I want to get a gig updating websites for the government
I can do that. I’ve designed websites. I do it very very slowly but hey, I do it. And the pay would be very very helpful (hat tip Ace):
The Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), the agency created by executive order on President Donald Trump’s first day in office, has uncovered yet another striking example of wasteful federal spending. This time, the target is the Department of Veterans Affairs, which until recently had been paying nearly $380,000 a month for relatively simple website modifications—work that a single staffer now handles internally with just 10 hours of effort each week.DOGE broke the story via a post on X, formerly Twitter, praising the VA for not renewing the contract. “VA was previously paying ~$380,000/month for minor website modifications,” the agency wrote. “That contract has not been renewed, and the same work is now being executed by 1 internal VA software engineer spending ~10 hours/week.”
This revelation adds to DOGE’s growing list of accomplishments, which already include the cancellation of 113 wasteful federal contracts valued at over $4.7 billion.
I’m not sure whether my level of cynicism has gotten high enough to say that none of this surprises me.
There’s a moral principle being violated here that is of more value than the saved money, if you ask me. It’s that ticks should not be allowed to batten on the taxpayer, even if it’s not a huge amount of money in the totality of the Federal budget.
I’ve been over and over the numbers: SS/Medicare/Medicaid, interest on the debt, “defense”. That’s where most of the money goes. But when we unpack these things, how much more equivalents of $400,000 monthly for 0.25 FTE are we going to find?
Social Security by its nature may not have that all that much to wring out and it has a very different financial problem. But I think everywhere we look we’re going to find stuff like this, and it’s going to add up. Enough drops in the bucket and you end up with like a quarter of the bucket.
Back of the envelope it is obvious that Federal spending is bloated by $1-$2 trillion: just take the 2008 Federal spend and scale it up for inflation and population and you can see that. 2008 was not a lean and mean budget and in fact still had a war going on.
Reminds me of an old 80s Tom Paxton song after the government bailed out Chrysler:
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I am changing my name to Chrysler
I am going down to Washington, D.C
I will tell some power broker
What they did for Iacocca
Will be perfectly acceptable to me
–Arlo Guthrie sings Tom Paxton’s “Changing my name to Chrysler”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZkT768QevrU
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Tom Paxton was your standard-issue 60s folk singer. He was more known for the covers of his songs than for his own versions.
His most well-known song was “The Last Thing on My Mind” which made it to the country charts and was covered by everyone from Judy Collins to the Grateful Dead to Dolly Parton to José Feliciano to Willie Nelson.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Last_Thing_on_My_Mind#Other_recordings
Paxton is still alive at 87.
Here’s to you, Tom, my ramblin’ boy.
huxley:
That’s an amusing lyric.
Back in my Baez-y days (had the hair and guitar but not the soprano) I used to play “The Last Thing On My Mind” on the guitar.
A billion here, a billion there, after awhile it adds up.
I suspect that folks outside of the choir have no idea of the magnitude of the waste and outright theft that has been exposed. The Democrats, aided and abetted by the usual suspects, have been working frantically to divert attention. I fear that they are rather successful, although I did see mention that Bernie Boy approved to some degree.
There should be a bipartisan (he said TIC) hue and cry for all of those who let these travesties develop and fester for so long.
Scale up 2008? That doesn’t begin to cover the difference between “useful work produced” and “money spent”.
Way back… 64 years -damn, I’m getting old… I had a summer job working for the Corps of Engineers. It was about a 25 man office, and generously, they produced 10 man-weeks of product (dam inspections, improvement proposals, lock maintenance contracts, etc). One guy had a side gig that he spent more than 5 hours a day on the telephone about -this was before computers. The work day was supposed to be 8-5, with an hour for lunch. If half the crew was in the office by 8:30 it was a wonder and by 4 they would start trickling out. 2+ hour lunches were the norm, not the exception.
That was my sole brush with the federal government, but if the rest is 1/2 as bad, the federal employment budget is 40% wasted.
Ironically I’ve never even heard of The Last Thing On My Mind but have long been familiar with a couple other Tom Paxton songs: The Marvelous Toy, I Can’t Help But Wondering Where I’m Bound (we sang it at campfire in summer camp in the early 70s).
The Grateful Dead never covered The Last Thing On My Mind unless it happened at a very early show for which we have no recordings. Jerrybase.com, which is a comprehensive as it gets, has no record of Jerry playing it with any of his other bands either. In fact there’s no record of Jerry ever performing a Tom Paxton song in any format.
Does anyone else remember these?
“The Golden Fleece Award (1975–1988) was a tongue-in-cheek award given to public officials in the United States for squandering public money. … William Proxmire, a United States Senator who represented the Democratic Party from Wisconsin, issued the award monthly from 1975 until 1988.”
Proxmire did a great job of highlighting wasteful funding of nonsensical “scientific studies” and it’s a great list BUT so far as I know it had absolutely no impact: stupid studies were not ended, and the amounts genuinely were “drops in a bucket.”
However, given what DOGE has uncovered about the depth, breadth, and longevity of the really serious waste and fraud in government programs, I am moved to inquire why Proxmire never went after those activities.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golden_Fleece_Award
The more that DOGE exposes, the more it looks like a lot–perhaps more than a lot –of our government was basically just a mechanism to make it possible for the theft of taxpayer’s money on an industrial scale.
Phony up some paper work–a proposal to do this or that supposedly worthwhile thing–hand it to your friends in the (usually) Democrat Administration and–voila–watch the often untracked money just roll in.
A case in point, the $2 Billion dollar EPA grant handed out to former Democrat Representative Stacy Abrams and her non-profit organization, reportedly just formed in the last couple of months, which had a reported $100 in the bank, this money supposedly to provide for “home energy upgrades.” *
* See https://www.aol.com/news/stacey-abrams-linked-group-insane-163741028.html
I used to watch Proxmire’s awards. Seemed as if he were cheating. Sure, playing around with mouse hearts sounds silly, but that sort of thing was frequently a legit start for some serious research. And the amounts were usually puny.
Either he didn’t have the time to do some real homework or he was putting on a show. And those who thought he was doing good work were satisfied somebody was keeping watch.
Maybe every government employee, including commissioned officers retiring at O6 rank and up, should be subject to surprise forensic audits as long as they and their immediate children live. Starting with dog catcher.
I used to watch Proxmire’s awards. Seemed as if he were cheating.
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My retrospective objection to Proxmire’s work is that he was chuckling at the National Science Foundation but not advocating any systematic remedy. Here’s a suggestion: end federal grants to corporate bodies and to persons with institutional addresses bar some discrete exceptions. Here’s a suggestion two: allow little if any franchise to award federal contracts by any method other than the submission of sealed bids.
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The exceptions in re federal grants would be as follows: (1) to miscellaneous parties in the course of disaster relief (including refugee maintenance), (2) inter-governmental agencies deemed advisable to join, (3) foreign governments, (4) state and territorial governments, (5) local governments. In re local governments, federal authorities would pay property taxes on federal real estate on equal terms with other parties if the local government in question used a compliant assessment method (a benefit which would extend to DC and the low census insular dependences). State and territorial governments would receive four grants: one to finance Medicaid, one to finance unemployment compensation, one to finance a residue of the federal highway program, and a general grant which the state could use for any purpose. NB, corporations affiliated with state or local government (e.g. state universities) would receive nothing. In re foreign governments, there would be a bias in favor or providing services, equipment, and credits to buy equipment with a resistance to providing any cash except in exigent circumstances. The State department might have a slush fund and their might be a counterpart to FEMA operating abroad. The security co-operation apparat at the Defense Department would not. Any agency succeeding USAID would employ technicians who supplied to publics abroad instruction and training. In re intergovernmental agencies, doubt there are more than three dozen which should interest our government. Some others you might belong to to disrupt China mischief.
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The implication of the above is that some agencies would be liquidated (e.g. the Corporation for Public Broadcasting), some would have a small residue fished out but otherwise liquidated (e.g. the National Science Foundation), some would have radical reductions in their budget (last I checked, about 85% of the NIH budget was devoted to grant money distribution), and some more modest reductions (NASA. EPA, and the complex of agencies at the Interior Department).
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Another thing we could do is to leave lending (other than that provided by the Federal Reserve) to the private sector. The Farm Credit System, Sallie Mae, the mortgage maws, the Small Business Administration, the Export-Import Bank, the Department of Energy’s lending facility &c. should be shut down and their loan portfolios auctioned off to private lenders. No more.
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Yet another thing which could be public policy generally (especially at the federal level) is to limit sectoral subsidies to medical care, long term care, schooling, legal services, and shipping-and-transportation (with provision for the last two sectors only on the margins). Outside of those realms, no service provision by public agencies, no vouchers, no insurance programs, no tax preferences, nada. You’d make a small exception for disaster relief. The specifically federal role in provision and finance of schooling (primary, secondary, tertiary) should be limited to veterans and a menu of niche clientele (e.g. military dependents and reservation Indians).
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Federal grazing and timber land ought to be auctioned off as well, while we’re at it, though there are some impediments there.
Oh, I remember Proxmire’s Golden Fleece Awards – my father had a low opinion of him; Dad thought Proxmire was grandstanding. The basis for some of the research that Proxmire disparaged was often quite worthwhile. IIRC one of those “Golden Fleece” cites was for a project that – measured the shoulder and chest measurements of airline stewardesses. Yeah, quite the lewd chuckles over that – but the intent was for designing a better safety restraint system for cabin crew in a hard landing. The existing folding seats and harnesses at the time were not optimal, and a lot of stewardesses had sustained broken collarbones and ribs in a bad landing. Which wasn’t nearly so chuckle-worthy.
but the intent was for designing a better safety restraint system for cabin crew in a hard landing.
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A. Have the aviation safety division within the FAA undertake the research with its own employees
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B. Have the aviation safety division within the FAA let out a contract to do this research.
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C. Have the airlines themselves do this research or let out contracts.
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D. Have university-based researchers do this financed by businesses, foundations, or dedicated endowments held by their own institutions.
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E. Have university-based researchers do this with equipment purchased by their own institution for their department’s use.
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F. Have airline suppliers do this research and patent it.
huxley:
I was always partial to Jose Feliciano’s rendition of “Last Thing on My Mind.” Beautiful production and orchestration … and, of course, Feliciao’s soulful voice.
I assume Proxmire was just doing what Obama was doing in a video from 2014 I saw recently–voicing acknowledgement of government waste in order to APPEAR as if they cared about investigating/ending it. When the average rube hears some politician talking about thousand dollar plastic toilet seats, they get upset and assume the person highlighting this waste is also upset. But the fact is the politician (or the politicians’ friends) are getting rich off these scams and just want to appear as if the Democrat party was the one trying to stop the fraud. In the end, the Democrats would shrug their shoulders and blame the continuing waste on “Republican intransigence”.
Now, they can’t play the same game Proxmire and others did and either have to deny this waste exists or support the spending.