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Comment by genericresponse | Hacker News Reader

This is /s, right?

First- Many of the cuts haven't been legally conducted and, rather, represent waste themselves as they are going to disrupt activities and create litigation. So we, the people, will pay at least as much and have less productive results and have to pay for legal fees.

Second- Federal contracts are usually bid on the free market. There's an RFP, bidders, and the best fit wins. It's usually lowest cost while meeting requirements. I'm not sure why selling to the government is not a "real customer."

Third- It's reductive and inflammatory to say that not detailing out the contracts were for was because you would have seen it as wasteful corrupt spending. How would the prior commenter have even known what you see as wasteful and corrupt?

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Can we at least agree that NGOs like Chelsea Clinton's Difficult to Verify Third World Orphan Feeding Service should be audited?

The argument from the right, which I have not seen anyone on the left address directly, is that a very large portion of government spending is laundered to well connected people by way of contracts to NGOs and other kinds of organizations where there is little or no verification that the money is actually being used as claimed. Often tax filings reveal that by its own admission, the organization in question is spending nearly all the money on overhead like travel and administration. Combine this with the fact that so many people go into government jobs with modest salaries but come out being worth 10s of millions of dollars and I have a hard time believing that anything but a wrecking ball is going to fix the system.

We are adding trillions to the national debt every year so we don't have money to waste.

Many politicians go into office promising reforms but until very recently it was always just slight nibbling around the edges, if anything.

I posted a link to where DOGE is publishing their cuts in response to the comment you are replying to and it was flagged and removed instantly.

Which, you know, is why liberals on this site and Reddit and Bluesky are so shocked at how many conservatives they have created by silencing them.

Let me repeat I VOTED FOR HARRIS. I just want to get real information! Flag away, censors!

Is it the one where you posted the dogegov.com website? Because that's the wrong website and not affiliated with the US government. That's probably why it got flagged. The real website is doge.gov, though that site isn't exactly great; it's basically a mirror of the @DOGE account on X. The "savings" section of the site says "receipts coming soon, no later than Valentine's Day," which is today.

Edit to add: doge.gov is exactly the site we're talking about here; it was offline a bit earlier, presumably while they cleared up the mess from their unsecured DB.

> I posted a link to where DOGE is publishing their cuts in response to the comment you are replying to and it was flagged and removed instantly.

You posted a link to a non-official crypto meme website that contained no useful information about what is actually happening with DOGE the government agency.

I think it's just time for you to stop digging. Every post is more inane than the last, and the last was you posting a link to a scam site and claiming it's an official government outlet. Just consider that if you can't tell the difference in that, you might be in over your head here.

I think that Chelsea Clinton's NGO is a nice interior bailey to fall back on to defend what Musk is actually doing.

Can you provide a basis in fact for the argument about a large portion of government spending? I'm asking because I think the argument is specious.

First- 49% of national spending goes to Social Security, Medicare and interest payments. The first is a direct payment, the second is very heavily regulated and has a bounty program for fraud waste and abuse, and the third is paid directly to bondholders.

Second- I'm almost certain that most, if not all, government contracts have auditing rights included. So we could audit them if we want, in fact almost every government agency has an inspector general to do just that.

Are you referring to the Clinton Health Access Initiative, to which USAID gave $7.5 million in 2019 during Trump's term, or is there another one?

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