Summary

Former White House Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney dismissed the new Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) as a “PR campaign,” noting it lacks statutory authority and cannot implement changes independently.

While praising Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy’s goals to cut bureaucracy and waste, Mulvaney emphasized DOGE must rely on Congress or the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) to enact reforms.

He highlighted Russ Vought, the incoming OMB Director, as important to the initiative’s success, despite Musk and Ramaswamy’s higher profiles.

  • ceenote@lemmy.world
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    11 days ago

    I work for the federal government, and there most definitely are ways to make it more efficient. However, everything I’ve seen from Musk and Ramaswamy only sound like ways to cut productivity while leaving spending pretty much untouched. Maybe that’s what they actually want, I dunno.

    • just_another_person@lemmy.world
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      11 days ago

      All of these fools are just out to prove that “the gubment” shouldn’t be doing anything but push paper, and everything should shift to privatization. Yes, meaning them and their friends. Musk is probably going to try and make Twitter the defacto messaging platform for all government entities…yes, seriously.

      GOP has been pulling this shit since the 80’s. Claim government wasteful spending, and shift tax dollars to their buddies or their own companies and call it “privatization”. It’s a scam to literally make people who live here just pay them money for doing nothing. In no way will they make anything better or save money.

    • xmunk@sh.itjust.works
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      11 days ago

      Nah, they just want to punish people who oppose them - that’s why Musk called out the CFPB in particular.

      Don’t hold your breath for Musk to cut Tesla subsidies because they create market inequities.

    • nbailey@lemmy.ca
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      11 days ago

      Yeah, real “efficiency” would come from standardizing tools and procedures, getting rid of “shadow IT”, making annual budget requests more flexible (ie if we don’t use it this year we won’t get it next year), and empowering the workers to make more decisions and initiatives without involving committees, managers, etc.

      They are not doing that. It’s not about efficiency, it’s a libertarian crusade to strip out anything valuable from the public sector and leave what’s left to rot.

  • DaddleDew@lemmy.world
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    11 days ago

    It would be hilarious if they told Elon he has this powerful position and he goes around telling people what to do but it’s just a plot to keep him happy and distracted. People pretend to listen and then once he’s gone they just ignore what he said and do what actually needs to be done.

    You know, like how SpaceX is run already.

    • Bassman1805@lemmy.world
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      11 days ago

      I was gonna say, that sounds like the modus operandi at his one company that’s legitimately successful underneath the hype.

      • DaddleDew@lemmy.world
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        11 days ago

        He did nearly bankrupt Tesla after he stole the company from its original founders and demanded that the cars have flush-fitting door handles, completely ignoring his engineers advice that the R&D would be extremely expensive and time consuming because of the safety regulations requiring the handles to still be functional after a crash.

  • DarkCloud@lemmy.world
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    10 days ago

    Yes, Russ Vought will be the one whose actually in charge of budgeting and costing policies, and he’s worse than Musk and Ramaswamy.

    He was a co-author of Project 2025.

    • takeda@lemmy.world
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      11 days ago

      Yeah, I feel Elonia and Ramaswamy are only there to divert attention to them, while the actual work will be done.

  • inclementimmigrant@lemmy.world
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    10 days ago

    Yeah, well see. I fully expect the spineless Republicans to fully follow through with whatever musk tells them because he has three toadstool of Trump in his mouth.