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You Heard It Here First: DOGE Didn’t
Cut Much

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Posted By: RockyTCB, 10/12/2025 7:01:02 AM

Yesterday, we came across a Wall Street Journal article titled: “Tariffs Are Way Up. Interest on Debt Tops $1 Trillion. And DOGE Didn’t Do Much.” The Journal based its report on a Congressional Budget Office report released earlier in the week. But I&I readers knew all this months ago. Because while Democrats and the mainstream press were freaking out about how the Department of Government Efficiency was slashing government, we were reporting the facts. Back in February, we debunked the claim that Elon Musk was taking a chainsaw to the federal government

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Reply 1 - Posted by: chance_232 10/12/2025 7:18:53 AM (No. 2015663)
You can't cut monies already spent. If you will remember, Biden inc was pushing pallets of cash out the door as fast as possible before Jan 21st. Its also difficult to cut congressionally approved funding. DOGE did absolutely destroy the Democrats primary source of taxpayer paid campaign donations. It also showed several thousand useless federal employees the door.
42 people like this.

Reply 2 - Posted by: franq 10/12/2025 7:26:28 AM (No. 2015664)
Once you put the Fed budget next to the cuts, and start knocking off zeroes, you get a sense of proportion. Most were in the range of $50-60 in a $600,000 household budget.
4 people like this.

Reply 3 - Posted by: felixcat 10/12/2025 7:35:50 AM (No. 2015671)
It did help get rid of USAID which has been nothing but a slush fund for Dems for years/decades. Not sure how DOGE or anyone else in this Administration is really going to seriously reduce the size of government when you have Cabinet Secretaries like Brooke Rollins whining about how the government shutdown is going to mean no more monies for WIC. WIC started out as a breastfeeding program - how the heck is some nursing baby going to starve? Or Sean Duffy of Transportation saying that the spoiled brats of the FAA - Air Traffic Controllers are stressed having to work without pay - you don't hear about ICE agents or federal correctional officers calling in sick during this time.
29 people like this.

Reply 4 - Posted by: RussZilla 10/12/2025 7:36:03 AM (No. 2015672)
A little here and a little there, now that’s a good start. The big cuts will come if they make a major cut in the bureaucracy. The bureaucracy only grows, and the bureaucracy feeds on waste.
22 people like this.

Reply 5 - Posted by: anniebc 10/12/2025 8:09:21 AM (No. 2015684)
Huge cuts in government workers is relative. FTA: "the job cuts were minuscule compared to the mammoth size of the federal workforce" You and I know what huge cuts in spending and staffing means in our real lives. What's happening in government (on both sides) is not anything like we know. Government, even with the shutdown and furlough of some 750,000 is not hurting. When businesses cut workers, the pain is real. When you cut your household budget significantly, everyone in your household feels the pain. Government is not hurting; it's too darn big. And, not enough heads of government agencies believe their stuff should be cut (see poster 3) or eliminated completely. WIC, food stamps, Section 8, free childcare, free healthcare, free business, crony contracts, free everything. It has to stop!
18 people like this.

Reply 6 - Posted by: padiva 10/12/2025 8:22:01 AM (No. 2015699)
Don't forget all the squabbles about funding for Planned Parenthood.
10 people like this.

Reply 7 - Posted by: Strike3 10/12/2025 8:37:41 AM (No. 2015711)
The objective of DOGE was to IDENTIFY waste and fraud. It was up to the government agencies to do the actual cutting. Exposing USAID alone will save us billions and force many democrats to live on salary and benefits alone, as they should. Elon and his team did us a tremendous favor, something nobody else could or would do in the past.
39 people like this.

Reply 8 - Posted by: Quigley 10/12/2025 9:39:02 AM (No. 2015725)
Right #7. DOGE had/has no authority to cut anything. Congress controls the budget. Also, the economy is structured around the current spending structure; the changes will have to be rolled out slowly enough to allow for adjustment. Even the fraudsters provide liquidity to the economy. If we can rip the piggy bank NGOs etc out of the Dims' thieving hands we will have a path to fiscal sanity.
11 people like this.

Reply 9 - Posted by: BarryNo 10/12/2025 9:41:05 AM (No. 2015727)
Doge doesn't have Congressional powers. All they can do is point to where the waste is. Congress has to save the money. One Party doesn't want to do this. They call themselves Democrats, but, "I don't think that word means what you think it means..." because they act like Soviet Oligarchs. They spent us to this place and with the shutdown, they are essentially saying, "Keep giving us our goodies or were stealing your marbles and going home."
14 people like this.

Reply 10 - Posted by: skacmar 10/12/2025 10:18:18 AM (No. 2015742)
DOGE identifies, Congress cuts. Remember all of the Democrat lawsuits blocking DOGE from even looking into parts of the budget? To Democrats, every penny of spending is sacred and a life and death issue. Whether it is money for transgender makeup parties in Rawanda or studying the effects of too many Starburst candies on albino gerbils.
11 people like this.

Reply 11 - Posted by: thefield 10/12/2025 10:39:11 AM (No. 2015747)
After the first round of cuts, I didn't or don't expect too many qualified to be cut this time.
1 person likes this.

Reply 12 - Posted by: jeffkinnh 10/12/2025 11:01:44 AM (No. 2015756)
I believe Trump cut some spending identified by DOGE as wasteful, unverifiable, and not aligned with (Trump's) priorities.
1 person likes this.

Reply 13 - Posted by: cheeflo 10/12/2025 11:09:11 AM (No. 2015760)
The role of DOGE was to identify waste, fraud, and abuse. It had no authority to make any cuts. That's for Congress to do.
2 people like this.

Reply 14 - Posted by: LC Chihuahua 10/12/2025 11:34:50 AM (No. 2015772)
The deficit is over a trillion. It's hard to make a real dent. It will probably take at least a decade to reign in out of control spending. Even longer when you see how much government is protecting it.
2 people like this.

Reply 15 - Posted by: LesUNo 10/12/2025 12:07:08 PM (No. 2015778)
Was DOGE authorized to make spending CUTS? They identified areas of waste and abuse and possible savings. Only Congress can pass spending cuts. Correct me if I’m wrong.
3 people like this.

Reply 16 - Posted by: kono 10/12/2025 3:21:58 PM (No. 2015834)
"You Heard It Here First:" ... yet, "Yesterday, we came across a Wall Street Journal article titled: ..." Here? Looks like we heard it first on WSJ, not here (Issues and Insights).
0 people like this.

Reply 17 - Posted by: voxpopuli 10/12/2025 3:27:52 PM (No. 2015835)
I am pretty sure I&I is a left wing rag and I KNOW the Wally is Stopped reading at Wall Street Journal
0 people like this.

Reply 18 - Posted by: danu 10/12/2025 8:04:44 PM (No. 2015860)
i love all these media types who sneer about what elon and doge did or didn't do-- in the tiny temp job. what did the media do? besides sit at a pc and blather. they could not-and did not- do the heavy lifting. it takes smarts to envision, create, hire and teach the right brainiacs to unearth deeply hidden/deleted assets. team doge enlightened us, educated us, showed us hard evidence and clearly explained it to all of us-- billions by billions. he stood before the world to say, succinctly: ladies and gentlemen: you are all getting hosed...we show it all to you here...down to the penny. elon-not scribblers and cranks- worked long days and nights, sleeping on the floor, to do this for america meanwhile, back at the ranch: elon's cars are getting firebombed; he's losing income, his teen doge squad is getting bashed up-to protect a girl from assault - in animalistical dc. the sharks in the oceans and the barracudas in the pools are encircling and subverting him assiduously, cos he's blocking their face time, their outsized ambitions to sit next to pdt--ppl who hate him?! why? did he cost them money money money?
2 people like this.

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