If you’re buying that this has anything to do with identifying fraud and waste, you’re totally drinking the Kool-Aid. Elon is only using “fraud and waste” as a pretext to tear apart agencies that he doesn’t like. In particular he’s targeting agencies that regulate or restrain his business interests. Well and USAID because, let’s not kid ourselves, who doesn’t like to rip food out of the mouths of hungry kids?

The Military – $850 billion

If you’re really trying to simply address waste and fraud, you’d look at the big items first. The military budget is the single biggest item in the budget and it’s known to have been out of control for decades. It has failed audits for most of the last decade. But would-be dictators don’t want to piss off their military. DOGE indicates they are going to look for a 5% reduction in the military budget but there’s no indication they’re going to actually look for “fraud and waste” in a budget that is notorious for cost overruns, $10,000 toilet seats, and tons of back scratching lobbyists that hold the status quo together.

USAID – $27 billion

There is a popular meme in conservative-land to the effect that we shouldn’t send any money to another country while we still have homeless US vets. We have a huge military budget (see above) and one could imagine that the military would figure out how to address this problem. But it’s not that simple. What actually is the right way to address the issue? Homelessness is complex and often comes down to the person just not being able to function in society for one reason or another. And just providing free housing would be considered communism by many.

Like any big program, yes, there will be some who will abuse the system. But the program is overall doing good around the world. Of course, work to reduce fraud but don’t spend more reducing fraud than you’re losing in fraud. That’s just common sense. And then it’s just setting priorities. When we look at reducing monthly expenses we don’t go “well we need all seven TV services so sorry starving World Vision kids, can’t help you.”

CFPB – $605 million

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau is the primary entity overseeing the payment business, an area Elon wants to get into. The conflict of interest here is glaring and there’s no evidence of serious fraud or waste taking place in the CFPB. It’s just a business Elon doesn’t like and that stands in the way, no wait, “stands in the way” is too strong, that “attempts to restrain certain behaviors” in order to protect the little guy.

The amount at stake is a rounding error compared to the military budget.

FAA aka Air Traffic Control – $20 billion

The FAA was just trying to hire additional air traffic control personnel. Now they’re firing them. In the wake of several recent disasters this seems like the wrong time to be trying to reduce force. Still the budget amount is also a very tiny fraction of the military budget.

NASA – $25 billion

I guess it’s not rocket science (sorry) to figure out why Elon would want to target NASA. As with all the others here, it’s a drop in the bucket compared to the overall military budget. But wait, we decided we’re not talking about that, right?

Secret Service – $2.2 billion

Actually DOGE hasn’t investigated them. In spite of them being almost four times as expensive as CFPB. I’m sure it just slipped Elon’s mind. Hmmm… no maybe don’t hold your breath.