[wklauss]

There is fat, but I'd venture not much on the CDC, FEMA or USAID. A big part of this mess is that fat is concentrated on areas that are very unpopular to cut, like military expenditure, or in legacy processes and systems that will take years and a lot of upfront investment to streamline (and that DOGE won't touch).

If you meet an average government worker in the US, you quickly realize how little they make and how understaffed their departments tend to be. People underestimate how complex government work is and how different it is from what you do at a regular business.