It's Wafer Thin
Years of profligate waste brought us to this reckoning. Better now than later.
DOGE Cuts Reach Key Nuclear Scientists, Bomb Engineers and Safety Experts
A number of staffers from the National Nuclear Safety Administration took the buyout. As one does.
The article goes on to tell us that this will make it more difficult to supervise the more than 60,000 contract employees who do the work.
This is what happens when you have a fiscal reckoning after years of profligacy. It was bound to happen eventually.
The first rule of Bureaucracy Club is, everyone is replaceable.
‘In the past six weeks, the agency, just one relatively small outpost in a federal work force that President Trump and his top adviser Elon Musk aim to drastically pare down, has lost a huge cadre of scientists, engineers, safety experts, project officers, accountants and lawyers — all in the midst of its most ambitious endeavors in a generation.
‘The nuclear agency, chronically understaffed but critically important, is the busiest it has been since the Cold War. It not only manages the nation’s 3,748 nuclear bombs and warheads, it is modernizing that arsenal — a $20-billion-a-year effort that will arm a new fleet of nuclear submarines, bomber jets and land-based missiles.’
Social Security Employees Warn of Damage From DOGE
You know, it’s going to be weird if there is no system collapse or if these moves prompt a wholesale technological refresh that makes these agencies robust and more efficient.
There will be no apologies for hysterics.
Did Musk & Co. assess the possibility of systemic failure at Social Security before these moves?
Maybe things aren’t as bad as they could be.
‘Many current and former Social Security officials fear the cuts could create gaping holes in the agency’s infrastructure, destabilizing the program, which keeps millions of people out of poverty and large percentages of retirees rely on for the bulk of their income.
‘The actions have caused Social Security employees and former commissioners and executives of both parties to sound alarm bells, saying it would be difficult to repair the damage, which could threaten access to benefits.’
Left for Dead, the C.F.P.B. Inches Back to Life
One way to figure out who is necessary and who is not is to purge the agency and see what screams back. This is only a small percentage of the agency’s prior employees.
‘Last week, the agency’s consumer response team was called back to work to tackle a backlog of 16,000 complaints, including dozens from homeowners facing imminent foreclosures. The bureau’s Fair Lending Office has resumed preparing its annual report to Congress. And the front page of the agency’s website, which had generated a 404 error message starting on the day Trump officials arrived at the bureau, is working again.
‘The consumer bureau is emerging as a test case for the boundaries of President Trump’s power to unilaterally hobble government agencies. For nearly a month, the bureau’s staff union and other groups have battled the Trump administration in federal court cases in Washington and Maryland, arguing that only Congress can formally close the bureau, which was created in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis.’
Democrats’ crisis: Regulations are choking their support
Interesting point: the partial-equilibrium analysis of adding a new regulation doesn’t consider the cumulative effects of all these regulations in a general equilibrium sense.
‘The Biden administration’s adoption of new regulations requiring a majority of new automobiles sold in the U.S. to be electric within the next decade, despite their cost, was a striking example of how cavalier they were about imposing new costs on consumers. It likely hurt them in states like Michigan where cars are built.
‘And the economic costs of regulation rise over time as we simply add new regulations which are needed on top of older ones that are more obsolete. Although the benefits of the regulations are spread broadly across consumers and workers, their cumulative costs on business (and indirectly on workers) grow. While an analysis of any new regulation might meet a cost-benefit test, the cumulative effects are much more rarely considered.’
Downsizing Government: Still Popular
What could turn this sentiment around?
‘The results of a Reuters Ipsos poll conducted this week are especially tough on Mr. Trump’s job performance compared to recent surveys from other pollsters. Disapprovers outnumber approvers by 8 percentage points. Yet even with this relatively MAGA-unfriendly sample, Reuters Ipsos finds a large majority favoring Beltway shrinkage. By 59% to 39%, respondents support downsizing the federal government. This view is held by a full two-thirds of independents.’
Imagine if bureaucracies were capable of dealing with failure politically and rationally. They could admit mistakes. They could learn. They could reverse course.
Instead fear turns bureaucracy into a ratchet. It is easy to add; extraordinarily difficult to remove.
‘Business rationalists are about minimizing costs and risks, about the time value of money, about reaching an agreement and moving on to the next thing. If this described Mr. Putin, he would have cut his Ukraine losses on day three.
‘For a political realist, the incentives compute differently. Failure must be hugged and doubled down on. Admitting error invites a knife in the back from one’s nearest and dearest. If the public is allowed to sniff weakness, they might soon be in the streets in numbers greater than the security forces would be able or willing to put down.’