Billionaires’ nickel and diming

These guys mean business.

Vivek Ramaswamy and Elon Musk, as co-chiefs of the new Department of Government Efficiency, have been deputized to destroy the livelihoods of millions of productive federal government employees in order to eviscerate the workforce and meet arbitrary goals. Ramaswamy has vowed to ax 75 percent of the federal workforce, exempting only the military.

They are driven by the conviction that the preponderance of workers are tapeworms who are perpetually nourished by the intestinal "deep state.” Musk calls for "shockwaves" and Ramaswamy promises "massive downsizing.”

These are credible threats. After acquiring Twitter, Musk sacked four-fifths of its employees. 

Musk is orgasmic about carnage. He wants to bleed out $2 trillion from the national budget. That's almost one-third of annual federal spending. Two-thirds of that includes programs like Social Security and Medicare that President-elect Donald Trump pledged were inviolable.

He has set the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence as the final consummation of this project of herculean destruction. The cold and indiscriminate goal of "efficiency" to achieve fiscal stability, is a pretext commonly invoked by advocates of the discredited "spoils system,” when patronage jobs were divvied out to political cronies and loyalists.

This was common practice in the 19th century but has gone a bit undercover since.

Musk seeks to obliterate three-quarters of federal agencies. His personal fortune exceeds $325 billion. He feels he has earned every penny of it, but the rolls of the covetous rank-in-file are, in his judgment, bloated. 

This is imperious effrontery. There are more red flags raised by Musk's self-interested patriotism than fly outside the United Nations. 

Is anyone monitoring the cozy relationships that Musk's companies, such as Tesla and SpaceX, may have with NASA and the Department of Defense? Musk and Ramaswamy will not be required to submit financial disclosure statements, because technically they will be acting merely as advisors and so will be held to a lower standard than the folks they hanker to terminate.

Presidents Clinton and Reagan both instituted measures to limit government expenditures, but they were not as heartless, zany or ruinous.

The Musk-Ramaswamy connivance has been called "the Manhattan Project of our time," referring to the intense and accelerated development of the secret atomic bomb during World War II. They think this is a suitable comparison, because in their view, the survival of civilization hinges on whether federal civil servants may keep their jobs.

Among the agencies reportedly on Musk and Ramaswamy's death warrant wish-list are the Department of Education, FBI, Department of Energy, Department of Environmental Protection, Department of Agriculture, Department of Commerce, Federal Communication Commission, Federal Trade Commission and Food and Drug Administration. In their crosshairs are not only entire administrative agencies, but specific programs that reflect philosophical principles and activism, such as Diversity, Equity and Inclusion. 

They particularly want to get rid of the Transportation Security Administration, because it inconveniences frequent flyers, especially those habituated to first-class cabins, who claim they are being lasciviously goosed by inspectors, and would rather return to the good old days of rolling the dice whether a hijacker may be aboard.

What remains on the menu for the ravenous DOGE gluttons: social services, regional development funding, training programs, veterans' benefits, foreign aid? 

The more the agency is involved in promulgating and enforcing regulations to protect the public, the higher on the list they are for liquidation. Musk's SpaceX plans to colonize Mars are contingent upon deregulation, he warns.

There is precedent for the all-encompassing confiscation of workers' rights. 

In 2020, just prior to his defeat, Trump issued an executive order that demolished civil service protections for federal workers, making them, in effect, "at will" employees who served at the pleasure of the government and could be terminated without due process or even articulable reason. Days into his term, President Joe Biden snuffed "Schedule F," but it may find new life in the new administration, perhaps as Schedule F.U.

Will it be possible to derail or at least mitigate the mutilations that the Department of Efficiency envisions as tonic for our nation?  

It does not aim to "reinvent" the government or tighten its operation through reorganization, but rather to expunge whole areas of vital functionality. Perhaps a more moderate and reasoned remedy to alleged government maladroitness could be attempted along the lines of what was accomplished in the wake of the World Trade Center mass murder, when the Department of Homeland Security was created.

To support seamless coordination and the perception of one face at the border," the legacy U.S. Customs Service (formerly part of Department of the Treasury) and Immigration and Naturalization Service (Department of Justice) were merged. Other agencies, such as the Secret Service, FEMA, TSA and the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Agency (CISA) are also now huddled under the DHS tent.

Some critics view the consolidation of agencies, which has gotten mixed reviews, as a publicity stunt that has made it flabbier, not leaner. They don't see it in practice, though perhaps in theory, as a "silver bullet" or even a pewter one. But the results of Mulk and Ramaswamy's take-no-prisoners expeditionary force will not be mixed: it will be uniform and ironically counterproductive.

But it looks good on paper, bides time and keeps doubters at bay as more genuine foundational improvements are devised, if anyone's interested.

If the outcome is not too dire, it will only be because the Department of Efficiency is, according to Vox, "unlikely to have any regulatory teeth on its own, but there's little doubt  that it can have influence on the incoming administration and how it will determine its budgets.”

The DOGE's objectives appear set in stone, but the time frame for its achievement in wet cement. Since so many final determinations are made on the basis of playing "saving face roulette," maybe the fulfillment of its mission could be stretched over 10 years. 

Musk wants to "get the government off people's back and out of their pocket.” That hardly squares with separating them from government employment and robbing their pockets so there is nothing more to get into.

The two Budget Inquisitors have allies across the ideological spectrum, but libertarians are among the most uncompromising. We must be wary of metaphors and analogies, but it's true that fat in the budget can be unhealthy as is fat on the human body. And the budget has indeed been propagating like bamboo, which can grow 3 feet within 24 hours.

But we must be careful not just what we wish for but how we wish for it. And the company we keep in its pursuit.