According to Fox News, Elon Musk “met with a small group of House Republicans on Wednesday evening to discuss the quest to find as much as $1 trillion in government waste.”
That would indeed be significant.
But until then, the “Department of Government Efficiency,” popularly called DOGE, continues to find insane wasteful spending in the “mere” millions.
Consider the Small Business Administration, which “administers” loans to … well … “DOGE said it identified that the Small Business Administration (SBA) granted nearly 5,600 loans for $312 million to borrowers whose only listed owner was 11 years old or younger at the time of the loan,” reports Fox.
Loans made in the pit of despair that was the COVID pandemic.
Children have no business taking out SBA loans — the obvious quip would be about “lemonade stands” — but Musk suggests there could be reasons for the practice, just not in the 5,593 cases DOGE specifies, because the wrong Social Security numbers were used in those applications.
But let no one say the federal government is not balanced, for “in 2020 and 2021 the SBA issued 3,095 loans for $333 million to borrowers over 115 years old.”
And speaking of the ancient, Bernie Sanders wrote to Newsweek to give the socialist view of the subject: “The person who is running the government right now is Elon Musk. Mr. Musk has taken it upon himself, with the support of President Trump, to virtually dismantle the United States government.”
Don’t get our hopes up, Senator.
Unlike Harry Enten at CNN, I’m not at all shocked to learn that DOGE has majority support in America at present. “I was truly surprised by this,” said Enten last Thursday, “but the numbers are the numbers.”
After all, it’s only common sense to seek to root out waste, fraud, and abuse.
Isn’t it?
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
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3 replies on “The Trillion-Dollar Mark?”
Identifying government waste is part of the equation.
But unless Congress cuts departmental budgets in at least the amount of that waste going forward, there’s no savings.
Has the president proposed, or is Congress considering, budgets or “continuing resolutions” that actually reduce spending? If not, then the money will just be spent on other things — and probably equally wasteful things.
Musk/Trump plan for Social Security
“The Social Security Administration (SSA) has a workforce of around 60,000 employees, but the agency has announced plans to reduce its staff.”
2,500 employees already fired. Goal is to reduce employees to 30,000. You can’t get anyone to answer a phone now unless you wait on hold for hours! If another 27,500 are fired they might as well disconnect the phone system!
The plan is for Social to fail to send payments on time or not send them at all. Musk now has the source code so he can do anything he wants with payments!
Musk/Trump want to privatize Social Security and give it to their buddies on Wall Street!
You have been warned!
If we want to look at government waste, start with the Green New Deal. The federal government needs to stop subsidizing EV purchases and trying to dictate what types of appliances are acceptable. If EV is the way to go, the industry and products will develop and consumers will decide what and what not to purchase. Consumers, not government, should pick the winners and losers.