Politics
DOGE Cuts IRS Budget To Prove Government Wastes Money, Immediately Wastes More Money
By Mor Michael, . BSN Network. Satire.
WASHINGTON, D.C. -- The Trump administration has achieved something genuinely rare in American political history: a government reform so efficient that it costs more than the thing it replaced, while everyone involved describes this as the point.
In the first year of what the White House has called the most significant restructuring of the federal workforce since the 1960s, the Internal Revenue Service lost approximately 9,700 employees, most of them auditors, revenue agents, and the specific category of person whose job title includes the word "collection." Audit revenue subsequently dropped by 35 percent. The administration has not disputed the figure. It has disputed the implication that the figure is a problem.
"What you're seeing is the dismantling of a weaponized bureaucracy," Elon Musk said during a post on X, which he owns, addressing an audience that had not asked. "The IRS was never about revenue. It was about control." He did not specify what the IRS should have been about instead, or where the money was going to come from, or whether he personally had ever filed on time, but the post received 340,000 likes, which the administration cited as positive feedback.
The math, for anyone interested in it, is straightforward enough to be insulting. The 9,700 agents cost roughly $900 million annually in salary and benefits. The 35 percent drop in audit revenue represents somewhere between $18 billion and $21 billion in collections that no longer occurred. The administration's position is that these two numbers are not in conversation with each other, and that asking whether they are represents a fundamental misunderstanding of what efficiency means.
Congressman Barry Loudermilk of Georgia, a member of the House Oversight Committee, told reporters Tuesday that the real issue was never the money. "The American people were tired of being harassed," he said. "Harassment has a cost too." He was asked whether that cost could be denominated in dollars and compared to $18 billion, and he said the hearing had run long and he had another commitment.
The Office of Management and Budget released a four-page summary describing the restructuring as "a generational reorientation of federal priorities," which is the kind of sentence that uses seven words to avoid using the word "loss." The summary noted that customer satisfaction at the IRS had improved significantly, which is true in the sense that nobody is auditing anyone, and audits are, universally, the part people like least.
Former IRS Commissioner Charles Rettig, who served under both parties and is therefore trusted by neither, said the revenue drop was "entirely predictable" and compared the situation to a hospital that eliminates its billing department to reduce administrative overhead. "You save on salaries," he said. "You stop getting paid. You call this a win because you no longer have a billing department to tell you otherwise."
The White House did not respond to the comparison but did release a statement noting that the IRS now has a 94-second average phone wait time, down from eleven minutes, which is an excellent improvement for the agency that is currently $18 billion short and no longer calling anyone back.
Congress is expected to debate the matter in the fall, after recess, after the midterms, or after someone in a position of authority develops an interest in arithmetic.
The story we are making fun of: https://www.foxnews.com/politics/trumps-first-year-government-overhaul-delivers-change-washington-hasnt-seen-since-1960s