To cut government spending.
Following Donald Trump’s re-election, Elon Musk was appointed to lead an organization titled, Department of Governement Efficiency (D.O.G.E.)
It’s stated goal was to reduce government spending.
Initially this included cutting up to $2 trillion from the federal budget, though estimates were later adjusted to only $150 billion.
As of April 2025, the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), led by Elon Musk, claims to have reduced federal spending by approximately $130 billion. This figure is a revision from earlier, more ambitious targets: an initial goal of $2 trillion, later adjusted to $1 trillion, and subsequently to $150 billion. (Wikipedia)
However, independent analyses suggest that a significant portion of the reported savings may be overstated or based on miscalculations. For instance, some canceled contracts were already inactive or yielded no savings, and there have been instances where the value of canceled contracts was misreported by substantial margins.
Why Cut Government Spending?
1. To Reduce the Deficit/National Debt The belief is that the government is like a household. It shouldn’t “spend more than it earns.” Cutting spending is seen as a “fically responsible” way to reduce the federal deficit or debt.
2. To Increase Efficiency The belief is that big government is inherently bloated and wasteful. Cutting spending will force it to be leaner and more efficient.
3. To Shrink the Size of Government Philosophically, some want less government intervention in the economy or personal lives. Cutting spending is a way to roll back programs and reduce federal influence.
4. To Reallocate Resources to the Private Sector Reducing public services and funding can create opportunities for private businesses to step in—healthcare, education, infrastructure, etc. The private sector is claimed to be more efficient than the public sector.
What has DOGE done to accomplish its mission:
Under billionaire Elon Musk’s leadership, DOGE has initiated substantial workforce reductions across various federal agencies.Available reports indicate that tens of thousands of federal employees have lost their income.
Many thousands more live in constant fear that they soon will be fired and/or deported.
Some examples:
In late January 2025, DOGE offered “voluntary” resignation packages to federal employees, resulting in approximately 75,000 departures.
The word “voluntary” is used in quotes because the choice was to retire or be fired.
On February 13, 2025, the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) advised agencies to fire most of the 200,000 federal employees in their probationary period (less than one year in their current roles).
The Department of Defense plans to reduce its civilian workforce by 8%, equating to approximately 61,000 positions.
AmeriCorps placed hundreds of employees on administrative leave and terminated 1,500 National Civilian Community Corps (NCCC) members. Nearly 2,200 young volunteers were also instructed to cease activities and return home.
In March 2025, the General Services Administration (GSA) laid off 600 employees from the Public Building Service and issued Reduction in Force (RIF) notices to 165 out of 178 employees in one region.
United States Digital Service (USDS): Following DOGE’s restructuring, several dozen employees were dismissed, and 21 resigned in protest.
Masive firings have severe financial and emotional effects, not only on the employees themselves but also on their families, creditors, and the businesses that serve them.How have DOGE’s efforts benefitted America?
1. Reduce the federal deficit and debt. While firing hundreds of thousands of people would seem to reduce the deficit and debt, the situation is more complicated.
a. The fired people will pay less income tax, thus reducing the desired effect on the deficit and debt.
b. The federal government is not like a household, a state or local government, or a business. It is uniquely Monetarily Sovereign. Neither deficits nor debt are a burden on the government or on taxpayers.
Unlike state/local governments, when the federal government saves money, this does not translate into lower taxes for the populace.
Congress arbitrarily determines tax rates based on political bases, not financial needs. While state and local taxes fund state and local government spending, federal taxes fund nothing. All federal spending is funded by the creation of new dollars.
All federal taxes are destroyed upon receipt by the Treasury Department
Even if the federal government didn’t collect a penny in taxes, it could continue spending forever.
Currently Congress favors tax reductions, but only for the very rich.
Contrary to popular claims, tax reductions are not “paid for” by federal spending cuts. All federal spending is paid for by federal money creation, regardless of taxes.
The federal debt is neither federal nor debt, never is paid for” by taxes or anyone. It merely is the difference between taxes collected vs. bills already paid.
Regarding the misnamed federal debt, no one is “owed” anything. T-security accounts contain dollars owned by depositors.
The government holds them for safekeeping, and does not take ownership of them. These accounts are similar to bank safe-deposit boxes, where the bank does not owe the contents, but merely holds them for safety.
The federal government’s sole purpose is to improve and protect people’s lives. To this end, the economy (as measured by Gross Domestic Product) must grow just to match population growth and inflation. Data indicates that we have recessions and depressions when federal deficit spending does not increase or even increases insufficiently.
c. There is no science to making the federal government “leaner.” Merely firing people will do that. The more people fired, the “leaner” the government is. The ultimate of “leanness” is a government with no people and no expenses.
But this does not translate into greater efficiency.
If efficiency is measured by the degree to which the government improves and protects the people’s lives, wholesale firings do not accomplish the mission.
On the contrary, they prevent efficiency.
Those agencies that have already experienced mass firings are less efficient today than before—less able to accomplish their missions.
Examples of “Leaner” government hurting people: Fewer inspectors → more food safety issues, workplace hazards.
Fewer IRS agents → less tax enforcement on wealthy individuals/corporations.
Fewer teachers or public health workers → worse services, more burnout, worse education.
Reduced unemployment offices → longer wait times for help.
Underfunded disaster response → worse outcomes during emergencies.
In these cases, “Leaner” isn’t more efficient—it’s slower and less ineffective.
d. There is no inherent advantage to a “small” government, however “small” is measured. The optimum size of a government is the size that will best accomplish its mission. It is difficult to see how DOGE’s wholesale firings, which do not consider those fired’s experience, work ethic, and individual accomplishments, can result in an optimum size.
Merely making a team smaller does not make it better. Quite often, a smaller team cannot accomplish as much as a bigger team, or the U.S. military would be composed of a dozen soldiers.
e. Reallocating resources to the private sector (aka “privatizing”) has no general effect on an agency’s ability to accomplish its mission.
The primary mission of a federal agency is to serve the people, while the primary mission of a private organization is to make a profit and serve the people.
The agency and the organization are judged by how well they accomplish their missions. Both private and public groups employ people. There are no fundamental differences between people working in the private sector vs. those working for the government.
One difference between the two types of organizations is that private organizations cannot focus on the people; their focus must be split between service an profits.
A second difference it that for a federal agency, the primary decision-makers must please Congress and the President, while the private organization’s decision-makers must please the owners-shareholders. The goals of the two groups are different.
This can be seen when the service and pricing of the United States Postal Service are compared with those of FedEx and UPS. They have different goals, different pricing, and different outcomes.
The DOGE willy-nilly, unfocused, mass workforce reductions will impact important public services, including disaster response, social security administration, and national security operations.
Visualize a football team with fifty players that tries to downsize by firing twenty players, without regard to position or skill level. That is the DOGE “efficiency” method.
Now imagine the effect of Trump’s efforts to deport millions of workers and consumers from the economy. because of false claims — based on bigotry — that these people are criminals. No evidence, no trials, only bigoted claims.
Millions of businesses all over America, will lose employees and customers (and this doesn’t consider the economic losses Trump’s tariffs will cause.)
Visualize the transfer of billions of tariff dollars from the private sector to the federal government, where they are destroyed.
Winners Wealthy individuals and corporations will see lower taxes, especially on tax shelters, and capital gains.
Private contractors/businesses: If public services (e.g., education, healthcare, infrastructure) are cut, private firms will be brought in to fill the gap—for profit.
Private jails, notoriously the least human, provide an example.
Ideological libertarians: People who hate government see this as a win.
Losers Working-class and low-income people: Most federal spending goes toward Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, education, and income support. These people will receive worse service and lose their income because of layoffs, hiring freezes, and wage stagnation.
Their real taxes will rise. They do not benefit from tax loopholes and other schemes afforded to the rich. They will suffer most from tariff increases, which will be nothing less than sales taxes on buyers.
Communities relying on infrastructure investment: Fewer public works = fewer jobs, slower development.
Cutting billions from programs that benefit the general population does not help the economy. It widens the income/power/wealth Gap between the rich and the rest.
The government will do less for regular people, leaving them to fend for themselves or turn to private corporations that profit by extracting dollars from those who cannot afford it.
IN SUMMARY
Trump and Musk lead these efforts under the banners of “efficiency,” which masks a deeper agenda: consolidating influence by the rich, reducing democratic control, and opening new markets for privatization.
If you believe government should actively provide education, healthcare, infrastructure, safety nets, and regulation—then cutting it back doesn’t make it better. It just makes it less capable.
And that is the real goal of Trump/Musk’s DOGE. To make the rich richer and the rest poorer.
If you are not rich, you have not and will not see a penny’s worth of benefit from Trump/Musk’s DOGE.
All that pain. All those lives ruined. All for nothing.
You will experience the result of ignorance, greed, paranoia, cruelty, and hatred.
Rodger Malcolm Mitchell
Twitter: @rodgermitchell
Search #monetarysovereignty
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MUCK RACK: https://muckrack.com/rodger-malcolm-mitchell;……………………………………………………………………..
A Government’s Sole Purpose is to Improve and Protect The People’s Lives.
MONETARY SOVEREIGNTY
#Monetary Sovereignty - Mitchell 
“… the banners of “efficiency,” which masks a deeper agenda…”
He’s a liar, and the follow-up to that is bigger and bigger lies. The inch becomes the mile, and we all pay for it. Thank you so much, all you millions who voted for him, for now you too shall suffer.
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Internal budget document reveals extent of Trump’s proposed health cuts
HHS would be asked to absorb a $40 billion cut, about one-third of its discretionary budget.
April 16, 2025 at 4:20 p.m. EDTApril 16, 2025
By Lena H. Sun, Carolyn Y. Johnson, Rachel Roubein, Joel Achenbach and Lauren Weber
The Trump administration is seeking to deeply slash budgets for federal health programs, a roughly one-third cut in discretionary spending by the Department of Health and Human Services, according to a preliminary budget document obtained by The Washington Post.
The HHS budget draft, known as a “passback,” offers the first full look at the health and social service priorities of President Donald Trump’s Office of Management and Budget as it prepares to send his 2026 fiscal year budget request to Congress. It shows how the Trump administration plans to reshape the federal health agencies that oversee food and drug safety, manage the nation’s response to infectious-disease threats and drive biomedical research.
The 64-page documentcalls not only for cuts, but also a major shuffling and restructuring of health and human service agencies.
Agencies are allowed to appeal to HHS for changes but have been told they cannot change the bottom line, according to a federal health official who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the negotiations.
While Congress often ignores the president’s budget request, this has not been a typical transition to a new administration. Trump and his allies in Congress have made clear they want to smash the status quo by drastically reducing the size of the federal government and scrubbing it of programs and research efforts seen as wasteful or contrary to administration priorities.
The administration already has downsized HHS by about one-fourth of its workforce, with about 20,000 imminent departures since Trump took office. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention staff who worked on programs to prevent drowning and gun violence, improve worker safety and test for sexually transmitted illnesses and hepatitis were among those laid off.
National Institutes of Health staffers who specialize in managing scientific funding have been ordered to terminate contracts and cancel hundreds of grants that fund research on topics such as vaccine hesitancy, transgender health and covid.
HHS had a discretionary budget of about $121 billion in fiscal 2024, but under the Trump administration’s preliminary outline, it would see a decrease to $80 billion.
The proposed cuts are aimed at some of the prevention-focused health-care efforts HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has said he wants to prioritize, said Anand Parekh, chief medical adviser at the Bipartisan Policy Center, a Washington, D.C., think tank.
“These are the efforts that try to get ahead of health-care problems,” he said. “You can expect the costs of the Medicare and Medicaid program just to go up. That’s the shortsightedness of reducing the sliver of the budget that is discretionary when that is the main opportunity you have to reduce health burden in America and get ahead of health problems.”
Spokespeople for the White House and HHS did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
“President Trump has committed to balancing the budget while providing adequate funding for critical nondefense discretionary priorities — securing our borders, caring for our veterans, and continued infrastructure investment,” the document states in an introduction.
“Reaching balance requires: resetting the proper balance between federal and state responsibilities with a renewed emphasis on federalism; eliminating the federal government’s support of woke ideology; protecting the American people by deconstructing a wasteful and weaponized bureaucracy; and identifying and eliminating wasteful spending.”
It is unclear which proposed cuts will stand in the budget proposal to Congress — and whether lawmakers will accept them. During the first Trump administration, Congress rejected some of the administration’s proposals, including a 20 percent cut to NIH.
But those who depend on this funding said the cuts would pose an existential threat to some programs.
“It would be catastrophic,” said Tommy Sheridan, deputy director of the National Head Start Association. “More than a million parents wouldn’t be able to go to work from all those children, or they would have to scramble to find some other type of option. In a lot of communities, Head Start is the only early childhood provider in the community — especially rural America.”
Alan Morgan, chief executive of the National Rural Health Association, said rural residents would suffer if the health initiatives proposed for elimination were cut.
“Those are essential to ensuring access to care for rural Americans and critical to keeping rural hospitals open,” he said. “If that would come to fruition it would be absolute shocking news, because these programs have had such bipartisan support,” he added, noting Kennedy himself had expressed support for the importance of rural hospitals.
AND NOT ONE OF THE ABOVE CUTS WILL IMPROVE YOUR LIFE IN ANY WAY. THE SOLE EFFECT IS TO SAVE THE GOVERNMENT MONEY, WHICH IS UNNECESSARY FOR A MONETARILY SOVEREIGN GOVERNMENT HAVING THE INFINITE ABILITY TO CREATE DOLLARS.
THE SOLE PURPOSE IS TO WIDEN THE INCOME/WEALTH/POWER GAP BETWEEN YOU AND THE RICHEST AMERICANS, I.E. TO MAKE THE RICH RICHER.
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Prediction: DOGE’s cuts won’t amount to more than $250b, and $150b of that will be a lie. They have already been caught claiming savings from non-existent contracts, contracts that expired in the Biden term, or contracts that were only meant to be partially paid for partial work. Many of the forced layoffs are already being walked back, or forced to rehire by the courts (how many court orders can Trump ignore before even the sycophant Republicans have enough defectors to impeach Trump for the third time; 3 strikes and he’s out??).
And that $150b savings will be a mirage because the harm to the economy will vastly overwhelm that temporary savings in lost GDP, maybe for a generation or more once the educational cuts really kick in. Look how much we lost just from the Covid pandemic shutting the schools for up to 2 years; that will never be made up.
This is all a play to get the tax cuts passed. Even Trump knows the real money is in Medicare, Social Security and Medicaid, and in Defense – which is going up to a trillion in the next budget, already announced. Trump and the Republicans will try to cut SS and the healthcare programs (the VA is already being slashed), but even Republicans know they will be voted out if they make it too obvious, so this will be limited in the final budget. The current bill is just an outline and already some “moderate” Republicans are balking, enough in the tiny majority to sink the bill without Democratic support, and once THAT gets opened up, all kinds of concessions will be required.
But Trump will probably get his tax cuts before these other things happen, so the debt will soar, much knashing of teeth and pulling of hair will occur, and lots of social programs, science, trade deficits will grow, not shrink. And after the recessions, the Republicans will lose the midterms, and the debt will have grown anyway.
Of course, America’s standing in the world, already trashed, won’t recover for a generation, maybe never. We’ll be second rate to China, even Europe collectively (the EU stock market is rising while ours is sinking).
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Well said as usual, Rodger!
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