According to the WSJ about 4% of government spending was improper, based on data from last year, not from DOGE. And given what DOGE has uncovered, there are probably more fraudulent payments that they weren’t previously looking very hard for. The Covid programs PPP and EIDL were said to have at least $200 billion in fraudulent payments because they shoveled money out the door without even basic checks.
I wonder where all the IRA funding, like EV and battery subsidies or like the $2 billion given to Power Forward Communities shows up in your charts, is EPA under one of your categories?
Is 4% a lot or a little? In some sense, it seems really hard for any organization to get to 0% waste in spending. Obviously we should get as close to 0 as possible, but I wonder what is a realistic goal.
For categories, I'm going with https://www.usaspending.gov/explorer/budget_function They don't break down agencies within categories. EPA is probably natural resources and the environment. At some point I'd like to dig deeper to understand the spending better.
Figure 1 really highlights how big the pandemic-era spending spike was.
Figure 2 is a bit misleading since Social Security and Medicare have their own incomes and expenditures that are legally separate from the rest of the federal budget.
I had heard that debt servicing actually passed defense spending in magnitude recently, but I might have heard wrong.
Good point, but I'm not sure it matters much. Social security is revenue positive, which means if we take it out, we still have to cut $2 million from the rest of the budget. I'm not sure if medicate is positive. If it is, it means more cuts to everything else.
If interest hasn't passed defense yet, it will soon enough.
According to the WSJ about 4% of government spending was improper, based on data from last year, not from DOGE. And given what DOGE has uncovered, there are probably more fraudulent payments that they weren’t previously looking very hard for. The Covid programs PPP and EIDL were said to have at least $200 billion in fraudulent payments because they shoveled money out the door without even basic checks.
I wonder where all the IRA funding, like EV and battery subsidies or like the $2 billion given to Power Forward Communities shows up in your charts, is EPA under one of your categories?
https://www.wsj.com/politics/policy/doge-musk-government-waste-spending-charts-109f3bcf?st=PAzvhw
Is 4% a lot or a little? In some sense, it seems really hard for any organization to get to 0% waste in spending. Obviously we should get as close to 0 as possible, but I wonder what is a realistic goal.
For categories, I'm going with https://www.usaspending.gov/explorer/budget_function They don't break down agencies within categories. EPA is probably natural resources and the environment. At some point I'd like to dig deeper to understand the spending better.
Figure 1 really highlights how big the pandemic-era spending spike was.
Figure 2 is a bit misleading since Social Security and Medicare have their own incomes and expenditures that are legally separate from the rest of the federal budget.
I had heard that debt servicing actually passed defense spending in magnitude recently, but I might have heard wrong.
Good point, but I'm not sure it matters much. Social security is revenue positive, which means if we take it out, we still have to cut $2 million from the rest of the budget. I'm not sure if medicate is positive. If it is, it means more cuts to everything else.
If interest hasn't passed defense yet, it will soon enough.