DOGE is Dead and Buried Inside of Big Beautiful Bill's Belly

The results are fully in. We all remember the brazen braggadocio as Musk raised a chainsaw overhead and boasted that he was slashing government expenses. We also remember the ham-fisted job the DOGE brothers did that frequently resulted in the government having to hire back a good number of the people DOGE fired because Team Trump discovered government could not do its expected work without those people. That happened several times in large numbers.

Surely, all that bloody slashing saved some money, as promised, right? How can you do all that chainsaw cutting and not save money?

Well, DOGE is dead, says one article below from The Winepress; and, for all of its bluster, DOGE saved nothing at all. The results that did come bled more red ink than all the blood that chainsaw could ever have let out of its victims veins. While no government slimming materialized during all the months DOGE was busting its “Big Balls,” as one firebrand in charge called himself (apparently believing he was all that and a bag of computer chips, too), we surely could reasonably expect to see those savings start to show up now that we have started the new fiscal year, right?

Not so! The US deficit at the start of the new fiscal year rose 10% over Biden’s last year. Beating #NoMoJoe with all of his fascist Bidenomics, which combined massive new government spending with corporate spending to jolt US chip production upward (similar to what Trump just announced today on his Genesis Mission, an AI build-out plan), was a pretty low bar to have to clear. Doing 10% worse than Sleepy, Creepy, Walking-Dead, Uncle Joe, however, is beyond terrible. How do you underperform a cadaver who shakes hands with curtains?

Some of that enormous deficit expansion, I’m sure is due to Big Beautiful Bill, whose personal repugnance and stench of body sweat, I often complained about as the government shoved the equivalent of cases of hot dogs and gallons of ice cream down its throat in celebration of its own largesse (or just largeness). Yet, we might have reasonably hoped DOGE’s bodacious budget slashing would, at least, neutralize the new stuff bloated Bill was swallowing. But … no! Emphatically no!

Budget billiards

The balls are bouncing everywhere, yet none of them is going into the right pocket.

The US Treasury posted a $284 budget deficit just for October. That’s right, a quarter of a trillion dollars for just one month where the data release was delayed due to the government shutdown. They could have, at least, not reported some of the expenses, claiming lack of time to add them all up. I suppose we can be thankful the report didn’t try to trim the fat from view with that kind of fakery.

In the very least, we could have hoped, since the shutdown took out about half the month of October, that there would be the appearance of huge savings just from closing the doors and keeping Big Bill out of the diner. But, no! That’s not how accounting by accrual works. You count the bills you owe as an expense in the month when those bills became your responsibility, whether you paid them or not. Still, not any savings from being closed for over a month—even in what we became legally obligated to pay? All we got was budget bloat.

Be forewarned, there may be great news on the budget for November since the government was shutdown nearly all month … if they can find justification for not accruing the paychecks owed by claiming the government doesn't owe for work not put in. There could be a lot of that. It is only for those they forced to work without pay, that they must pay, or those on a contract that binds the government. If there is any savings, however, it will likely come by making December a lot more expensive as the government leaps into paying anything it simply postponed (but didn’t cancel).

Expect yet another vast data mess.

Now, the US Treasury has a defense for this terrible report:

Treasury officials noted that the October deficit was inflated by approximately $105 billion in November benefit payments for military and healthcare programs that were shifted into October. Without this timing shift, the October deficit would have been around $180 billion, representing a 29% reduction from the adjusted October 2024 deficit of $252 billion.

Paying the bills in advance would be legitimate as an excuse for the extra-large deficit, except the shutdown is going to create all kinds of other expenses that got piled the other way—into November or December—because, instead of getting paid in advance, they were postponed, making those months, likely December in particular, all the worse. I think any improvement in what October would have been, had they not moved some November expenses into October, will be more than offset by the worsening of months where many of October’s expenses likely got pushed off to.

Expect a mess to figure out that will, at best, only be resolved by next year, once all the advances and delays are included.

Worse, still, the October number with all of its fat spilling out, is a deficit that happened in spite of revenue having made a huge leap up. (An increase in revenue has the effect of reducing the deficit, so it washes out that advance payment to the military.)

Government receipts for October totaled $404 billion, marking a record for the month and representing a 24% increase from the $327 billion collected in October 2024.

That would be a good thing, except the additional revenue was mostly paid by you. Or, to be more precise, it was mostly from the new tax on Americans, known as the Trump Tariffs. If you’re a business that buys anything from overseas, you now you got hit by those taxes. If you're just a consumer, you likely got hit by them in the prices you paid or will get hit by them eventually, as retailers will not bear the loss to their profit margins forever. They will keep finding ways for months—maybe even years—to push those additional taxes on to the consumer. They always do. It’s just a matter of time.

A significant contributor to the increased revenue was net customs duties, which reached an all-time monthly record of $31.4 billion in October. This represents a substantial increase from $29.7 billion in September and $7.3 billion in October 2024.

(Visit the article highlighted, as usual, below—this time available for everyone, since it is Monday—in order to get more details.)

Don’t worry, we’ll all be Fed up just like Big Bountiful Bill

Don’t worry about the deficit, though. The Trump has a plan for it. He’s going to appoint a new Fed chair very soon, who will be a man who LOVES to run the money presses at full velocity and claims outright that he would love to see the dollar seriously devalued. (At least, if Trump appoints the person he has shown the greatest leaning toward, which is White House National Economic Council Director Kevin Hassett.)

With Hassett, Trump would have a close ally whom the president knows well and trusts installed at the central bank, the [Bloomburg] sources - who may well be leaking information at Trump’s behest - said. “Hassett is seen as someone who would bring the president’s approach to interest rate cutting to the Fed, which Trump has long wanted to control”, Bloomberg reported, citing sources….

[Hassett] told Fox News on Nov. 20 that he would “be cutting rates right now” if he were the chair of the Fed.

Hassett has written out a plan to devalue the dollar in order to increase US trade (and maybe to devalue the massive debt that keeps piling up no matter which party is in office). So, if he’s Trump’s choice and makes it through Senate confirmation, expect massive inflation on top of whatever inflation is caused by tariffs.

And expect that to go on for a long time:

The next chair is likely to be named to a 14-year Fed governor term that opens on Feb. 1.

Trump has instructed Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent to “work on” Powell in order to get rates lowered. He’s even threatened to fire Bessent if he doesn’t. Bessent has NO control over what the Fed’s FOMC decides on interest rates, but what does that matter to a president who, at least, pretends to not understand how the US monetary system works by law?

“The only thing Scott’s blowing it on is the Fed,” Trump said. “The rates are too high, Scott, and if you don’t get it fixed fast, I’m gonna fire your ass. I can’t tell you — Scott: ‘Sir, don’t fire him [Powell]. Sir, please don’t fire him. He’s got three months to go, don’t fire him,’” Trump said. “I wanna get him out!”

Well, the three months are nearly up, and Trump is slavering to install a new high-volume money printer at the top of the Fed to help crash the dollar, which he might hope will drive more people to Trump crypto, especially now that $Trump has been crashing more than cashing. This guy is likely to be worse than Powell was when he ran the presses full speed for far too long in the Covid days and helped create the huge inflation that came out of those days. (Shortages from shutdowns were the other part of the chemistry.)

Of course, Trump sang a different tune on all of this when interest rates were low under Obama while Trump was running against Obama’s VP, Biden:

“We have a very false economy,” he repeated.

“So far, I think she’s done a political job,” he said about Fed chair Janet Yellen.

“At some point the rates are going to have to change,” Trump added. “The only thing that is strong is the artificial stock market.”

“That’s only strong because it’s free money because the rates are so low. It’s an artificial market. It’s a bubble. So the only thing that’s strong is the artificial market that they’re created until January. It’s so artificial because they have free money... It’s all free money. When rates are low like this it’s hard not to have a good stock market,” he also said.

So, he maybe he does know how it works, but he sings a completely different tune now that it is his term up to bat. Now the economy and the booming stock market are no longer “artificial” in his view, but are proof of his glory. (Until it fails to boom, then it will be all Powell’s fault.)

DOGE ball: the big balls are out!

As for DOGE, it almost doesn’t even exist anymore. The fumbling department that fired so many of the wrong people—including many that the courts said it could not fire contractually or because the department lacked any legal authority—THAT department has been disbanded eight months before its sell-by date and parceled out somewhat into other departments. DOGE is done, and we haven nothing so far to show for all the bluster than just a big belch.

If you may recall, when Musk and Trump were campaigning in 2024, Musk initially promised to cut $2 trillion from spending, then it turned into a ‘maybe’ and a ‘might,’ then Musk dropped the number to $1 trillion right before Trump took office; and then Musk dropped that number again to the hundreds of billions, and before he took an early exit from DOGE as Tesla was getting hammered he lauded DOGE allegedly saved $150 billion.

While what is left of the DOGE website currently claims that number has grown to a little over $210-billion saved, numerous audits claim otherwise.

The Wall Street Journal, Bloomberg and Fortune, found that the officially published numbers did not align. DOGE lists the things that were cut on its website, the problem is a number of the contracts were already fulfilled and the checks distributed, so nothing was cut or saved; and there were other accounting errors and typos that grossly overstated the amount of money that was being ‘saved,’

I’m sure DOGE managed to save something, but an exaggerated number around $210-billion falls far short of its original boasting. The biggest contributor to the deficit, though, is Trump’s Big Bodacious Bill, about whom he still boasts. Most of that boost to the budget deficit went to increased military spending by the Peace President to fund his Caribbean and Venezuelan and Israeli-Iran war adventures along with continued support for Ukraine, all of which his supporters voted to prevent, causing Musk to conclude the government mess is “unfixable.”

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