Comment on Im thinking we still have a deeper bottom

• oldbaldgrumpy@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago

  Explain how it hasn’t.

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  • gravitas_deficiency@sh.itjust.works ⁨6⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

    No, because you are clearly arguing in bad faith

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  • Carrot@lemmy.today ⁨6⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

    Based on their reported numbers, DOGE has “saved” the US 55B so far. Based on actual receipts, it has “saved” 8B dollars.

    Let’s say they aren’t lying, and they have in fact saved 55B in the last 4 months. Let’s also say for the sake of the argument that they are somehow able to keep up this pace for the entirety of the 4 year term.

    That would be 660B dollars. It sounds like a lot, right? 660B in 4 years. However, basing off of this year’s budget, the military would have spent 3.2T dollars. This means we’ve only saved 20% of what the military spends in the same amount of time.

    Currently, the DoD cannot account for 2.46T dollars. That means that doge will have “saved” only 26% of the DoD’s spending discrepancy. Remember, these numbers are based on the savings that Doge claims but have not proven.

    If we use the number that they actually have receipts for, (8B) and still assume they will somehow keep their pace for the full 4 year term, they will have saved 96B. That would mean that they will have saved 4% of the DoD’s spending discrepancy, or 3% of the DoD’s budget for those 4 years, or 11% of the DoD’s yearly budget, which is actually expected to keep going up year over year.

    Realistically, the amount of money “saved” by the DOGE will be somewhere between those two numbers, and given the track record of the government, as well as Musk, it’s likely closer to the 8B than the 55B.

    Sorry, that was a lot of numbers to throw out there all at once, but my point is this: DOGE is going after the wrong places to find wasted money in the government. Wouldn’t it make more sense to cut spending for departments that have such a long track record of aggregiously overspending? Wouldn’t it make more sense to cut funding from programs that would have less negative impact on the lives of normal US citizens?

    Imagine that, instead of cutting all of these programs, ones that are helping the lives of millions of Americans, we instead gave the military somewhere between 80% and 97% of the money it was expecting, and had the exact same amount of savings of our taxes, while still putting money into the development of future generations.

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