Who Are These Guys?

According to The Hill,

DOGE aides have been fanning out across the federal government, exerting control of agencies as part of a mandate to cut at least $1 trillion in federal spending, most recently at the Treasury Department and the U.S. Agency for International Development. They have demanded, and received access to, highly sensitive information, raising alarms among Democrats and government employees.

I saw someplace that their dress code is blazer-over-T-shirt, and that's about all I know about them, except from the stories, it doesn't sound like they work from home:

ABC News reported on how DOGE showed up at USAID offices in Washington, D.C., late last week and demanded access, speaking to one employee who claimed to have seen it all play out.

"DOGE was in the building. We started -- we took down our Pride flags, we took down- I took out any books I felt would be incriminating," Kristina Drye, a speechwriter for USAID, said. "No one was talking. We heard they started taking transcripts automatically of all of our Google Meets."

She added further, "They unplugged the news in the little kitchen galleys. It didn't feel good. And then Saturday, all of the websites went down. And then I lost complete access to my computer."

On Monday, the White House listed a variety of questionable and DEI-related projects USAID has contributed to.

Aha, this is how you do these sorts of things, you get in quickly, go for low-hanging fruit, and show immediate results:

White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt confirmed reports that millions in federal funding went to Politico and declared taxpayer dollars would no longer “essentially” subsidize subscriptions to the outlet.

. . . “So upon coming out here to the briefing room, I was made aware of the funding from USAID to media outlets, including Politico, who I know has a seat in this room,” Leavitt said.

“I can confirm that the more than $8 million in taxpayer dollars that have gone to essentially subsidizing subscriptions to Politico on the American taxpayers’ dime will no longer be happening,” she added. “The DOGE team is working on canceling those payments now.”

These guys are smart, and they're fast. They worked all weekend, and by Monday, they had the dirty laundry in the news. But let's keep in mind that the total USAID budget is a relatively piddling amount:

USAID's budget for 2024 was approximately $44 billion, representing about 0.6% of the U.S. government's $6.75 trillion budget.

And even though the individual payments to news organizations, NGOs, and such are maybe $8 million here, $30 million there, these are really just teases. The Hill link above understands the real objective and the real stakes:

Representatives of billionaire Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) have turned their focus to the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), the agency confirmed Wednesday.

. . . The Wall Street Journal reported earlier Wednesday that DOGE aides had been granted access to key payment and contract systems.

. . . The CMS spent more than $1.5 trillion in 2024, around 22 percent of federal spending. Lawmakers often say the massive amount of spending on health care programs is rife with fraud and abuse, though bipartisan efforts to curb Medicare spending over the years have been met with political backlash.

So in a matter of days, they set expectations by bringing about near-immediate results, and they've proven their methods out as well. They seem to have a knack for looking at payments, exactly whom they're going to, quickly locating the deposit slips and the receipts, and getting this all into the news cycles. And now they're focused on the real money.

Democrats are terrified of DOGE and Musk because they have never witnessed this degree of competence. It looks alien to them.

I mean that literally. People with experience see in DOGE a process that is necessarily messy but 100% on target in terms of speed, talent, and energy…

— Scott Adams (@ScottAdamsSays) February 6, 2025

Well, Scott Adams knows a thing or two about competence. Now and then in my career I ran across truly competent people. It was always a privilege to work with them. But what does it say about Musk that he's been able to find and employ whole teams of them?

Scott Adams concludes, "I pity the inexperienced."