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I have common sense. They put the least serious people possible in charge of it, so of course I'm not going to take it seriously.

> I really think we're getting to a point where people are too hyper emotional and sensational about most topics which further limits real discussion and response.

Maybe, but this has nothing to do with emotion. I'm not a moron. An actual audit would be great, but would take more than the 30 days that Trump has been in office. They are lying, so I am left to speculate as to what.

> This time someone is.

Do you have any direct evidence they are doing something about it? I see several people supporting these actions that are based on emotion, but at a factual basis, it appears you are just regurgitating party propaganda.

Who do you propose be put in charge? Why when the Democrats were in power weren't they put in charge before?

As for an actual audit, those have been done left and right. Audits only validate where the money is going not why.

Clearly they are doing something, budgeted spend is being cut and most notably if they weren't doing anything we wouldn't be having this discussion. We are also only a handful of weeks into the presidency. They're being very clear about what they are doing. Looking line by line at some of these cuts, I've yet to see anyone here actually debate the validity of all of the spend. Yes good programs will likely be impacted, things will be course corrected and brought back where appropriate.

It's a painful process no mater who is executing it. The only way to reduce the budgetary spend of the country is to do just that, cut spend. You start small and work your way up.

For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong.

You are embracing those clear, simple answers. You are going to pay dearly for it.

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interesting to behold this inversion where the "conservative" side is taking dramatic and rapid action, changing things quickly, while the "progressive" side vociferously defends the status quo
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{"deleted":true,"id":43117493,"parent":43117415,"time":1740072083,"type":"comment"}
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> Right, which is why it's still ongoing. They have a year to complete it.

So maybe the President's special boy shouldn't be tweeting that 150 year olds are receiving Social Security payments because he doesn't understand cobol's datetime system. That only way I take these people seriously is the way I would take a toddler with a lit torch seriously.

We don't have the data in front of us to actually prove your point one way or the other. Resulting to name calling and hyper emotional responses doesn't elicit the behavior of cooperation. Instead, engage on data and facts.

If you said "He's making statements without any data to back up his claims" I'd respond, at this point you're correct, we do not have the data to verify. Collectively we could ask for more transparency. The result is we agree more data is needed.

A few replies up, when presented with a clear example of the DOGE team having carte blanche access to sensitive government data, you handwaved it away. Don't accuse other people of being hyper-emotional when your own reasoning is so plainly motivated by political sentiment.
I didn't. The report came out that it was an accident that was directly rectified. Show me where that's wrong and hand wavy.
You're telling us to trust the word of people who were caught either lying or being staggeringly incompetent. It's irrational. You're letting your political sentiments cloud your judgement. You're having an emotionally-driven reaction.
You’re telling us to trust the word of people being caught either lying or being staggeringly incompetent.
While I disagree with everything going on, the cobol date time thing is just some myth everyone came up with. Go find me a single source to that claim because I can’t.
The claims from Musk are complete garbage and I have the receipts to show it.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43116844

So, where is your evidence that fraud of such scale is happening in the federal budget that requires unprecedented (and likely extremely illegal) access by people who are not qualified to be running a gas station IT system, let alone the entire financial and IT backend of the federal government? This is such a dishonest discussion and I suspect you types know it.
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> Fraud has already been posted everywhere ($55b and counting) so if you haven't seen it, you aren't looking.

Not too surprising to find another propaganda victim…

Here, I did your research for you:

> After correcting an apparent clerical error, it now shows $8.5 billion.

https://www.npr.org/2025/02/19/nx-s1-5302705/doge-overstates...

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Frivolous spending != fraud.

Please read commenting guidelines at https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Is there a difference when it comes to the taxpayer?

It's all waste. Fraud if there were kickbacks, we'll see about that.

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