DOGE spreading its wings

Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy are sending representatives to agencies across the federal government, four people familiar with the matter said, to begin preliminary interviews that will shape the tech executives’ enormous ambitions to tame Washington’s sprawling bureaucracy.

  WaPo

To tame it perhaps, but to tame it to their hand.

In recent days, aides with the nongovernmental “Department of Government Efficiency" tied to President-elect Donald Trump’s transition team have spoken with staffers at more than a dozen federal agencies. [...] The agencies include the Treasury Department, the Internal Revenue Service and the departments of Homeland Security, Veterans Affairs, and Health and Human Services.

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At the same time, Musk and Ramaswamy have significantly stepped up hiring for their new entity, with more than 50 staffers already working out of the offices of SpaceX, Musk’s rocket-building company, in downtown Washington.

[...]

While much about DOGE remains unclear — including who is paying the salaries of these staffers or exactly how DOGE representatives work with the formal transition team — the agency outreach reflects intensifying efforts by Musk and Ramaswamy to propose what they say will be “drastic” cuts to federal spending and regulations. Even as the scale of their project grows, Musk and Ramaswamy are encountering a slew of obstacles, including reluctance among congressional Republicans to approve deep budget cuts and a skeptical career civil service.

That obstacle will be cleared when Trump takes office and fires those civil servants. They've already been combing the ranks to try to find those who might not be loyal to Trump.

In a potential nod to the myriad challenges facing DOGE, Musk has begun tempering certain promises in his bid to achieve sweeping reform. [...] “I think we’ll try for $2 trillion. I think that’s like the best-case outcome,” he said. “But I do think that you kind of have to have some overage. I think if we try for $2 trillion, we’ve got a good shot at getting $1 [trillion].”

Fifty percent. That's a hell of an overage.

Over the past several weeks, DOGE has been deluged by applications that have poured in through direct messages on X, Musk’s social media site, where the group put out a public call for “super high-IQ small-government revolutionaries willing to work 80+ hours per week on unglamorous cost-cutting.”

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The White House budget request applies to spending in fiscal 2026, which doesn’t begin until Oct. 1. Spending for the rest of the current fiscal year is being hashed out on Capitol Hill by congressional Republicans who already have voted overwhelmingly to boost spending for the Defense Department — an agency DOGE has vowed to target.

How are we going to annex Canada, take Greenland away from Denmark, and reacquire the Panama Canal if we cut the military? And what agency - even a Republican led one - will want to give up any of their budget?

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.