> Do you feel all of these programs should have been funded, or make sense when we are blowing through money and crushing people with inflation? Do you find the concept of auditing these organizations as bad, or is it bad because it's someone else doing it? If so can you explain why these actions weren't taken with the prior administration?
I don't take issue with auditing. I take issue with the possible illegal firing of officials that are meant to provide oversight, skipping over security clearances to provide sensitive data access to unvetted indivduals, and attempting to illegally cut spending when only Congress has that authority.
> The point being, step out of a partisan hat, or an emotional state of X person is Y. Look at the federal governments spend, fraud, waste, and abuse is prevalent. Someone has to do the hard part and clearly leaving everyone to manage themselves doesn't work. More so when they can't pass their own audits.
Let's be clear here because I see a lot of MAGA repeating this incorrectly. You are referring to a few agencies like the Pentagon when you say they can't pass their own audits. Most federal agencies have no problem passing their audits and all of those audits are available through GAO. https://www.gao.gov/federal-financial-accountability. The majority of agencies pass GAO audits. In fact if Elon was only targeting agencies that failed GAO audits I would have much less of a problem.
I think you are the one that needs to take off the partisan hat.
Can you prove that the appropriate clearance hasn't been granted? It actually appears to be the opposite.
Passing an audit of " you spent x at y" isn't the same as "why are we spending X at y". He's doing the later, surely you can agree with that.
As for you partisan hat dig, i'm in fact not. I don't lean or vote how you're implying. In this particular instance, I've seen the excess of fraud, waste, and abuse through multiple agencies and organizations first hand. I've seen the pallets of USAID cash that were handed out without regard. I've also seen the increased prices, the national debt rising, and the general glut of how our government operates. So yes, while I may disagree with the process, the fact is no one else has taken a legitimate attempt at solving this problem. So in that manner I support the cleanse.
Can you prove the opposite has happened because every journalist says otherwise? The very article you are commenting on suggest the FBI did not do background checks because if so this particular person wouldn't have been approved. I'm all for having a committee that scrutinizes line items but the ends don't justify the means. Especially because there is no oversight here.
What evidence do the journalists have? Elon is cleared, many of his employees are by nature of the work they do. Many of the listed personnel for each of the DOGE teams in the orgs are comprised of Cleared lawyers and invdividuals from within the orgs as well. The burden isn't on proving they aren't, it's on the journalist to prove the sensationalist claims. There is clearly evidence of oversight, the president is authorizing actions. He was elected, we don't have to like it but it's how things are structured. Want change, back the candidates that will fix the issues you want, convince everyone else to agree.
One good example of sensationalism from journalists is the claim this is a "Data breach". That's neither true, nor helpful.
That is not how oversight works. Oversight is an unrelated non-partisan committee and transparency. Unfortunately Elon is jumping through hoops to avoid transparency like moving off any communication that would be subject to FOIA. What you describing is a crony doing his masters bidding not oversight and transparency.
You clearly have your perspective and the rest of the population has theirs. If he / they broke the law, I encourage you to engage your representatives and push for the appropriate actions. Take charge. Until then, it is what it is.
Are you seriously suggesting that usaid spending is responsible for inflation? Can you show any correlation with inflation and usaid spending? The only correlation I see, is corporation profits and wealth of the upper 0.001% going up at the same time as inflation. But instead of a conversation about this, we put the biggest of them all (whom btw has profited significantly from government hand-outs) in charge of finding efficiency.
No one should have to prove a negative. In fact, Musk should be the one being completely transparent about clearances, etc... Instead he's fighting transparency every step of the way. If Musk was really looking to save tax payers money, USAID would have been at the bottom of the list. The cynic in me says he went after them because they were investigating him and he didn't want any conclusions to get out.
Finally, if you want to talk about the 'why' money is being spent, that's congress's domain. If we throw the laws out now then what use are laws. If you want to talk about rising debts, then look at the tax cuts Trump wants to renew that we can't pay for.
The left lost. If they didn't want this to happen they would have put forth a better candidate and addressed the American peoples concerns. This is what we get. It's crude and abrupt, but its what we get. I think we needed to purge a lot of the glut, so in this instance i'm indifferent to whom is doing it.
Kamala Harris was not a leftist candidate nor is the DNC a leftist party. They are both center-right, with a center-left fringe that votes Democrat largely for historical reasons. In fact, it is specifically the fact that the DNC is not leftist that renders them incapable of addressing Americans' concerns. Because the center-right is the "everything's fine" wing of the DNC, which bet that they could make leftists blink and vote Harris, and lost.
You completely sidestepped their comments on the legality of this all as just "eh, as long as it gets done." The legality and unconstitutionality of it all should be concerning no matter what side you are on.
You clearly have your perspective and the rest of the population has theirs. If he / they broke the law, I encourage you to engage your representatives and push for the appropriate actions. Take charge. Until then, it is what it is.
> If Musk was really looking to save tax payers money, USAID would have been at the bottom of the list. The cynic in me says he went after them because they were investigating him and he didn't want any conclusions to get out.
Why would the USAID be investigating Musk? USAID primarily focuses on foreign aid, humanitarian assistance, and development programs rather than regulatory or investigative actions.
By the way, the reason the USAID is at the top of the list for DOGE to audit is because they were the most resistant and combative when the idea of them being audited came up. But they won’t be the only ones facing an audit - the administration said they are looking at all agencies. In fact, just today President Trump literally said in a pre-Super Bowl interview that they will be looking at the Department of Defense soon and expect to find billions or maybe even hundreds of billions in waste.
This seems like exactly the kind of broad audit the US government needs, not just at the national level but every level of government.
It's not an audit, it's bullshit. The resistance he has met from officials is due to them trying to follow the law.
Musk doesn't have the context or detail on what is wasteful or not. Those decisions are made in Congress. If you believe him you believe you can just look at who is being paid and a short description and identify waste. That notion is idiotic.
Musk and crew aren't informed or qualified enough to make decisions about any of this. They're just ignoring the law and made themselves judge jury and executioner.
> If you believe him you believe you can just look at who is being paid and a short description and identify waste. That notion is idiotic.
We have to be clear going into the future. Musk is not doing things this way because he's an idiot, he's doing it because he is waging an ideological war. If he says something is waste and fraud, it's waste and fraud by definition. They don't care about whether there is waste and fraud, they just care about implementing their vision, and "reducing waste/fraud" is apparently the magic phrase that everyone agrees allows them to seize unchecked powers.
This is not accurate. Most jobs in the federal government, including at the treasury, do not require security clearances. You’re confusing background checks, which are very basic, with the different types of security clearances, which aren’t required for something like a financial audit.
I don't take issue with auditing. I take issue with the possible illegal firing of officials that are meant to provide oversight, skipping over security clearances to provide sensitive data access to unvetted indivduals, and attempting to illegally cut spending when only Congress has that authority.
> The point being, step out of a partisan hat, or an emotional state of X person is Y. Look at the federal governments spend, fraud, waste, and abuse is prevalent. Someone has to do the hard part and clearly leaving everyone to manage themselves doesn't work. More so when they can't pass their own audits.
Let's be clear here because I see a lot of MAGA repeating this incorrectly. You are referring to a few agencies like the Pentagon when you say they can't pass their own audits. Most federal agencies have no problem passing their audits and all of those audits are available through GAO. https://www.gao.gov/federal-financial-accountability. The majority of agencies pass GAO audits. In fact if Elon was only targeting agencies that failed GAO audits I would have much less of a problem.
I think you are the one that needs to take off the partisan hat.