You ask, "Will DOGE have a grace period?" Short answer no, long answer, no. The rent a whores are already coming out in droves to try to take down Pete and Matt. I suspect that next week there will be more on board for Elon and Vivek. It's all the dems know how to do. Fortunately the people have wisened up to this. All that said I suspect that E and V will work hard and the weeping and wailing and gnashing of teeth will be heard throughout the land, beginning the day they start. Here's hoping that Vivek has the same sort of stones that Elon does. It should work.
First: Kelman's explanation is vastly over-simplifed and fails to address the totality of the issue. Yes, companies add allocated overhead, but the DOD does too - so a $5 hammer becomes a $6 invoice before buying, specification, and stocking/shipping costs are added. As a result a small quantity of hammers attracts roughly the same total allocated costs as a large quantity - hence one hammer at $200 but 5,000 hammers at $6.04 each.
Want to fix this? change to standing orders that can be filled according to orders placed directly by the user group - bypassing procurement and all the costs/delays they impose. You will get more mistakes and some fraud, but on net much lower costs and much shorter fullfillment times.
Second: civil service procedures and job protections (Trump's order renewal notwithstanding) mean that the idea of simply firing all those with odd (or even) employee numbers isn't practical - and neither are any of the variations.
What is practical is government re-organization with. where necessary, congressional action to change departmental or other group mandates. Dismantle DHS, for example, to combine a number of functions in a new, leaner, department or agency and you can make thousands of positions redundant.
Third: Saving a billion or ten in salaries is nothing - the costs are in what these people do, not their saleries and incurred overheads.
Kill off the dept of education, for example, by delegating some functions to the states (so treasury cuts 50 x 12 checks a year and that's the end of it for fedgov) saves a few hundred million in direct costs - and that's nice - but the real gain is in eliminating their regulatory roles because that removes a hundred plus billion burden from the system - and that's great.
I don't remember how the Grace commission was paid for, or where it got its authority, but neither Ramaswarmy or Musk have Grace's executive experience: they can both talk to entrepeneurship and finance, but I think less to personnel management and general operations. They won't be able to fire anyone directly, and most of those wasted positions are a) prohibitively difficult to legally empty and b) in the Pentagon, or c) in the sprawling Intelligence Community(TM).
What they can both do well is troll the opposition and draw fire. They've both got the time and interest, and both enjoy the spotlight. If nothing else, this could save this Trump administration the trouble of playing defense and, as the last one did, shying from offense. This alone might be useful.
Maybe Ramaswarmy has ambitions for later, and the notoriety could help that. Musk's motivations and plans are anyone's guess. It would be highly entertaining to see one or the other kicking holes in the paddock around, say, NASA or the FDA. I'd personally love to see Musk take out the Climate Crazies and Nut Zeros at NWS/NOAA.
Let's see who gets DOE. Selecting Joe Manchin for the position might prove interesting.
Later: Looks like it is Chris Wright. Nice choice.
I was remarking on what they are, or were, good at, and what I perceive are their strengths.
Ramaswarmy is not an operations manager, he builds companies and sells them off - great as an enrepeneur.
IMO Musk, an equally great company builder and promoter, plays front man for the people he hres to run operations. In fact, with both Tesla and X specifically, he's gotten into more trouble running them day-to-day himself, and probably recognizes that.
To my recollection of Grace, he was a long-time CEO and at least conversant in all parts of management.
Musk and Ramaswarmy are disruptors. Grace was an organizer. These are equally useful, but different.
I remember my first experience with private sector efficiency and management experts reforming and streamlining government in my time with the NH Division of Welfare in the late 1970's, early 80s. The new governor brought in one of the then Big Eight accounting firms. After their review, the manage analyst offered his first big suggestion. He (they were hes back then) wanted us to purchase our regional offices. It would save money and improve our financials. I pointed out to the gentleman that government didn't have an income statement and, as such, didn't have a bottom line. We were a governmental agency. But, more importantly, we didn't purchase our offices because we didn't want the property taken off of the local property tax rolls to the disadvantage of the local communities. The state government couldn't be taxed without its consent by an inferior subdivision of the state. NH's taxes were then predominantly local and principally for the schools. But, of course, NH at that time was a small, well-managed and frugal state and my first experience caution with well-meaning experts may not be applicable to DOGE.
A more fine-grained accounting system, completely feasible with today's technology, would be able to leave an audit trail for "overhead".
My complaint with government spending is not so much the Federal employees, it's the contractors. I worked for a USAID program in Russia. It turned out 95% of the money spent was spent on the contractors; administration made up most of it; and "overhead" was a huge item on top of actual expenses.
Then there's the universal mandate to spend everything in your budget before the end of the fiscal year.
You ask, "Will DOGE have a grace period?" Short answer no, long answer, no. The rent a whores are already coming out in droves to try to take down Pete and Matt. I suspect that next week there will be more on board for Elon and Vivek. It's all the dems know how to do. Fortunately the people have wisened up to this. All that said I suspect that E and V will work hard and the weeping and wailing and gnashing of teeth will be heard throughout the land, beginning the day they start. Here's hoping that Vivek has the same sort of stones that Elon does. It should work.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=abhlj4Pfftc&pp=ygUUUm9uIHN3YW5zb24gc2xhc2ggaXQ%3D
DOGE it! DOGE it! DOGE it!
Who will be DOGE’s Ron Swanson?
Vivek said they can cut around 80%. Lord, please make this happen! Amen!
OK. How to pronounce DOGE?
"Dew-gie" like Doogie Howser MD?
"Dough-jeh" (ˈdōj) like the chief magistrate of the Republic of Venice?
"Doggy" (like Fido or Rover or Spot)?
"Dough-geh" rhymes with 'rogue' (like a rogue elephant)?
"Dodge" like dodge a bullet? (Which Trump and the country just did.)
Enquiring minds want to know.
No, no, and no.
First: Kelman's explanation is vastly over-simplifed and fails to address the totality of the issue. Yes, companies add allocated overhead, but the DOD does too - so a $5 hammer becomes a $6 invoice before buying, specification, and stocking/shipping costs are added. As a result a small quantity of hammers attracts roughly the same total allocated costs as a large quantity - hence one hammer at $200 but 5,000 hammers at $6.04 each.
Want to fix this? change to standing orders that can be filled according to orders placed directly by the user group - bypassing procurement and all the costs/delays they impose. You will get more mistakes and some fraud, but on net much lower costs and much shorter fullfillment times.
Second: civil service procedures and job protections (Trump's order renewal notwithstanding) mean that the idea of simply firing all those with odd (or even) employee numbers isn't practical - and neither are any of the variations.
What is practical is government re-organization with. where necessary, congressional action to change departmental or other group mandates. Dismantle DHS, for example, to combine a number of functions in a new, leaner, department or agency and you can make thousands of positions redundant.
Third: Saving a billion or ten in salaries is nothing - the costs are in what these people do, not their saleries and incurred overheads.
Kill off the dept of education, for example, by delegating some functions to the states (so treasury cuts 50 x 12 checks a year and that's the end of it for fedgov) saves a few hundred million in direct costs - and that's nice - but the real gain is in eliminating their regulatory roles because that removes a hundred plus billion burden from the system - and that's great.
Not all managers are created equal.
I don't remember how the Grace commission was paid for, or where it got its authority, but neither Ramaswarmy or Musk have Grace's executive experience: they can both talk to entrepeneurship and finance, but I think less to personnel management and general operations. They won't be able to fire anyone directly, and most of those wasted positions are a) prohibitively difficult to legally empty and b) in the Pentagon, or c) in the sprawling Intelligence Community(TM).
What they can both do well is troll the opposition and draw fire. They've both got the time and interest, and both enjoy the spotlight. If nothing else, this could save this Trump administration the trouble of playing defense and, as the last one did, shying from offense. This alone might be useful.
Maybe Ramaswarmy has ambitions for later, and the notoriety could help that. Musk's motivations and plans are anyone's guess. It would be highly entertaining to see one or the other kicking holes in the paddock around, say, NASA or the FDA. I'd personally love to see Musk take out the Climate Crazies and Nut Zeros at NWS/NOAA.
Let's see who gets DOE. Selecting Joe Manchin for the position might prove interesting.
Later: Looks like it is Chris Wright. Nice choice.
I don’t know who this Grace fellow is, but to question the “executive experience” of either Elon or Vivek, is foolishness on stilts.
You might actually read the article re: Grace.
I was remarking on what they are, or were, good at, and what I perceive are their strengths.
Ramaswarmy is not an operations manager, he builds companies and sells them off - great as an enrepeneur.
IMO Musk, an equally great company builder and promoter, plays front man for the people he hres to run operations. In fact, with both Tesla and X specifically, he's gotten into more trouble running them day-to-day himself, and probably recognizes that.
To my recollection of Grace, he was a long-time CEO and at least conversant in all parts of management.
Musk and Ramaswarmy are disruptors. Grace was an organizer. These are equally useful, but different.
I remember my first experience with private sector efficiency and management experts reforming and streamlining government in my time with the NH Division of Welfare in the late 1970's, early 80s. The new governor brought in one of the then Big Eight accounting firms. After their review, the manage analyst offered his first big suggestion. He (they were hes back then) wanted us to purchase our regional offices. It would save money and improve our financials. I pointed out to the gentleman that government didn't have an income statement and, as such, didn't have a bottom line. We were a governmental agency. But, more importantly, we didn't purchase our offices because we didn't want the property taken off of the local property tax rolls to the disadvantage of the local communities. The state government couldn't be taxed without its consent by an inferior subdivision of the state. NH's taxes were then predominantly local and principally for the schools. But, of course, NH at that time was a small, well-managed and frugal state and my first experience caution with well-meaning experts may not be applicable to DOGE.
So it is the overhead cost that is outrageously out of line! Does not matter the nature of the cost
when the final cost is still outrageous.
A more fine-grained accounting system, completely feasible with today's technology, would be able to leave an audit trail for "overhead".
My complaint with government spending is not so much the Federal employees, it's the contractors. I worked for a USAID program in Russia. It turned out 95% of the money spent was spent on the contractors; administration made up most of it; and "overhead" was a huge item on top of actual expenses.
Then there's the universal mandate to spend everything in your budget before the end of the fiscal year.