Doge started as a joke. 100 days later, nobody

A journalist had asked Trump After a campaign event in York, Pennsylvania, if you consider to appoint Musk to a cabinet post, something that had not previously suggested, and Trump said with enthusiasm she would.

“I am willing to serve,” Musk wrote in response, along with a artificial image of yourself in a lectern with the name of your imaginary agency.

The whole matter was literally a joke. The name of the department is a reference to a setback Internet meme based on an image of a dog Shiba Inu, “Doge”, which served as inspiration for the favorite cryptocurrency token of Musk. That was also created as a joke.

For a while, it seemed that Dege itself could become a joke, simply an updated version of past deficit reduction panels. But after the elections, Trump announced that Dege would be a real entity, something to “provide advice and guidance from outside the government.” For the day of the inauguration, Trump had issued an executive order that created Dux as an office inside the White House, with Musk as a temporary employee that serves for 130 days. Things got serious.

Dege burned perhaps too bright, and 100 days later, it seems that we are in the twilight of the Era of musk in the Trump government. The billionaire who pushes the chainsaw promised the Tesla shareholders last week that he would soon spend time in his government work. Last week, Trump significantly described Musk in the past time: “It was very helpful.”

Doge has changed to the government, but not in the way Musk or Trump promised. Musk promised last year to find $ 2 billion in savings of the federal budget of almost $ 7 billion. Later he went down to $ 1 billion, which was still an absurd objective because Congress controls federal expenditure, and Trump has promised not to touch popular retirement programs that represent the largest federal expenditure segments.

After months of infiltrating federal agencies, illegally accessing confidential government data and imposing massive chaos and dismissals, a sitting and moderate musk said at a cabinet meeting this month that your team would deliver only $ 150 billion, a figure that has not yet been able to provide accounting.

“What loss of time and money of all.”

– A former IRS employee recently

The obvious irony in the midst of all this is that the so -called government efficiency department has resulted in generalized inefficiencies among government agencies. Do you remember the mandate of Musk a couple of months ago that hundreds of thousands of federal employees send five bullet points every week to their managers, describing what they did during the week? At least some employees are still doing this, and it is completely useless.

“From what we can say, nobody is reading them,” said an employee of the Department of Defense who requested anonymity to protect his work. “I send them with the requested reading receipts and I never received a notification that they are read. It is annoying and slow and simply insulting.”

An IRS employee now trainer who Dogs crossed the runner before he finally resigned this month: she and her team of 30 people were fired, then hired again, then put an administrative license, then pressed to resign, then warned that more shots are coming, he said that if something is clear, it is that Dege has advanced through the government as “a ship’s How is something that works.

This former IRS employee, who requested anonymity when a new job begins, was working on the farm tax division and donations, which pursues extremely rich tax evaders. Most of its division is being destroyed, so many of the cases in which you have been working will have to be closed.

“My division raises millions of tax revenues for the American people,” he said in an email. “What loss of time and money of all. Several people will now not pay what owes to the American people, and will continue not paying because there is no one there to guarantee their fulfillment. And this does not make anything more efficient.”

Doge has also lost its initial brightness. Musk’s approval index sank 35% in a Washington Post / ABCNews / Ipsos survey published Monday.

Bloomberg through Getty Images

A reason why people can be on musk is due to their decision to attack Social Security, one of the most popular government programs, such as a fraud and waste.

Musk said in February that millions of people over 110 were falsely listed as still alive in the Social Security Administration system, suggesting that the agency was sending fraudulent checks. Trump repeated the claim in a speech before Congress, although it was not true. In March, Musk called Social Security a “Ponzi scheme”, a scam that scams Americans of their payroll contributions without future benefits.

Musk used these claims to justify the important changes in the agency, including cuts to a telephone service that would have forced millions of older people to travel to the agency’s field offices to request retirement benefits. Musk said, without evidence, that the change was necessary because the scammers bombarded the government with telephone requests to change the information of the bank account of the people to divert their benefits.

“This is happening all day, every day, and then someone does not receive their Social Security. It is due to all fraud lagoons in the social security system,” Musk said in March, massively exaggerating the scope of fraudulent requests to change bank accounts.

After all Musk’s exaggeration about this threat, the Social Security administration ended up postponing and then canceling the cuts to the telephone service for people who have benefits claims, saying that he had discovered a new way to avoid telephone fraud after all.

Democrats may not have a national leader or a coherent plan to counteract Trump, but Musk’s attacks against Social Security have made him an almost perfect villain, which allows Democrats to undermine Trump’s attempt to position themselves as a program defender.

As Dege ends their efforts, people outside Washington, DC, are beginning to feel the negative effects of what Musk has done. A Social Security field worker told News themezone this week that they are seeing longer lines and more angry customers because people are watching news about Musk’s mischief and worrying that their benefits are in trouble. At the same time, Musk’s layoffs have made it even more difficult to keep up with the workload.