A former employee of the Department of Government Efficiency says that he found that the federal waste, fraud and abuse that his agency was supposed to uncover were “relatively nonexistent” during his short time embedded within the Department of Veterans Affairs.
“I personally was pretty surprised, actually, at how efficient the government was,” Sahil Lavingia told NPR’s Juana Summers.
Lavingia was a successful software developer and the founder of Gumroad, a platform for online sales, when he joined DOGE in March. Lavingia said he had previously sought to work for the U.S. Digital Service, the technology unit that was renamed and restructured by the Trump administration. He told NPR that he just wanted to make government websites easier for citizens to use and didn’t really care which presidential administration he was working for, despite protests from his friends and family.
No shit
No shit. Pretty much the only bloat in government is the private contracts—usually for the unauditable “defense” budget.
If you’ve paid any attention, government programs are usually forced to operate with absolutely minimal funding. And the people who make it all work anyway—often with personal dedication and sacrifice—are heroes.
There are also too many contractors in non-defense agencies. It’s really terrible because it both increases costs, slows things down (in my opinion), and means that there is little retention of skilled workers.
Oddly, the main way to save money and increase efficency is to expand the government workforce. Although, I do think there needs to be more effort on how we focus government work.
And DOGE just created more waste because ALL those federal workers fired, are still getting paid without actually performing any work. They are still getting paid until September. When they most likely will sue again. So the actual savings were ZERO. Idiots always forget you can get sued in the US and DOGE AI equation didn’t take into account the ton of lawsuits it created.
This comment implies DOGE is for what it says it’s for.
DOGE is a political purge and fiscal responsibility is its smokescreen.
federal waste, fraud and abuse that his agency was supposed to uncover were “relatively nonexistent”
Same in UK. Most on welfare are pensioners, disabled and jobless. Those committing welfare fraud are in miniscule minority. And yet, conservatives obsess on welfare fraud as if it is an epidemic. But I think at the end of the day, the conservatives got what they want-- government cuts and shifting tax payer’s money to fund their rich lifestyle. The campaign on the supposed huge welfare fraud is a distraction to the actual welfare fraud of the rich.
The anti-benefits rhetoric is fucking dystopian. When I highlight the harms of making vulnerable people jump through hoops to get basic support, people often respond that it’s a necessary evil to prevent “scroungers and cheats” claiming benefits.
The minuscule number of people committing fraud is a large part of why I oppose this, but I would feel the same if there were 100x more fraudulent claims than there is now. Fundamentally, there are always going to be people who slip through the gaps, and the only choice we have is whether we’d rather that involve: disabled people and other vulnerable groups not accessing support they need; or people getting away with fraud and getting money they aren’t entitled to. For me, the choice is obvious, because I think by sacrificing vulnerable people’s wellbeing to prevent fraud is absurd when the entire point of the system is to help those vulnerable people. It undermines the whole concept — though I imagine that for many politicians, undermining it is the point
This administration’s idea of “waste” is determined by the groups of people the programs help.
Any fraud they uncovered was likely run-of-the-mill stuff that would’ve been found even without DOGE, probably with less overhead than DOGE as well. Thinking some 20yo without even a college degree will come in and immediately spot fraud is laughable.
As for waste, Musk thinks anything that doesn’t directly contribute to “the product” is waste. I wouldn’t be surprised if one of his factories had outhouses and water troughs to save on plumbing.
A lot of the inefficiencies come from being understaffed. You end up waiting on another department to do something so you can move forward. The work on site mandate and the buyout have made this insanely worse. I work as a consultant in the public sector for tech. The team I’m working with now went from 5 people down to two and they have one that they have hired but is still waiting for the paperwork to go through to start working. They were hired in December. The on site mandate fucked this military base. They have 8000+ employees and ~4500 parking spots. Everyone is basically expected to show up late and the police stopped giving parking tickets because it was too much work. With everyone on base the internet access is almost unusable until about 4:30 pm when people start leaving. We put in a request for a service account that our product requires 3 weeks ago and are still waiting for it because that team downsized and can’t keep up… And on, and on, and on…
These over worked, under staffed teams are spinning plates right now. When those plates come crashing down they’re going to end up hiring IBM, VMware, General Dynamics, Microsoft, Red Hat, etc… consultants to fix the mess and get them back to spinning. That’s going to be so much more expensive than just keeping those previous people on staff. It’s going to be wild in 6-12 months imo.
“When those plates come crashing down they’re going to end up hiring IBM, VMware, General Dynamics, Microsoft, Red Hat, etc… consultants to fix the mess and get them back to spinning” That’s not a bug it’s a feature those contract will go to someone who “donated” to the Taco.
It’s just going to be all the same people that he cut contracts from. What they did was get a list of the companies they were spending the most with and started cutting contracts. They’re going to end up having to go back to those same companies. This time with desperation.
As usual, the republican search for the corruption they’re doing themselves. DOGE was a fraud and a waste on top of as-yet-to-be-suffered damage.
Refused to get onboard with the false narrative and got fired. Shocking.
A man in the inside?!!
The only bloat in the government is the defense department and means testing. Defense spending needs a 75% reduction in spending, nearly all in private contracts. And 99% of means testing. Just creates a whole bureaucracy just to get access to what society and government is for.
The rampant fraud, waste, and abuse is plain to see. It’s every goddamned republican swine in government.
