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  • Hacker News
  • By GAO, lol. The only reason they'd do the reports is because DOGE isn't there to respond. Because it was in DOGE's design to not become just an instrument of furthering the problem it was designed to combat, unlike GAO!

    The spirit of DOGE lives on though. The basics of just having to at least have a reason what an expense is for did wonders, and DOGE did save a ton, even if it'd benefited from more freedom. Another time.

    by maxlin
  • It's weird that serial liars have such a rabid fanbase. Keep it up!
    by k12sosse
  • What’s notable about this article is not its literal conclusion, which is obvious to any casual observer, it’s the publisher - I haven’t been following it lately, but for decades National Review was the preeminent Limbaugh-school right-wing magazine in America, so for its editors to be taking this position so clearly feels significant. These days the Trump Right has rags like The Epoch Times, so maybe they don’t need Buckley’s soapbox anymore?
    by nxrabl
  • Although it seems to have been a flop in practice, I do appreciate the spirit of making good use of tax dollars. I only wish the program was more carefully guided, since the motive behind it did seem genuine.
    by hallole
  • It was never about saving money. It was about sabotaging programs they were ideologically opposed to, stealing data, and possibly messing with internal investigations into Musks "unsavory" business practices.

    There already is a "DOGE", it's called the GAO.

    And lastly, if anybody is actually concerned about government efficiency, they should be prepared to have it audit favored programs as well. Let's not forget that the Pentagon has never truly been audited.

    One of countless cases of "trust me bro!": https://www.cnbc.com/2011/10/26/The-$40-Billion-Iraqi-Money-...

    by pstuart
  • But closing USAID did result in lots of deaths around the world as life saving aid was just cutoff with no warning. Was done with no regard to consequences or Congressional approval.
    by goatlover
  • Link to the GAO report that actually analyzes the spending: https://www.gao.gov/products/gao-26-108615
    by chabad360
  • Maybe they didn’t save any money but they did manage to exfiltrate huge amounts of info on citizens and residents that had been provided under the understanding that it would be held in confidence and that was siloed to event cross-correlation and privacy violations.

    So at least they accomplished that even if they failed to accomplish the cover story.

    by gumby

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