GAO finds billions in possible government savings, all without Elon's help Cost-trimming in the US federal government is all the rage right now – and a new report finds more than $100 million in savings available to the Feds by doing nothing but eliminating redundant and unnecessary IT investments. Those savings are part of a much more significant $100 billion in potential cost reductions …
The thing about the government: the taxes are higher for the rich than the poor.
If you save money in the government, there is less take-from-the-rich, give-to-the-poor. Even if you're giving back to the rich, the poor still have jobs with paychecks. Spending increases.
Saving money with the government is really only an issue if resources are being wasted - actual, finite resources. If paper-pushing is the issue, then it can be considered a make-work program or a reinvestment program. The latter are good: if not for such programs, everyone will have to fall back to welfare, or try and find a McDonalds job. Overall, in the long run, wages would decrease, fewer people employed by Gov, etc etc.
In the case where resources are spent - maybe we should conserve those. Copper mines, cobalt, unnecessary lithium battery investment for arbitrary government purposes. Those are things we really, actually need. So replace them (in most government usages) with sodium or lead batteries.
I fear that what's being gotten rid of in many cases is the make-work to keep people busy without causing harm (looking at you, TSA) where those people may fall back to welfare, or offset a slightly lower class who will fall back to welfare. In summary: shedding government jobs and/or expense largely won't help the country.
People will need busy-work for the time between when AI takes their job and a Dune/Star Trek/Terminator/Blade Runner/Foundation eradication of thinking machines drive.
They won’t be able to afford access to the leisure opportunities the A.I. efficiencies <cough> presents them with. LOL
Perhaps the writers of the Matrix got it right after all. I’m sure Molly-Mae Hague, Jimmy Donaldson, Khaby Lame, Charli and Dixie D’Amello, Felix Kjellberg, Addison Rae etc will be pushing them …wash those Blue pills down with some Prime (though that’s in the shit bin in Aldi these days).
"If you save money in the government, there is less take-from-the-rich, give-to-the-poor"
Not necessarily, if you save money in the government there is less take from the poor to pay the poor. Paying 1,000 people for pointless bureaucratic work is worth less than using that same money to invest in infrastructure and services. Better healthcare, education and roads is worth more than jobs for the sake of it.
Jobs for the sake of it don't make up for poor education, health and infrastructure...it is itself a cost cutting measure...because if the government can just offer you a pointless job it costs less than giving you a better education.
The problem the UK has with better education though is that as soon as people are well educated, they tend to leave the country because other than jobs for the sake of it, there is fuck all here that you can do that doesn't earn you more money and a better quality of life elsewhere for much less effort with much less competition...if you are UK educated (even to an average level) you are far more educated than folks in a lot of other countries...if you're British, have a fairly good British education and you speak at least two languages, you are basically a god in a lot of foreign countries...24ct gold and you'll be treated as such, whereas at home, you're fucking nothing because hardly any business owners in the UK value their employees. It's a race to the bottom.
UK employers seem to have lost sight of the fact that well paid employees are what make an economy. If nobody has any money to spend, there is no economy.
We don't have a cost of living crisis here, we have a price of labour crisis...if you look at Scandinavian countries, everything there is expensive but their taxes are about the same as ours yet the salaries are 2-3x the salaries in the UK...but the cost of living isn't 2-3x ours...because the higher salaries generate more tax revenue, taxes go towards things like childcare, infrastructure, transport etc etc...which reduces the overall cost of living for everyone...so some things are a lot more expensive, but some things you don't have to fork out a bean for.
Employees are paid more, which raises more tax, which pays for services and infrastructure that saves money. They also have tax systems that are fair, the rich are taxed far more heavily than the workers, but not to the point where it's unfair, I think the highest tax bracket most scandi countries have is around 25-30%...It's not fucking rocket science. There is a much smaller wealth gap in Scandi nations.
If there was ever a metric that accurately measures how fucked your country is, it's the wealth gap...the bigger it is, the shittier your country is for workers and the less sustainable your economy is.
The absolute extreme examples of a massive wealth gap is probably Dubai or Singapore...countries built on exploiting labour...countries like these rely on the rich and wealthy being loyal and the exploitation of insanely cheap, essentially slave labour...it's not sustainable and not stable.
> We don't have a cost of living crisis here, we have a price of labour crisis
OK, so what is your solution? As soon as a company pays its staff more it will go out of business in the UK...well at least in what is left of industry and probably any retail outlet, plus you have to get people who don't have the money to but the more expensive stuff....
The UK seems to be turning mostly a services/retail economy with most goods imported in my view, so to get to the examples you give we would need Trump like tariffs to get the price of goods up enough for the wages to rise accordingly....which in turn would spark a price/wage inflationary cycle. Welcome back to the 1970's (I started in the late 70's and I remember seeing eye watering percentage increases in the price of stuff at the company I worked for in from the early 70's - so glad I was at school then!)
Bottom line is that the UK is in a cost of living crisis brought about by the effects of COVID and Putin from energy to food through to housing, so for that have a downvote.
As soon as a company pays its staff more it will go out of business in the UK"
You are assuming that every company exists entirely to maximise profits against all other things and that any increase in wages will automatically increase the cost of their products rather than maybe reduce their profits a little. The non-public UK SME I work for just announced record profits in the many millions and could quite easily increase every employees wages by a couple of grand annually and barely see a dent in the annual profits or affect the lifestyle of the family who owns it. (about 350 employees, so that increase would be a single digit percentage of annual profits, which have been in the same ballpark for at least the last 10 years)
"As soon as a company pays its staff more it will go out of business in the UK"
That is a fallacy. If people are paid more, there is more money in circulation that will eventually feed back into the businesses, instead of trickle down, it's monsoon up. Where do you think the money in the system comes from? The 99% that are consumers, or the 1% that are hoarders?
"tariffs to get the price of goods up enough for the wages to rise accordingly"
US wages were already higher than here on average. The problems in the US are completely different to the problems we have here. We mostly export services to countries like the US. We've had wage and salary stagnation in the UK for nearly 20 years...what we're seeing now is the result of that stagnation. Had wages not stagnated, we wouldn't have such a fucked economy.
"which in turn would spark a price/wage inflationary cycle"
No it wouldn't, for two reasons. Firstly, increased money supply doesn't create increased demand for consumption linearly. There is only so much perishable stuff that can be consumed. Just because people have more income it does not necessarily mean they will demand more simply because they have more money...because...
Secondly, more money in the pockets of people that don't need to consume more can go towards other aspects of the economy...savings, assets, property, pensions, tax etc...you know, wealth producing mechanisms that contribute to narrowing the wealth gap and provide capital for expansion and growth.
For example, in your head, if everyone had more money...it would put more strain on everything (for example, lets say Cinemas, limited seating, limited number of cinemas, the only thing to do is put the price up right? Supply and demand!!), which is true, to an extent...but if more people had higher savings, bigger pensions, paid more tax, invested etc...there would be more available capital in the economy to just build more cinemas and assuage the demand...the price of a cinema ticket doesn't need to rise, it can remain the same...we just need to build more cinemas. Which creates more jobs...argh shit, but what about the infrastructure...power, roads, parking, building etc...well that's more jobs as well...with more salaries, wages, taxes, cashflow...it's the complete opposite of "trickle down" economics.
What we've seen in the last decade is a shrinking of supply...shops closing, high streets dying, infrastructure crumbling, jobs disappearing, wages stagnating...COVID, Putin etc etc all contributes, but it's not the cause because we had this decline going on long before any of this shit happened...it's been happening for nearly 20 years...the only difference now is people are finally fucking sick of it and can see it for what it is.
After the end of World War 2 there was money sloshing around everywhere and it led to one of the biggest economic booms and transfers of wealth the UK has ever seen...and probably will ever see...the money supply was off the chain...but it was in the hands of the "poor" not the "wealthy" and what we got was an explosion in infrastructure projects, building projects, new towns being built, motorways...everything got better...but you know what didn't happen at that time? Rampant fucking inflation.
If you believe that more money in the hands of the poor through higher wages and salaries is the root cause of inflation, your brainwashing by the elites is complete.
Right on! This vanity DOGE bronwshirt wanker duplication of existing mentally-stable government work (GAO) has been nothing but a Social Security and Medicare Яusski welfare queen Ayn Rand-inspired full-on shock-and-awe assault on American Democracy premised on the duff notion that the US Government's been systematically gassing its own people for ages.
It's the epitome of moron, with a hefty extra helping of yellowcake, and chihuahuas, imho, sold by dangling the alluring carrot of modernization and efficiency, with neither intent, nor ability, to ever deliver!
Well, I expect you've read the EO that established DOGE, and noticed that it says nothing at all about tax cuts and smaller government. The official stated purpose of DOGE highlights modernization and efficiency, as follows:
"Section 1. Purpose. This Executive Order establishes the Department of Government Efficiency to implement the President’s DOGE Agenda, by modernizing Federal technology and software to maximize governmental efficiency and productivity."
And its a big adipose goose egg on that front (and Ukraine-Russia, and Israel-Palestine, and World War Fee, ...) so far ... The sane approach would have been to work with GAO, obviously.
Like binning off the 18F team that just launched IRS Direct File service
In addition to working on the free tax return program, the 18F office worked across government agencies to update technology and launch new software products. It worked on more than 31 projects across different government agencies in 2024, including the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (Cisa). It has been part of the GSA since 2014…..
El Reg» If that's the case, one might wonder why the heck do we need DOGE in the first place?
We, in this case, being the US populace, don't and didn't need DoGE and DoGE was not in any case for them.
DoGE was set up to make life easier for Elon's companies (all that annoying regulation & compliance gone or hobbled), to scare the civil service, to make the service that the federal government offers worse, to reduce the power of the federal government by reducing its income (Hello IRS!) and kill off one or two agencies that really annoyed Fox News (USAID, Dept. of Education and so on).
DoGE was never about government efficiency or saving money. DoGE was, for Elon & Trump, a massive success although he engendered such hatred with his methods & actions that he ended up shooting himself in the foot in a most spectacular way.
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Interesting. When DOGE makes a claim of how much can be saved by cutting something we get pessimism, scepticism and resistance. "The GAO regularly looks over the books" since 2011 has now discovered $100m in savings which has the 'potential' of $100bn!
I think this is a good thing and well done to the GAO. My issue is with the reporting where based on this one claim the reg is questioning the existence of DOGE. Who is to say this $100bn or even the $100m figure isnt as fanciful as a DOGE prediction?
Keep up the good work DOGE and GAO
"When DOGE makes a claim of how much can be saved by cutting something we get pessimism, scepticism and resistanc"
When it started Elon/DOGE promised $2 trillion and at least probably $1 trillion. Recently it was down to $100 billion, a cool order of magnitude less the the original BS. So far by DOGE's own estimate it is more like $60 billion and by most other accounts after finding numerous massive errors in the DOGE "receipts" less than $40 billion. All of these actions and numbers are well documented so I invite you to do something completely different and look things up before posting so I don't get a where can I find this from you.
So pessimism, scepticism (sic) and resistance are well founded and 100% correct!
Add to that numerous stupid firing errors (you know people that were doing CRITICAL jobs that had to be rehired IF they could find them) that cost even more money to correct than they would have saved and you get a complete failure. If fact it is quite possible that DOGE actually cost more than it saved which given the participants in DOGE and the results so far makes perfect sense.
It should also be noted that all of the DOGE cuts have obvious political (guess who) rather than true cost cutting motivation. A very good example is the US Department of Defense which has a storied history of waste and fraud getting no scrutiny at all. For reference they have failed their last 7 audits and have given us the assurance that they will pass the audit in 2029. I give that estimate a pants on fire rating. Luckily It did get a proposed raise of over $200 million dollars bringing then to the lofty heights of a $1 trillion budget which is as people are constantly reminded more than the next 8 countries combined, several of which were until very recently our trusted allies.
Another interesting thing is that no fraud charges have been filed which leads to the conclusion, probably an incorrect one, that no fraud was found. Since fraud is against the law it is normally acted on with indictments and trials which have been conspicuously absent. This of course leads to the question WTF?
Inspectors General which are required to have experience finding waste and fraud have been reporting what they have found to congress through many administrations now. At that point it is up to congress and the DOJ to take actions on those findings and these actions have been sorely missing. To top it off Agolf Twitler fired most of the IGs and instead relied on people that had ZERO experience in finding waste and fraud and their results have been very predictable.
I agree the GAO has a well earned good reputation. On the other hand DOGE is a cluster fuck (sorry the need to emphasize just how dumb this all is got the best of me) of the highest order brought to us by the biglyest, bestest ever seen in the history of the universe moron ever to inhabit the highest office in US.
"So far by DOGE's own estimate it is more like $60 billion and by most other accounts after finding numerous massive errors in the DOGE "receipts" less than $40 billion."
And quite a lot of the supposed savings has been wages, ie firing people. I wonder how many of those fired people just walked straight into another job and how many are claiming some form of unemployment benefits, were "bought out" of contracts or are still on "garden leave" at full pay? I get the sense that a lot of the supposed savings are anything but, at least in the short term and in some cases the claimed savings cost more to implement that they saved.
The GAO savings, on the other hand, seem to be very much focussed on procedurals and doing more with less, not mass firings of the people actually doing the work.
Fragmentation and potential overlap between various agencies working on quantum computing strategies is another area where money is being wasted
Money is being wasted by "agencies working on quantum computing strategies", period. When Q.C. moves from concept car/incredibly-expensive demo/bandwagon territory to "I can go to Office Depot, buy a Q.C. box, and play Crysis on it" territory, then worry about it.
I once worked for a partially-governmental health org which had network infrastructure extending from our campus into a U.S. Department of Veterans' Affairs hospital. One of their employees was simultaneously one of our employees; her time was split between the two orgs, and she had an office on our campus, and another in the VA hospital.
I was called in to her VA office because one day she could no longer access ANY network from there. I did a quick check, then called the VA help desk to get a replacement Ethernet patch cord. I was told that they were not authorized to do that, and that it would take a sign-off by some VA IT executive or another. They offered to send someone out with a new power cord...
(Stupid and) penny-wise, yet pound-foolish.
No, really, just no. At the top of the security environment you spend a big chunk of time on "what-if", because your opponents are absolutely doing just that to get at your data/infrastructure. If you haven't spent any time keeping up on wild-hair possibilities with real theoretical weight behind them you'll find yourself bare naked in the snow securitywise *WHEN* that technology hits the shelves at Walmart.
Fun stuff. This is following the typical pattern in corporate America. A big "cut expenses" project is started. Everyone panics and whines about the injustice of an outside group telling them they are wasting money. The outside group won't actually find any savings that others couldn't already find. They just create fear that people are going to lose their jobs. Sometimes people do lose their jobs. The outside group finds some of the "well duh" cost savings opportunities. Woohoo! Mission accomplished! Now the groups inside the company are scared and finally understand the assignment. They start cleaning up their areas and find big savings on the dumb things they were doing. Everyone is unhappy but expenses are cut. Fast forward five years. All of the waste and stupidity start again and five years after that you're doing this same routine over again. Why? Because everyone that started every part of this dysfunctional cycle have moved on/retired/died/whatever and now the new people have started the same dysfunctional cycle.
$100 Million sounds like a lot of money to us simple tax payers. The 2024 federal budget was $6.75 Trillion. That means the federal government cut 1 dollar out of every 67,500 dollars that are spent.
For context, lets say you are doing pretty well in IT. With benefits & stock, you bring home a solid quarter million dollars every year. You decide not to stop for a cheap $4 cup of coffee today. That is how much this cut represents to the federal budget.
This $100 million cut is meaningless. It is designed to solicit the exact response that El Reg gave it...."Look, the government is cutting spending without Elon's help"
$40 Billion is still barely half of one percent of the overall budget. Following the comparison, with a $250k income, that is less than $1500/yr or around $120/mo. Mouse fart territory in the overall scheme of things.
Get back to me when the cuts start with the letter "T" instead of "B" or "M". Then it actually matters
DOGE’s estimated savings are about equal to the cost of a single F-35 fighter plane (of which over 1000 are in service in the USA) which are still being produced. If the goal of DOGE was to cut spending and improve efficiency then the low hanging fruit is in the DoD, which is the largest share of the discretionary budget.
Structural changes in entitlement programs would also make changes. Increase the already high Social Security full retirement age from 67 to an even older age.
Intent aside, the outcome of DOGE has been to ruin: USA soft power abroad, investment in citizen health, and future scientific research. DOGE is the boot in the face.
DOGE is a challenge to Congress who controls Federal spending. Congress is also part of the problem. Decades of pork barrel policies have resulted in inefficient spending policies that favor well connected elites over taxpayers.
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