Comment by scarab92
Comment by scarab92 3 days ago
[flagged]
Comment by scarab92 3 days ago
[flagged]
DOGE is an agency, it took over the digital services agency that existed before.[1]. Obama had created the original agency, not Congress, so Trump had the ability to change it.
"The United States Digital Service is hereby publicly renamed as the United States DOGE Service (USDS) and shall be established in the Executive Office of the President."
And I’m not sure why you think a “congressional mandate” is required for the executive to do things, it’s not. Especially for an agency that a former President created on his own.
As for data access, my understanding is the digital services agency already had data access to other agencies through pre-existing agreements (it goes back to the original mandate to fix the Obamacare website which required pulling data from numerous databases).
[1]https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/01/esta...
The mandate and personnel of the Digital Service are completely different from DOGE, so they are effectively different things. Renaming an existing one was just an administrative shortcut taken by an executive that clearly does not care for the spirit or the letter of any law (as stated by the president himself in his infamous tweet).
As you are well aware Washington DC isn’t big on following “the spirit of the law” and is a big fan on quick workarounds for the bureaucracy that slows things to a crawl.
I give credit to Trump and Musk for playing the DC game like professional politicians.
It’s pretty clear you can’t get anything done in DC without it.
Big on authoritarianism and small on everything else.
Can you tell me a cost reduction plan involving police or military or do i have to label it law-and-order with a sharp salute for you to understand what i am talking about?
Communication is so messy man, two sides, same iterpretation ... just tell me when i can lower my arm of friendship, that absolutely noone could misunderstand.
> Big on authoritarianism and small on everything else.
Historically, that has not been the case, hence the question.
> Can you tell me a cost reduction plan involving police or military or do i have to label it law-and-order with a sharp salute for you to understand what i am talking about?
Just yesterday this[0] was a headline: "Hegseth wants Pentagon to cut 8% from defense budget for each of the next 5 years"
[0] https://www.cbsnews.com/news/hegseth-pentagon-8-percent-cuts...
> False. It was a temporary injuction until the judge has time to review it.
It was in fact multiple injunctions because people at DOGE kept trying to work around it in increasingly stupid ways.
> So are 2.5 million other employees and advisors in government.
Those employees are employed by a government agency established, funded and given their mission by Congress. The heads of these agencies are approved by the US Senate.
None of these statements above apply to Elon Musk or "DOGE."
That's definitely possible. Ultimately, it was up to the public of the USA to be the backstop against this and they chose not to.
I think it's worth pointing out that it's not a given Congress would have approved it all. For a start, it would take longer to legally setup the instruments that Musk wanted. Also, the current situation allows Republicans to conveniently wash their hands of any negative consequences. Which is likely a big reason they're not pushing on this at all, as demanding a vote would require them to take a clear side on DOGE.
Musk has publicly threatened to fund a primary challenger for any Congressman who gets in his way so, in some very real sense he's the one doing it, rather than the voters who voted for their congressman, perhaps not expecting them to be threatened into compliance by the richest man in the world.
These are also staff of the government.. Or contracted by the government. The government contracts out all the time.
> They are unelected, So are 2.5 million other employees and advisors in government.
The 2.5 million you speak of operate within agencies whose mandates have been given by Congress and their actions are subject to judicial reciew. There is no Comgressional mandate for DOGE. They are the rogue agency people like you spent years worrying about.