Dogey or Runaway debt? – Orange County Register

Washington – This is not what Doge does; This is how Doge does it. It is the taking of Beltway of the dream child of Elon Musk and President Donald Trump, the Ministry of Effectiveness of the Government. Or “the so-called Ministry of Government efficiency,” as the New York Times said.

This is probably why the lieutenants of Musk and Doging sat for an interview with Bret Baier of Fox News Thursday – to present their file directly to the public.

“We want to reduce expenses by eliminating waste – reducing spending by 15%,” said Musk.

And really, if someone with authority in Washington wants to shave 1 dollars billion on the budget of 6.75 billions of dollars, what cannot like?

“It’s a revolution,” said Musk.

“I am brutally favorable to the existence of Doge,” said Ryan Bourne, economist at the Cato Institute Libertaire.

Bourne likes Musk to be difficult for program budgets because there was no reason to believe that the spending plans were right.

“No one approached government reform in this way,” said Bourne. Musk reduces the budget as a “technician”.

“I think Doge is an exercise that has been absolutely expected for a long time,” said Maya Macguineas, president of the Committee based in DC for a responsible federal budget.

MacGuineas thinks that Doge “will offer a package probably short of $ 1 billion”.

Yes, she noted: “Study first, acting in the second, would have been a better sequencing”. As it stands, the cuts she has defined as “incredibly aggressive” are still not far from the reforms necessary to put the ship back.

For MacGuineas, the list of reforms would include more taxes, but I do not see Trump or the Congress of the GOP go there, at least not while there are big cuts to make.

DOGE has done Yeoman work to find and exhibit boondogles that do not succeed in the odori test, such as a USDA $ 145,000 contract for “Peru’s climate change activities” and obsolete data systems.

The team member, Steve Davis, told Baier that Doge reduced the number of credit card holders within the government from 4.6 million to around 2.3 million.

The elements add up.

Yes, there have been uns forked errors. Musk has poorly explained the programs that DOGE has targeted, and inside the Beltway, it is a greater sin than to waste taxpayers’ money.

Bourne and Macguineas told me that they had two main areas of concern.

First, the Trump team team on “waste, fraud and abuse” leaves around services like Social Security out of the table. Doge Cuts will not eliminate deficit expenditure. As it stands, the country’s pieces exceed 36 billions of dollars, or nearly $ 275,000 per household.

Second, while Trump speaks as if he had a unilateral power to reduce expenses, even low -budget hawks argue that he must work with the congress.

“Doge cannot do it all alone,” said Bourne. The administration must work with the hill if Doge wants to survive the legal challenges.

For me, Doge is a start, like a toddler learning to walk. You want the child to walk.

Washington Permanent does not want Doge to work, so the mainstream media focuses on the lack of understanding of the tech bros on the functioning of Washington. There is a saying here very expensive in the marsh: you cannot lead the government as a business.

This saying does not prevent musk from trying. Because Washington does not know how to reduce expenses, so the atmosphere of Silicon Valley can be the only ticket to save taxpayers money in a city that burns more than one year to the other without blinking.

It is a DOGE or leak debt.

Contact Review-Journal Washington Columnnist Debra J. Saunders at dsaunders@reviewjournal.com. Follow @Debrajsaunders on X.

Originally published: April 1, 2025 at 9:10 p.m.