I for one hope DOGE does succeed.
Having worked in Federal, State, and City each for a good while, I can contradict several of your points.
- Government employees are NOT overworked. Having a government job is the easiest 30 year career you can imagine. Most government employees do about 10-20% of the work that employees do at an average startup or large consulting firm. They come to their desks, attend maybe two meetings per day, and fill in 1-3 status reports per week. It's not hard work at all.
- Yes government employees are paid less, but their perks, benefits, retirement, and vacation time more than make up for it. 5 weeks per year holiday is standard, along with pension, generous 403(b) match, top of the line healthcare, deep discounts on shopping, union-protected job security, etc.
- You hail Jed as a hero, but why is the system so inefficient as to require exceptions, workarounds, hacks, and deficiencies? The amount of red tape involved in any government operations is dizzying. I once heard it took 7 ranks of approvals, just to get the White House website changed. And that still didn't prevent unwanted content from getting published.
- "The Purpose of Civil Service" is neither noble nor sacrificial. And government certainly is not interested in making things "just at any bit better for the American people." In any government, there are career people, and there are political. The career people are steady, just working a job, and usually providing for a family. Which is fine; similar to programmers and accountants at large corporations. Not exactly "noble" but not evil. The politicals however have absolutely NO interest in the good of the people. Politicals are there to serve themselves. And they stab each other in the backs all the time, to secure future plush political appointments for themselves. Contractors siphon up hundreds of billions of dollars every year, for themselves. I cannot understand why you would defend all this.
- Creating crisis conditions where none exist, has been practiced in government for decades - as long as I have been alive and maybe more. The Monica Lewinsky investigation from Kenneth Starr? The rush to go to war with Iraq? The rush from GWBush administration to cut taxes, by declaring a recession when there wasn't one? The absolutely falsified science that spawned COVID policy? The Trump misdemeanors that were prosecuted as felonies? Yes, politicals engineer crises every single year.
So, yes. I hope DOGE makes radical changes to every branch of the federal government. Lay people off, severely reduce the ranks of politicals, end contractors, and close departments. I would be fine with terminating over 50% of our nation's expenses, paying off the US debt, and THEN restoring only what is needed to provide essential services.
