After Trump named them head up the new Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy decided to curtail waste, fraud, and abuse. To fish where the fish are, they contemplated eliminating three government agencies — the Department of Waste, the Department of Fraud, and the Department of Abuse.
Then Trump announced he would appoint crypto swindler Sam Bankman-Fried as
Secretary of the Department of Fraud, and David DePape, who hammered Nancy
Pelosi’s husband, to head the Department of Abuse.
“These appointees are highly qualified for these offices,“ Trump tweeted on Truth Social. “They have great chins.” Trump had previously promised Tech billionaires and Evangelical vicars that the chins of his cabinet would surpass those of the 1940 German General Staff in “chiseled manliness.”
Though the Bankman-Fried and DePape appointments were attacked by liberal media,
Republican Senators declared that America had clearly voted for disruption and
chiseled manliness.
Musk and Ramaswamy welcomed Bankman-Fried and DePape as “Jolly Good Felons.”
To not upset Trump, they pivoted to eliminating only the Department of Waste. “The way
to end waste is to end Waste,” Musk stated. He promised to shut down the entire
Department.
The New York Times editorial board defended the Department of Waste, noting its
achievements in diversity, equity, and inclusion. “In DEI training and DEI outcomes,
Waste is a superlative agency model. They provide on-call life coaches for each of the
76 genders and each of the 26 letters.”
Then an investigative team at Fortune published a bombshell: THE DEPARTMENT OF
WASTE DOES NOT EXIST. Neither did the Departments of Fraud and Abuse, which
have never existed. There is no trace of them in any government document.
Musk and Ramaswamy admitted that their job would now be more challenging. They
hired McKinsey to list every bureau of waste, fraud, and abuse in each of the 2,000
government agencies.
Four weeks and $49 million later, McKinsey reported that waste, fraud, and abuse were
not concentrated in specific bureaus. They were highly decentralized throughout the
tangled webs and jumbled snares of the bureaucracy.
Moreover, even if waste is obvious, it often receives enough political support to prevent
savings. Farm state legislators assure that over $30 billion a year for farm subsidies is untouchable. (One wag asks if the mohair subsidy assures a sufficient supply for Army
uniforms if World War I returns.)
The McKinsey report was equally pessimistic about preventing fraud:
Tax fraud costs the federal government over $1 trillion a year, Yet Republicans
proudly demand that IRS fire tax auditors. Medicare and Medicaid fraud costs taxpayers $100 billion a year. Yet DSHS would be called the Gestapo and shut down if it employed the same anti-fraud tactics as private insurers.
After reading the report, Ramaswamy said, “Let’s forget about waste, fraud, and abuse.
We will just decimate all the bureaucracies.”
“You idiot,” Musk shouted. “Decimate means reduce by a tenth. We must demidiumate
the bureaucracy, reduce it by half.
“When can we start dismissing every second employee?” Ramaswamy asked.
“Right now,” Musk replied. “There are two of us here and you’re fired.”
“Lucky me. I am no longer responsible for government efficiency,” Ramaswamy
responded.
Pretty rich for the fraudster-in-chief to create a posse to root out fraud! I assume the new president is already pardoned.
Appointing “crypto swindler Sam Bankman-Fried” in DOGE is unbelievable. The incoming administration is trying to out-do the corrupt Harding administration (Teapot Dome), administrations before federal civil service was enacted and, dare I say, the first Trump administration.
Thank you for this piece. The Department of Government Waste or DOGE is so George Orwellian sprinkled with Joseph Heller’s Catch 22: set up a new federal department or agency lead by inexperienced individuals Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy with clearly axes to grind (who’s going to watch this agency’s “waste, fraud and abuse”?). Cutting government spending has long been on Republicans’ list, – salivating over the mere idea – because they don’t like government spending. Cutting waste, fraud and abuse is catch phrase too many Americans take to heart. Like ‘lowering grocery bills’ or ‘replacing Obamacare/ACA with a “concept of a plan”. Not to mention another driving reason Mr. Clifford forgot to add: Trumps’ tax cuts 2.0 in 2025 for the top 1 percent has to be paid for. Or will create a hole in the budget even larger than the one passed in 2017.