How Much Progress Is Trump Making? by JEWELSTAITEFAN

REAL WORLD EVENT DISCUSSIONS

How Much Progress Is Trump Making?

POSTED BY: JEWELSTAITEFAN
UPDATED: Tuesday, February 18, 2025 05:39
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Sunday, February 16, 2025 4:46 PM

It has been less than 3 weeks.

Before taking office, Trump and Musk had made a lot of claims about how much waste, fraud, abuse they were going to cut, or that existed to cut. Also promises to reduce the Federal workforce.

Although there have been many policy changes enacted, this thread is about those 2 item - slashing expenditures and reducing employee count.

I would certainly accept help with populating some of this data. I do hope to keep it updated.

Some of the claims had sounded ambitious, exaggerated, excessive, outrageous. I had little doubt that the waste existed, but I was unsure how much would get exposed.

Since taking office, it has been a whirlwind. Facts flying by at breakneck speed. What had sounded extravagant now seems far more within reach. It is possible some of the claims or goals have already been surpassed.

Fake News has been played fast and loose with the quotes of claims. Trump and Musk seems to be more consistent with their statements, but maybe not always agreeing with each other.

I will try to use body counts of workforce reduction, but I might be able to incorporate percentages as well.
I might try to include cost savings which are greater than $500M

Some of the savings might be immediate, applying to the 5th month of FY2025. Some might be only for future savings, like FY2026.

All of the Federal Administration is Executive Branch. The Constitution identifies The Executive Branch as The President - with his replacement being the VP.

Currently, the portions of the Federal expenditures for DoD (the only mandate for the government), Medicare/Medicaid/Social Security, and Interest on the Debt add up to the vast majority of the Federal spending.
The rest, we might call "discretionary spending"
There is not much tinkering that can be done with the Interest, except reduce overall spending.
Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security are hands-off. Regarding payments to Citizens. But rooting out and slashing waste and fraud is another matter.
DoD may have some waste, fraud, abuse - but It doesn't seem they have even started over there.

So, the remainder is where the slashing can come from.
How much did they claim they would slash? $1T?
Musk claimed $2T. After seeing a couple weeks of low hanging fruit, this seems quite reasonable.
How many employees? Body count, or percent? Some from outright firings (like probationary positions, or smaller numbers of incompetents), some buyouts (the Postal Service did much the same under Obama).

National Debt $36T.

FY2025 Budget Total: $7.266T. $1.781T Deficit.
Already projected overbudget: 1st 2 months (end Nov): 622B Deficit; 4 months $838B, 306 more than prior year. Projected $1.9T Deficit.
$257B Oct, 365B Nov,

DoD $900B.
Non-defense $1.029T
Subtotal $1.929T.

Medicare $936B.
Medicaid $589B.
SocSec $1.543T.
Other "Mandatory Programs" $1.303T
Subtotal $4.372T.

Net Interest $965B
Other

Dems don't want those figures visible, so I'm not sure if they are accurate, but they are a place to start. The above is the way CBO obfuscates the info.
This means:
$ 900B DoD
$ 936B Medicare
$ 589B Medicaid
$1543B SocSec
$ 965B Interest
$4.933T subtotal

$2.333T is the rest.

FY2026 Budget Total: $7.419T. $1.547T Deficit.
Already projected overbudget:
DoD
Medicare
Medicaid
SocSec
Interest
Other

# Federal Employees: 2.6 million non-military. Pay of $350B.
Reduced:

Buyout Program
Expected
Result 75K? 90K?
Cost savings FY2026

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Sunday, February 16, 2025 4:47 PM

JEWELSTAITEFAN

More info, likely Department or Agency breakdown.

USAID Budget "~ 0.3% pf total Federal Budget" - which would be about 1% of discretionary spending. Was $40B in "FY2023. 2,000 employees let go.
Employees: 10,000 cut down to 300.
A contractor explained: when DOGE can info the building, we first took down our Pride Flags (?no longer proud?), and then we started shredding our most incriminating files. The next day we were locked out of our systems.

NED budget $70M FY2025

Treasury, possibly SocSec: at first glance, $50-100 Billion. Payments without SSN attached, without Account numbers, paid to those on the Do Not Pay List - such as terrorists.

EPA recaptured $20 B.

HHS fired abouut 5,000 probationaries on 15 Feb. from health agencies.
IRS is firing some.

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Tuesday, February 18, 2025 3:34 AM

JEWELSTAITEFAN

And they found another $1.9B stashed or "misplaced" at HUD.

Census reports about 90,000 of the population is over 100 years old.
Social Security payments are being made to more than 20 million accounts over 100 years of age.
I don't know how much a Soc Sec payment is. I wonder if those addresses also get a ballot to harvest for DNC. Do they all vote?

There are more paying accounts in Soc Sec than the US population.

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Tuesday, February 18, 2025 5:39 AM

6IXSTRINGJACK

Links?

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"I don't find this stuff amusing anymore." ~Paul Simon

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