Brian Barrett: Just this week I was looking through some of our earliest DOGE reports and was reminded of what a crazy few months it has been. Just a reminder for people who slept through the first half of the year: Oh, I’m jealous. I respect that.
Zoë Schiffer: I just wanted to say, bravo to you.
Brian Barrett: The Department of Government Effectiveness was created when Elon Musk and Donald Trump got together and basically Trump gave Elon Musk some freedom to do whatever he wanted, and here in the federal government I’m not exaggerating at all. So Musk’s allies took over various government agencies, including the Office of Personnel Management, which is sort of staff for the entire government, the General Services Administration, which is basically his tech and IT department. From there they were scattered throughout various agencies and were responsible for a lot of the chaos we saw in the early administration, massive layoffs, massive cuts to USAID, cutting regulations, not always for good, having everyone in the federal government present, having to write a five-point email about what they did that week and submit it so it would never be read. DOGE ultimately didn’t do what it intended.
The idea was to cut the budget by a trillion dollars, which literally couldn’t be done unless you cut entitlement programs that A, DOGE had no control over, and B, would be politically unsustainable. So Zoë, what did they do?
Zoë Schiffer: Yes, I think the goal was supposedly to root out fraud and waste, to root out inefficiency.
Brian Barrett: And I think abuse, fraud, waste and abuse.
Zoë Schiffer: Fraud, waste and abuse. I wanted to say this and I thought: I don’t even know exactly what it means: