Government salaries are such a small percentage (less than 5% is what I'm seeing in cursory searches) of spending that it doesnt make a lot of sense to me that DOGE was a genuine attempt at cutting spending. I work in defense, and at least a few times a year, I see government contract money that could pay a dozen salaries wasted on equipment that never even gets installed. We have a government bought tool that cost $2million 8 years ago, and we plug it in when senators come tour our facility so we can pretend we use it. If anyone in the government cared about reducing costs, I don't think they would care too much about payroll. Its the equivalent of taking all the appliances out of your house because your electric bill was $200 when you take home $5k.
I won't pretend to know what the actual motives were, but financial "efficiency" seems suspect to me.
Doge did far more than cutting salaries, the salary cutting was almost entirely voluntary and actually a tiny fraction of what they were cutting. Mostly it actually is third party contracts being cut. You can see all the contracts being cut here: https://doge.gov/
Please don’t cite doge itself as if it’s a reliable source.
Citing doge as a source shows that your viewpoint is built on provenly bad info.
And Frankly it’s insulting to HN readers that it’s being cited given how well published it was that their estimates were grossly inflated, unreliable, and kept trying to claim credit for cutting things that were already ended.
Doge has not been proven unreliable anywhere I've seen, if you have data to show that please provide it. I have seen the kind of anti-doge news articles you are referring to but if you viewed the authors of those articles it was always folks who post entirely anti-elon or anti-republican articles like they are an attack ad placed by the democrat party and were debunked quickly.
Okay… well it was extensively reported like everywhere so I don’t know what you’ve been doing but it’s sure not reading the NYT, NPR, CBS or the similar.
Okay so you somehow haven’t seen any of the many many accounts of doge being extremely unreliable but today you’ve seen people tell you they are unreliable.
After hearing that, to you, surprising new info did you consider googling it or cross check it in anyway before replying?
have you so much as tried googling “are doge estimates reliable?” After hearing other people call them into question?
Anyway here’s the AI google summary for you to get you started:
Based on analyses of the "wall of receipts" posted by the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) in early 2025, their savings estimates are not considered reliable by budget experts, government contractors, and media outlets. Investigations have revealed that the claimed savings are heavily overstated, often misleading, and sometimes factually incorrect.
DOGE already address all of those political hit piece articles. The claims made in them were spurious such as that they could not use the full amount of the contract. DOGE addressed this criticism by saying over 99% of contracts end up fulfilling their full amount. I'd be wary of what you read in the news especially when it relates to politics. Those news sites even thought Elon Musk was saluting a long dead genocidal maniac when he waved to the crowd - but specifically only Elon Musk and not any other person who made similar waves - why would that be?
Tesla is a meme stock and will one day explode like a game of hot potato.
Going online and defending every poor decision musk makes won’t change the reality that these days musk is a drugged out buffoon with a penchant for white nationalism who pays people to cheat at videos games for him.
His main selling point these days is how He has a loyal core group of cheerleaders that sticks with him no matter what. It’s prolonging the inevitable.
I was talking to an applications engineer one night at the bar in a restaurant. The company he works for makes equipment for mass producing the large armament shell cylinders. One of the clients that bought their equipment was a missile manufacturer. He went on site and found the machine had incorrect tolerance and was producing deformed products. They also lied about the thickness of the material they planed on using. Finally when the DOD general asked him point blank, "Will this help us produce X missiles a year?" he said no and why. Turns out the contractor directly lied about their capability and yet retained the contact because they are one of the few companies that produces missiles. He never got a call back from the company because they wanted him to lie to the general.
This is the actual waste that needs to be looked before the checks are even signed. No way in hell DOGE or anyone in the current administration will actually look at bad spending. Specially now this administration likes the name Department of War. These are the same companies that bribe ... I mean donate to politicians to retain this corrupt funding.
Israel wouldn't take the Bradley Fighting vehicle because this know it was bad just by looking at it but the Pentagon doubled down and flawed designs.
Reminds me not to get tunnel focused with-in a company and keep looking around to see what outsiders are doing.
The talk about the AR-15 being flawed but not why. 1) Sold as a firearm that did not need to be cleaned and maintained which is 100% false. 2) It was a gas based system that push the debris in the barrow into the chamber. This is why Vietnam solders would place condoms over the end of the barrow. It took years to move it to the gas piston system which people use now.
I won't pretend to know what the actual motives were, but financial "efficiency" seems suspect to me.