Doge is not cutting anything but also... hands off!

Liberals are starting to pivot away from complaining about all the great programs being cut by DOGE, and now claiming that they are not actually cutting much of anything.

But the bigger question is exactly what DOGE will accomplish in the end. It’s been obvious for a while that federal spending has continued to rise despite DOGE’s much-discussed if outlandish goals. And as Jessica Riedl explains in The Atlantic, the numbers are looking worse every day. She estimates annual DOGE-generated spending cuts at about $15 billion, less than a tenth of Musk’s $165 billion claim and vastly short of his initial $2 trillion target. But the bigger picture looks even worse:

Let's start with the fact that the actual deficit for the last recorded month was considerably lower than it had been for some time. Whether this is because of new tariff taxes or literally less money being requested now that they have required payment codes and receipts or something else, is irrelevant. I suspect we are comparing apples to oranges when it comes to government statistics and someone is cherry picking data to suggest spending is somehow up to some degree over any sort of budgeted spending. Or they are just confusing the fact that every year the budget increases and budgeted spending will always be higher year over year.

Moreover, we know that USAID was chopped off and 80% of their $40 billion dollar budget was slashed based on both recorded contracts being cancelled and the manner in which the agency is now part of the US State Department. That alone is $30 billion or more that we are no longer spending on first world LBGTQ+ lobbying groups or first world transgender clinics or teaching governments how to remove binary gender language. We have already seen a huge decrease in requests for payment since the treasury implemented the needed change of every request needing a payment code and receipts as to what it is for. So I am not buying the idea that DOGE has only cut 15 billion dollars so far. That seems beyond preposterous.

So which is it? Are they making drastic cuts to essential government programs that require people to go out and protest (hands off) and suggest that Elon Musk should go to jail or are they doing next to nothing and we should all just be laughing about how little Musk and DOGE has cut. Because it is intellectually impossible to claim both.