DOGE opinions

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Originally Posted by FoxtArt

Depending on the tasks, federal contractors are not cheaper than federal employees - common misconception.

The contractor's wages are often utter garbage, I'll give people that. So yes, the contractor might make $20 an hour where their federal counterpart makes $32/h (equivalent) doing the exact same thing.

However, the labor rates the company charges to the federal government is $45. Contractor gets $20, $25/h to the company for costs of labor and profit.

So your federal employee is costing the gov about $40/h in true costs of labor, while the contractor is $45/h for the same position. Pension contributions have been adjusted over the years where a federal pension is no longer what it was.

Very neutered analysis, but this is what I'm talking about.

Labor rates I've seen for even low-to-mid level contracting jobs are often around $65-72/hour (that the company is paid by the gov). I've seen some as high as $161/h. Again, the contracted employee... does not make those numbers. But that's what it costs the gov.

It's great if you own one of those companies. But it doesn't eliminate waste/fraud.

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This is a very interesting comment to me. As a 30 year civilian construction subcontractor, the cost of labor is dictated by the federal government. For a typical commercial project being bid on the Front Range, our field 'mechanics' are paid $28 per hour plus benefits and $15 per day for fuel. A federal contract on the Front Range can range from $43 to $51 per hour for the same scope. We still provide the same benefits/ fuel stipend to our employees.
Our overhead and profit is the same no matter what we bid/ build. In fact, we are required to provide the labor and material breakdowns to prove it we don't exceed Federal standards on overhead and profit. I have always made more profit on private jobs than federal. We can complete the work faster with far less bureaucracy. Quality is often impacted negatively by the gov't requirements. The federal standards are based on 50 year old requirements for our scope. Materials have come a long way since then, and can be installed faster with less waste than the COE allows.
We are also required to produce weekly documentation that proves we pay the required wage. I'm sure there have been contractors that don't, but I've never seen one. And the risk of not paying your employees per the mandated Davis-Bacon schedule is more than small contractors ($1-10M per year) could absorb and stay in business.

We don't "get" to charge the government more, they mandate it.

Just listened to Musk on the Joe Rogan podcast. From Musks own mouth they only find discrepancies and hand them to the head of the appropriate department and they decide how to handle it. Cancelled aid programs get a chance to show that they are a legit organization and that the aid is being used for what it is allowed for and they do not get cut off. Musk said that there aren't any people collecting social security that are listed as being over 115 or whatever but what the social security thing is are people that are using ssn's that are still active in the system in order to claim other money such as disability and other gov hand outs. He did talk about the office that handles all government payments and the issues around payments that have no classification assigned to them so there is no way to trace some of it as well as programs and payments that were set up at some point in the past by some admin or dept head that is no longer around and were forgotten about but still being paid out as in you forget about that gym membership that automatically withdraw from your account every moneth even though you haven't been there in six years.

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Originally Posted by 3beansalad

This is a very interesting comment to me. As a 30 year civilian construction subcontractor, the cost of labor is dictated by the federal government. For a typical commercial project being bid on the Front Range, our field 'mechanics' are paid $28 per hour plus benefits and $15 per day for fuel. A federal contract on the Front Range can range from $43 to $51 per hour for the same scope. We still provide the same benefits/ fuel stipend to our employees.
Our overhead and profit is the same no matter what we bid/ build. In fact, we are required to provide the labor and material breakdowns to prove it we don't exceed Federal standards on overhead and profit. I have always made more profit on private jobs than federal. We can complete the work faster with far less bureaucracy. Quality is often impacted negatively by the gov't requirements. The federal standards are based on 50 year old requirements for our scope. Materials have come a long way since then, and can be installed faster with less waste than the COE allows.
We are also required to produce weekly documentation that proves we pay the required wage. I'm sure there have been contractors that don't, but I've never seen one. And the risk of not paying your employees per the mandated Davis-Bacon schedule is more than small contractors ($1-10M per year) could absorb and stay in business.

We don't "get" to charge the government more, they mandate it.

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All true. For the SCA side, it's substantially the same. Even minimum benefits are spelled out. County-by-county, wage assessments and benefits. If a individual employee doesn't take health insurance, the company nevertheless still has to obtain the same benefit amount from the gov't. E.g. company is spending 0.25/h on benefits for employee A, is reimbursed the same 4.85/h (or whatever the counties grade is). I'm not saying fed contracting is lucrative business, I'm just illustrating that between federal employees and contractors, the loser is usually the employee, there is not a cost saving going private realized by the taxpayer.

(I'll clarify too - I am not a fed, nobody should infer self interest).

The salt mine handling retirement should be closed.

Zero reason in 2025 to have people riding around on bikes looking for paper. This should all be digitized

This entire thing is like a detox. The US is a giant drug addict that voluntarily checked itself into rehab. We KNEW that our choice is going to suck. It's going to make us feel like shit for a bit. We're going to get majorly sick temporarily but once it's over we'll be so much healthier.

We elected Trump because the country is addicted to bullshit; waste, woke, inefficient and corrupt. We all knew he was going to come in and do some shit that was going to screw stuff up for a bit. He said exactly what he planned to do. The toxins and addiction must be purged. It's going to be a bumpy road and it's probably going to suck for a bit, but if we have the appetite to stick with it, we'll ultimately come out the other side so much healthier.

We frequently call the gov BS "cancer". We'll, just we started chemo. It's not going to be fun.

Unfortunately, it's pretty clear to me the American public has zero appetite for things that make them uncomfortable, temporary as they may be. And even if some things get better in the end, we ultimately won't break our addiction and the second we checkout of rehab, we're going to binge hard.

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Originally Posted by hollohas

This entire thing is like a detox. The US is a giant drug addict that voluntarily checked itself into rehab. We KNEW that our choice is going to suck. It's going to make us feel like shit for a bit. We're going to get majorly sick temporarily but once it's over we'll be so much healthier.

We elected Trump because the country is addicted to bullshit; waste, woke, inefficient and corrupt. We all knew he was going to come in and do some shit that was going to screw stuff up for a bit. He said exactly what he planned to do. The toxins and addiction must be purged. It's going to be a bumpy road and it's probably going to suck for a bit, but if we have the appetite to stick with it, we'll ultimately come out the other side so much healthier.

We frequently call the gov BS "cancer". We'll, just we started chemo. It's not going to be fun.

Unfortunately, it's pretty clear to me the American public has zero appetite for things that make them uncomfortable, temporary as they may be. And even if some things get better in the end, we ultimately won't break our addiction and the second we checkout of rehab, we're going to binge hard.

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Great analogy. Seems spot on to me!

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Originally Posted by tmckay2

I work in federal government. There's waste for sure, in my department not as much as you might think. But some, and it's definitely impossoble to fire trash employees. I support the idea of DOGE in general and don't mind the emails and whatever, but the way it's all been handled is pretty amateurish. For one, they don't even notify secretaries of the various federal departments that emails are coming, so nobody has any clue once they show up. Second, they're written very unprofessionally which makes it almost seem fake or spam. Lastly, they're just trying to purge a bunch of the government. In my anecdotal experience, you can lean it out but you need to be very specific about who you fire. My group could absorb a 20% reduction no problem if you cut the correct 3-4 people. Leave any of those and cut someone else and we will be buried. It's easy too, look at performance records and their internet surf history and boom you are good to go. Do it on seniority only and we will be absolutely crippled.

I also don't think making government employees the enemy and thst they're all lazy trash is the wrong way to go. I've worked in both sectors and some of my colleagues are the best abd brightest I've worked with.

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Also a .gov employee, my opinion mirrors yours, I didn?t respond to any of the emails, not because I couldn?t come up with 5 bullet points, but because I thought it was dumb, and it didn?t come from a supervisor.


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all these Gov. employees crying about being laid off, well, welcome to the party. My wife has been laid off 4 times in her career in the mortgage business. She didn't go crying to a TV camera. Nope, started looking for and finding another job. If she can do it, these Gov employees can do it too and need to stop crying about it not being fair.

Learn to code!

https://thehill.com/changing-america...learn-to-code/

According to Dave Weigel of the Washington Post, Biden said, "Anybody who can go down 3,000 feet in a mine can sure as hell learn to program as well! Anybody who can throw coal into a furnace can learn how to program, for God's sake!"

All the probationary employees at my office were hired back with back pay. Of course they can still get RIF'd so no celebration yet unless an exemption is given.