Two right-wing billionaires outline plan for mass firings and cuts to antipoverty programs

[milestogo]

Jake Johnson
Common Dreams
November 21, 2024

The two right-wing billionaires President-elect Donald Trump has tasked with spearheading a new "government efficiency" commission outlined their vision Wednesday for the mass firing of federal employees, large-scale deregulation, and major spending cuts that could impact antipoverty programs, drug research and development, and more. For the first time since Trump announced plans to create the Department on Government Efficiency (DOGE)—which, despite its name, would be an advisory commission rather than an actual federal department—Tesla CEO Elon Musk and biotech entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy offered a detailed look at how they plan to achieve their stated objective of taking a "chainsaw" to federal operations.

"We are assisting the Trump transition team to identify and hire a lean team of small-government crusaders, including some of the sharpest technical and legal minds in America," the pair wrote in an op-ed in The Wall Street Journal. "The two of us will advise DOGE at every step to pursue three major kinds of reform: regulatory rescissions, administrative reductions, and cost savings. We will focus particularly on driving change through executive action based on existing legislation rather than by passing new laws." Decrying rules crafted by "unelected bureaucrats," Musk and Ramaswamy—unelected outside advisers—wrote that they intend to present to Trump "a list of regulations" they believe should be eliminated. The culling of regulations would, they argued, provide the justification for "mass headcount reductions"—corporate-speak for sweeping firings—across federal agencies, a plan the two wrote would not be deterred by civil service protections.

Watchdogs have noted that the regulatory cuts envisioned by the commission's co-leaders would likely benefit Musk's companies, at least three of which are currently under scrutiny from nine federal agencies. "Based on Elon Musk's comments, the so-called Department of Government Efficiency is poised to make far-reaching recommendations that could have a devastating impact on Americans and enormously benefit insiders, starting with Musk himself," Public Citizen co-president Robert Weissman said Wednesday. "A second Trump term will undoubtedly see a multipronged attack on any institution that seeks to constrain big business, and DOGE will lead the charge."

Musk and Ramaswamy also laid out a plan under which Trump would evade existing federal statutes such as the Impoundment Control Act to cut spending already allocated by Congress. "DOGE will help end federal overspending by taking aim at the $500 billion-plus in annual federal expenditures that are unauthorized by Congress or being used in ways that Congress never intended, from $535 million a year to the Corporation for Public Broadcasting and $1.5 billion for grants to international organizations to nearly $300 million to progressive groups like Planned Parenthood," they wrote.

https://www.alternet.org/elon-musk-doge-2669965699/

Department of Government Efficiency sounds like it is straight out of George Orwell's 1984.

[Passages]

1. Sociopaths have taken control.

[riversedge]

2. ' Watchdogs have noted that the regulatory cuts envisioned by the commission's co-leaders would likely benefit Musk's co

Watchdogs have noted that the regulatory cuts envisioned by the commission's co-leaders would likely benefit Musk's companies, at least three of which are currently under scrutiny from nine federal agencies.

[DJ Synikus Makisimus]

3. Increasing poverty means increasing crime, so ...

I would expect a massive militarization of the police will be "required." In all probability, that increase in the militarization of the police will cost much more than the anti-poverty programs and the axed employees' salaries combined*, but there is much profit to be made all at once when selling instruments of death and oppression. Besides, in the immediate aftermath of such cuts they can give massive tax breaks to the wealthy and corporations. And the stock markets will rise and there will be much rejoicing, accompanied by brutality and gunfire directed at the nation's poorer folks and anyone in the way.

It would go a ways toward making urban life more miserable by causing chaos in many larger cities, and big cities are the fascists' "great Satan."

And if/when they declare the Democratic Party to be a terrorist organization, they'll have the equipment.


_____________________________________
*They will have to increase police forces to fight the upsurge in crime, but that's a local budget issue not a Federal one. I expect the equipment to be "donated" by the Feds so that Trump Admin. officials can control (and get kicks from) any contracts issued to the military-police-prison-surveillance industrial complex.

[intheflow]

4. Tom Tomorrow had the best take on DOGE:

The Department of Government Efficiency has two directors, which sounds pretty inefficient.