[lowercased]

From the article...

“They’re just spinning their wheels, citing in many cases overstated or fake savings,” said Romina Boccia, the director of budget and entitlement policy at the libertarian Cato Institute. “What’s most frustrating is that we agree with their goals. But we’re watching them flail at achieving them.”

To your point, people have taken musk/doge at face value, with 'efficiency' being the goal. That's not been the goal. But... pointing that out seems to make you some sort of conspiracy theorist.

"Just give them time! It takes time!"

We did have some meaningful government cutbacks in the 90s. It took months of bipartisan collaboration and dealmaking, and we ended up with a balanced budget and a bit of a surplus. The process was a lot more open, experts were consulted, hearings and studies were done, and we did make some short-lived progress there.

None of that process was even entertained. We had a charlatan foisted on us in the role of "chief slasher of anything woke", and a third of our country cheered it on, until they got cut. Those not cut/affected still seem to support this circus.

[rco8786]

> "Just give them time! It takes time!"

Except it's exactly Doge and the admin at large who keeps saying how fast they're going to go and how easy it all is to fix, etc.

[cubefox]

Back in the 1990s politics were much less polarized. Nowadays, perhaps due to the WWW, polarization is so strong that a bipartisan collaboration on this matter is highly unlikely. I don't even know if the Democrats are in principle interested in shrinking the government.

[LiquidSky]

>Back in the 1990s politics were much less polarized.

The 90s were the era of Gingrich and the "Contract With America" and the rise of figures like Rush Limbaugh. If you weren't around it was pretty bad back then too. Witness the enduring "the Clintons are LITERALLY an evil crime family" meme from then that persists to this day.

[ewgoforth]

I think about the quote that "Only Nixon could go to China" and maybe there's a corollary that "Only Clinton could balance the budget". Similar to how Nixon had the anti-commie credentials to be able visit Mao's China, Clinton had the liberal credentials to be able to cut social spending. I don't think that the budget surplus that Clinton left us was all due to social spending cuts, but he did make significant cuts.