Mulberry Heel
Inconceivable Member
- Messages
- 3,106
“… For all the controversy DOGE has generated, its time at the Social Security Administration has not amounted to looming armageddon, as some Democrats warn.
What it’s been, as much as anything, is a missed opportunity, according to interviews with more than 35 current or recently departed Social Security officials and staff, who spoke on the condition of anonymity mostly out of fear of retaliation by the Trump administration, and a review of hundreds of pages of internal documents, emails and court records.
The DOGE team, and Bisignano, have prioritized scoring quick wins that allow them to post triumphant tweets and press releases — especially, in the early months, about an essentially nonexistent form of fraud — while squandering the chance for systemic change at an agency that genuinely needs it.
They could have worked to modernize Social Security’s legacy software, the current and former staffers say. They could have tried to streamline the stupefying volume of documentation that many Social Security beneficiaries have to provide. They could have built search tools to help staff navigate the agency’s 60,000 pages of policies. (New hires often need at least three years to master the nuances of even one type of case.) They could have done something about wait times for disability claims and appeals, which often take over a year.
They did none of these things.…”
Because DOGE was never about actually saving money or improving efficiency or the other things they claimed. It was about a taking a meat cleaver to welfare programs and other agencies that conservatives have despised for decades (environmental regulation agencies, education agencies, regulatory agencies) and gutting them so they are either abolished or no longer capable of doing their jobs. DOGE was there to carry out Project 2025, not to make the government work better or save money. Ironically, they wasted a good deal of money while cutting programs. And sadly, they were quite successful in their brief reign of terror. And even though DOGE may be out of favor, the gutting of the government continues, it's just by different Trumpers now.