalism? Some guy with all of the capital - which,
| in those days, meant arable land - basically got to dictate how
| things worked, because he had the stuff you, as a peasant,
| needed to live. He was called the king. If you didn't do what
| he wanted, your life got cut short. Government was just one
| guy's ideas enforced by his brute squad. In many ways, it was a
| sole proprietorship. Eventually, nobility was required to
| administer the land, and that nobility eventually turned into a
| structure that could keep the king somewhat in check, lest they
| carry out a coup. They became the administrative state. Today,
| we have legislative, judicial and executive bodies that - at
| least ostensibly - need to win election in order to do the same
| thing, thus replacing the nobility.
|
| That's the ultimate goal here: the dismantling of the
| administrative state. The administrative state carries out laws
| made by a body - in this case, Congress - that, at least in
| theory, puts society's desires at the center.
|
| A number of these laws directly impact the ability of capital
| holders to generate more capital. Since the people holding this
| capital think that the only reason humans do anything is to
| create more capital, they go to any lengths to keep society's
| "unprofitable" desires at bay.
|
| Since the accumulation of capital can result in monopoly, you
| will, at some point, have someone controlling all of the
| capital again. This is a return to feudalism. You won't be
| swinging a scythe in a field in a toque and tunic, but the
| structure will be the same.
| drstewart wrote:
| "Feudalism is when not everyone works for the government"
| lenerdenator wrote:
| Feudalism is when everyone works for the government.
| yongjik wrote:
| If any Silicon valley company did this HN will have a party
| roasting it.
|
| These days I'm convinced that the usual "The government can't do
| anything right!" pro-Trump guys are not saying it as a warning or
| complaint: it's an _aspirational_ quote for them.
| _DeadFred_ wrote:
| Everyone here has had management with overly tight 'you must
| track your time' and 'you can only work on XYZ tasks' (normally
| where XYZ is capitalizable or billable) requirements and we all
| know how that turns out.
| averageRoyalty wrote:
| I'm not American, but it seems this has been going for weeks now.
| Are these changes/this access to various things actually
| impacting normal Americans at all? I understand the impact on
| government workers, but I'm curious if this is actually changing
| peoples lives in any way.
|
| We were barraged for 6 months about how Twitter would fall over
| the next day when Elon took over there and took a radical stance,
| and it just didn't. I'm curious if this will be similar.
| jarsin wrote:
| The average American rarely deals directly with the federal
| government.
| iAMkenough wrote:
| But the effects cascade down to other levels of government,
| service providers and businesses in their area.
| throwway120385 wrote:
| The average American files their tax return with the IRS once
| a year. The IRS just lost 15,000 employees. This tax season
| is going to make 2020 look smooth and efficient and fast.
| jarsin wrote:
| The average american uses the one page form 1040 ez and
| just sends it in electronicly or in the mail.
| alaithea wrote:
| Tens of thousands of people are now out of work, with more to
| join them soon. The job market is already tight. That is going
| to have ripple effects throughout communities all over the
| country. We will probably see an uptick in housing
| foreclosures. At the same time, grant money for community
| support programs has been turned off, so these folks will have
| a harder time getting help.
|
| Farmers who produced food that was sent abroad by USAID are not
| getting paid, and will have stock piling up that they don't
| have a buyer for.
|
| Scientific and health agencies have been muzzled during a time
| when we are fighting bird flu (millions of flocks dying), there
| has been human transmission and there is a high risk of another
| pandemic (bird flu or anything else) coming along. People will
| die who wouldn't otherwise have to.
|
| The agency which protects Americans from predatory bank fees
| has been shuttered, so we can expect our banking (like $35 late
| fees) to get more expensive.
|
| I could go on and on, but our country is not Twitter; it's not
| even comparable, on almost any level.
| drstewart wrote:
| > I could go on and on
|
| Could you go on and on with any actual examples since all of
| your statements were riddled with "probablies" and "mights"
| and "wills"?
| johnnyanmac wrote:
| >I understand the impact on government workers, but I'm curious
| if this is actually changing peoples lives in any way.
|
| Well, our inflation rose to 3% in a month, a few people have
| died over all these illegal spending freezes, we had a repeat
| of the Saturday Night Massacre[0] where 6 or 7 judges resigned
| due to Trump wanting to basically hold blackmail over a corrupt
| Mayor's case to be temporarily dropped. Those are the most
| immediate and obvious effects seen after one month off the top
| of my head.
|
| >Elon took over there and took a radical stance, and it just
| didn't. I'm curious if this will be similar.
|
| I don't know why people say this when Twitter had clear changes
| to day to day use. Let alone to anyone investing in Twitter.
| Smaller content creators get even less organic engagement,
| celebrities are harassed more because of blocking changes,
| commenters get worse, more toxic community.
|
| The effects only aren't felt if you use Twitter to get news and
| you avoid comments, or an account. Even then Twitter makes it
| harder to view stuff without an account. The fall of Rome took
| years, if not decades. If you're just expecting anything
| software to collapse like a demolition project you need
| perspective on how people define "drastic".
|
| ----
|
| On topic: no, don't compare this to Twitter that no one needs
| in a day to day. The US economy will get noticeably worse, jobs
| will be harder to find and more people will be let go, The GDP
| will fall, and if March goes horribly a lot of old people will
| be on the the street dying. It's not going to all happen in one
| day, but lives will be lost over these reckless changes. The US
| isn't exactly doing too well with foreign policy either so
| that'll be the most obvious effect for you. Our country will
| probably shift to rely less on us goods.
|
| [0]: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saturday_Night_Massacre
| LorenDB wrote:
| https://archive.ph/k1EdO
| adamredwoods wrote:
| Guess what? You can see all this information, because of
| government transparency (not DOGE):
|
| https://smartpay.gsa.gov/about/statistics/
|
| >> GSA SmartPay statistics for fiscal year 2024:
| $39.7 billion in total program spend. $506 million in
| refunds earned by agencies/organizations. $441 was spent
| on average for each transaction.
| FollowingTheDao wrote:
| This is yet another thing that will help bring on a
| recession/depression. First they create unemployment and lower
| spending from the layoffs. Now anyone left cannot spend money.
| What effect do they think that will have on the economy?
| johnnyanmac wrote:
| Pretty clear at this point that Trump is not about creating
| jobs. And that DOGE isn't about government efficiency. I mean,
| he declared himself king. This is just a direct attack on
| America as we know it.
| jarsin wrote:
| They want the 10 year down to zero again. The only way it goes
| there is to force a recession.
|
| There is no other way to do it fast enough to blame the
| recession on previous administration that to up the
| unemployment rate fast.
| brink wrote:
| Once again, in this thread HN is putting on display how
| disconnected it is from the average American, and how little good
| faith it's willing to give a government it didn't get to pick.
| threeseed wrote:
| a) Based on polling, only 3/10 Americans support DOGE [1].
|
| b) There is widespread (almost unanimous you would imagine)
| support for reducing waste, corruption etc in government. The
| issue is _how_ you do it and whether you are negatively
| impacting people for little gain.
|
| c) And from what we've seen to date, DOGE has not found
| anything that wasn't already known long ago by the Inspectors
| Generals.
|
| [1]
| https://thehill.com/homenews/administration/5105472-donald-t...
| flutas wrote:
| > a) Based on polling, only 3/10 Americans support DOGE [1].
|
| and yet, here's an article that says the almost all of their
| focus group supports doge[0], saying explicitly:
|
| > "These swing voters are delighted by Musk's Trump-endorsed
| government housecleaning,"
|
| Got any sources for your "c" claim?
|
| [0]: https://www.axios.com/2025/02/14/arizona-voters-trump-
| elon-m...
| johnnyanmac wrote:
| Care to elaborate on your point? What's the "averqge' American
| as of now?
| readthenotes1 wrote:
| "so-called DOGE"
|
| The article is paywalled, but I would be willing to bet that
| there's not much discussion were those credit card transactions
| were made.
| mtmail wrote:
| https://archive.ph/k1EdO
| f154hfds wrote:
| As someone who has worked for a variety of companies, I've never
| been issued a company card. I've heard of the perk of course,
| normally presented as an efficiency thing to get around the
| reimbursement process. I guess I'm wondering (in good faith I
| think) why it would be newsworthy for a random company to stop
| issuing company cards to its handful of employees that travel a
| lot? It seems rather that this is part of an outrage mill
| obscuring a real debate that needs to be had.
|
| I hear a lot of outrage over DOGE and I don't particularly feel
| like I have a dog in the fight. I just think I've been through
| private downsizing events and I don't really know why the public
| sector shouldn't occasionally have similar occurrences. The real
| critique in my opinion is lack of professionalism but this gets
| somewhat subjective. Professionalism is very important of course,
| these people are human beings, some are close relatives of mine
| and aren't being treated respectfully.
| alaithea wrote:
| If your bank wanted to downsize, how would you feel about them
| doing it by allowing a rogue team of 20-something software
| developers access to all its most sensitive IT systems?
| tredre3 wrote:
| > The real critique in my opinion is lack of professionalism
| but this gets somewhat subjective.
|
| I think that's the point here, the overt pettiness from
| Musk/Trump. If they feel like employees shouldn't have company
| cards, then fine, just take them away! Surely it would be
| cheaper to cancel the cards than to keep track of all (now
| effectively useless) active cards?
| tgsovlerkhgsel wrote:
| The card is not a "perk". It's not there to make expenses that
| benefit you.
|
| For travel expenses, it gives the company more
| control/monitoring and a tiny percentage benefit because they
| get the equivalent of cashback/points, not you (for you, the
| advantage is that you aren't required to front the company the
| money).
|
| For non-travel expenses, it means you can spend company money
| on tools without wasting _hours_ over $20 in shitty
| bureaucratic spending processes meant for much bigger
| purchases. If you need a specific adapter for work, and your
| manager approves that, you can buy it from Amazon or your local
| retailer, rather than filing a request to add a vendor to your
| purchasing system so this $20 item can hopefully be delivered
| in two months.
|
| The alternatives are either you paying the $20 out of pocket
| because you don't want to deal with the hassle (i.e.
| essentially the business blackmailing you into donating money
| to them with the threat that your work would _really suck_
| otherwise), or you literally telling your boss, for months,
| that that urgent project is still waiting on that adapter,
| which is waiting on the approval that typically comes within
| 2-3 months.
| bayareabadboy wrote:
| Not going to be a popular comment, and this action is probably a
| little heavy handed, but the country has also be spending so
| egregiously for so long that it's probably not the worst thing to
| exercise some silly fiscal behavior in the direction of restraint
| for once.
| TomBombadildoze wrote:
| Unpopular because it's so flagrantly ignorant. How much do you
| know about the "egregious" expenditures by rank-and-file
| federal employees just doing their jobs?
| ushuz wrote:
| Maybe $2T too much?
| sf_rob wrote:
| USA government spending as a percent of GDP is on the lower
| side of developed nations (high 30s depending on the source).
| Our peers are Luxembourg and Norway, and we're well below
| France and Germany. Granted that we are one of the few
| developed nations that don't provide universal healthcare which
| biases us lower.
|
| While I'd share your concerns about fiscal sustainability,
| we're an outlier on tax receipts not spending.
| briandear wrote:
| The list of absurd spending makes me super angry; I never voted
| for climate change grants for Sri Lanka, or funding operas in
| Columbia or research in to Vietnamese bathhouses, or supplying
| birth control to the Taliban. There is also tens of billions in
| unaccounted for money that we sent to Ukraine. Billions also
| getting granted to various non-profits -- none of which I voted
| for and those grants were awarded not by an elected Congress,
| but by unelected career bureaucrats.
|
| Also seeing how many politicians have financial connections to
| orgs that receive government grants is disgusting.
|
| It's even more disgusting that apparently we have all of this
| spare money to burn when there are thousands of people in North
| Carolina and California suffering from the effects of fires and
| hurricanes.
|
| Democrats love to complain about "tax cuts for the rich," --
| the other side of that coin is the almost criminal level of
| stewardship of our tax dollars. Hard to argue for raising (or
| not cutting) taxes when the U.S. Government leaks money like a
| sieve.
|
| It's also ironic that the left has wanted cuts to the defense
| budget for decades, but when Trump starts to do just that,
| suddenly he's Hitler.
| asah wrote:
| what about gas cards for postal workers and other delivery
| people?
|
| https://www.google.com/search?q=gas+charge+cards+postal+work...
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