One Way DOGE Might Work

 

I have previously considered this DOGE – department of government efficiency – to be led by Elon and Vivek.  My conclusion:

Even if Trump [because I am still not sure he will be inaugurated] and Musk get in, nothing like this will happen.  Can you even comprehend the weight of those who suck on the government teat?  Everyone who is anyone will fight against every action to reduce the spending.  Banks, the military-industrial-complex, heck, even Trump’s best supporters will fight this (“keep your government hands off of my Medicare”).

At most, Musk and his buddies will make some aspects of government more efficient – Blackwater will fix the DOD, Palantir will fix the CIA and FBI, etc.  You get the idea.    

I want none of that.

I have thought about one way it could work, but first a slight detour for a clue, from several days ago when the eleventh million government shutdown was threatening civilization:

With a Friday deadline to fund the government looming and Republican lawmakers at loggerheads over House Speaker Mike Johnson’s proposed stopgap spending bill, the conservative House Freedom Caucus is touting a plan to slash federal spending that conveniently leaves the bloated Pentagon budget untouched.

This is the one way DOGE might stand a chance to be implemented.  It doesn’t take a rocket scientist (none at NASA, plenty at SpaceX) to know that the spending trajectory for the United States is unsustainable.  Now, I am not saying next year or in ten years.  But, thinking long term, it just isn’t.  Tack on the exponential growth of Social Security and Medicare…you get the idea. 

DOGE can work if the DOD and the spook agencies want it to work.  And they will want it to work if they want to continue their fun and games; others in government will want it to work because the only thing backing the US Dollar is aircraft carriers and the stationary carrier in the Middle East.

Now, all government agencies have this desire for continued survival.  But Joe Biden, for all the incoherent things he said over the last four years, got one thing right – and I will paraphrase greatly: who has the F-15s?

It isn’t the Department of Agriculture or the Department of the Interior or the Department of Education.  It sure isn’t grandma and grandpa waiting for a return on all the money they put into the system for forty years.

If the DOD and spook agencies see that the only way they continue over the next fifty years is for all other aspects of government spending to be drastically reduced, well, that’s just what will happen.

Conclusion

Now, I am not sure such rationality exists in any department of this $7 trillion monstrosity.  But not everyone in the military and spook hierarchy is stupid. 

And they have all the meaningful guns.