Question?
Your working in a Federal agency office….
Doing your job….
The security guard down stairs says someone from DOGE wants to come to your office to ask you a weeks of questions?
WTF?
You say your busy….
A hour later your new political boss calls and says let the DOGE person up….
Once up?
Your fucked….
This person is asking questions and you have to stop working and assign people to stop their work….
And do this stuff that could CUT jobs?
How IS this gonna go?
In recent days, aides with the nongovernmental “Department of Government Efficiency” tied to President-elect Donald Trump’s transition team have spoken with staffers at more than a dozen federal agencies, said the people, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak with the media. The agencies include the Treasury Department, the Internal Revenue Service and the departments of Homeland Security, Veterans Affairs, and Health and Human Services, the people said.
At the same time, Musk and Ramaswamy have significantly stepped up hiring for their new entity, with more than 50 staffers already working out of the offices of SpaceX, Musk’s rocket-building company, in downtown Washington, two of the people said. DOGE aims to have a staff of close to 100 people in place by Trump’s inauguration on Jan. 20, they said.
While much about DOGE remains unclear — including who is paying the salaries of these staffers or exactly how DOGE representatives work with the formal transition team — the agency outreach reflects intensifying efforts by Musk and Ramaswamy to propose what they say will be “drastic” cuts to federal spending and regulations. Even as the scale of their project grows, Musk and Ramaswamy are encountering a slew of obstacles, including reluctance among congressional Republicans to approve deep budget cuts and a skeptical career civil service.
Two government employees said remarks Musk and Ramaswamy have made about the civil service have made them wary of the entire DOGE effort. Longtime civil servants — some who have built their careers learning the intricacies of the federal bureaucracy — are an awkward fit with Silicon Valley’s fast-moving and disruptive culture. Many in Washington regard the tech entrepreneurs as arrogant or naive about the complexity of reining in government.
The U.S. presidential transition process traditionally involves teams from the incoming administration working with existing agency staff and officials on the transfer of power, including regular briefings. This year’s changeover is far smoother than it was four years ago, when the process was complicated by Trump’s refusal to recognize the results of the election. But the uncertain status of DOGE relative to the rest of the Trump transition team has raised new questions about who precisely is speaking for the incoming administration….
…
As Musk’s emissaries begin to make contact with federal officials, critical questions remain unresolved about the group’s authority and responsibilities. The two federal employees expressed confusion about what DOGE is assigned to do — including whether it has Trump’s full backing.
Every administration has to establish a relationship with its career people, because it’s the career people who keep the government going,” said Bill Hoagland, senior vice president at the Bipartisan Policy Center, a nonpartisan think tank. “I think this is an important foray, but given what they have stated, it will be difficult for some career individuals to be cooperative with the DOGE people, who are not elected and are more advisers than political appointees.”
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