Trump’s Cost-Cutting Team Reveals First Targets

(Congressional Agenda) – The men who will be put in charge of the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) during the second Trump administration, Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy, have now started dropping a few clues here and there about where the new agency will focus the majority of its efforts when they take a big old butcher knife to federal spending. Musk, who is currently the richest person on the planet, has set a goal for DOGE to cut $2 trillion in spending, while Ramaswamy has stated that entire government agencies are going to be “deleted” under the recommendations made by DOGE.

I never thought I would ever be excited by the prospect of seeing government agencies being buried in a 6-foot hole, but here I am. It’s due to the fact that our tax dollars have been wasted on so many frivolous things, mostly lining politicians’ pockets, that when someone suggests cutting the fat to this extent, which will put a lot of money back into the economy, it makes you want to celebrate.

According to Fox Business, DOGE’s account on X — which Musk owns — posted about simplifying the U.S. tax code, saying, “In 1955, there were less than 1.5 million words in the U.S. Tax Code. Today, there are more than 16 million words. Because of this complexity, Americans collectively spend 6.5 billion hours preparing and filing their taxes each year. This must be simplified.”

The post was published on Nov. 15. Just two days after that, DOGE revealed that the Department of Defense had failed it’s audit the previous month, marking the seventh time it had done so, pointing out that the DoD cannot fully account for its budget, which was a staggering $824 billion. You know, when you can’t account for all the money you have been budgeted for specific purposes, it usually means there is someone — or a group of “someones” — who are skimming some off the top and hoping nobody notices.

When Musk saw a post about the Pentagon failing yet another audit, he replied, “Sounds like a job for @DOGE!” He’s really excited about the prospect of thinning out our government and reducing spending. That’s one of many reasons he’s the right guy to head up this project.

“DOGE and its co-leads have vowed repeatedly to end telework for federal employees, and flagged the Biden administration’s last-minute deal extending 42,000 Social Security Administration (SSA) employees work-from-home privileges for another five years – after President-elect Trump leaves office,” Fox reported. “Ramaswamy says a majority of federal workers do not show up to the office, and pointed to the fact that the U.S. government owns thousands of vacant buildings, which he called, ‘nuts’ and ‘a job for DOGE.'”

Retired Congressman and well known Libertarian Dr. Ron Paul took to X where he discussed one way DOGE could reduce spending and that was to take a close look at the foreign aid we’re sending to other nations around the world.

“Here’s an easy one for @DOGE!” he wrote on X. “ELIMINATE foreign aid! It’s taking money from the poor and middle class in the US and giving it to the rich in poor countries – with a cut to the facilitators in between! Americans don’t want their government to borrow more money to spend on foreign aid. Besides, it is the immoral transfer of wealth and is unconstitutional.”

Musk replied to Paul, “@DOGE will address this with full transparency for the American people.”

Now, a lot of voters across America have expressed concern about cuts made to important programs like Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security.

“Most of the largest spending program in the federal government is Social Security, followed by Medicare and Medicaid, along with other mandatory obligations. While several options for adjustments have been floated to address the sustainability of these programs over the years, Ramaswamy said in a recent interview that touching entitlements is not DOGE’s role. Ramaswamy told Axios at the Aspen Security Forum earlier this month that it would be premature to discuss any of the aforementioned entitlements through DOGE, saying such cuts would be “a policy decision that belongs to the voters” and their representatives in Congress,” the article read.

Ramaswamy noted that DOGE will help to make sure taxpayer dollars are not sent to people who are wrongly pocketing the funds, saying, “Right now, there are hundreds of billions of dollars flowing out the door of all of those programs ending up in the hands of people who, even under the statute, should not be receiving those payments.”

Copyright 2024. CongressionalAgenda.com

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