The Elon Musk-run Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) announced the termination of nearly two dozen leases on federal properties.
In an X posting on Sunday evening, DOGE announced, “In the past 6 days, the number of lease terminations of underutilized buildings has increased from 3 to 22, with savings increased from $1.6M to $44.6M.”
The three buildings cited by DOGE involved lease terminations enacted by the US General Services Agency, which DOGE said resulted in $1.6 million of savings. DOGE added the federal real estate portfolio had “more than 7,500 leases.”
The locations of the buildings where the leases were terminated were not disclosed, nor did DOGE offer a follow-up on tenant relocations.
This is where Paul Pelosi steps in and figures out how to make him and his Broker several million dollars.
You aren’t very bright are you?
David, please if you have something to say, say it please.
So where are the return to office workers going to return to ya dumbass?
Try reading. “underutilized buildings”
The amount of Government waste is staggering. Unbelievable how bad it is. Hopefully we can get this country back on its feet and going strong again.
Great news. Buildings can be sold or used for homeless situations and or veterans – Tunnel to Towers buy a few and condos for disabled vets ? Soooo much can be done
Great ideas Charlene.
Charlene, they’re leases. You can’t just turn leased property into homeless shelters. That’s not how leases work.
With what exactly? Dictatorship! THIS, is how it starts. Trump did not have a mandate to violate the Constitution of the US. The main reason he ran for office is to stay out of jail. Certainly NOT to help me or you. Strength by intimidation, degradation, humiliation, isolation, etc, is NOT strength at all. This is how a bully gets things done. If you have kids or grandkids, make sure to congratulated them if they bully others (anything but is hypocrisy)! Because, at least 49% of American believe that is a good approach.
Settle down Irene, it’s going to be okay. Just stop watching the View and MSNBC. We’re all Americans and it’s all constitutional. 🙂
Thank you for your concern. I certainly hope all with be okay. However, I watch it all. In fact, I then read and verify, from multiple sources. Do you not think that Trump has studied the likes of Hitler and Putin, and now Orban. There are several things to be learned from all of them, including but not limited to: authoritarian control, intimidation of their non-supporters, and wealth stays at the top. I live in a family split down the middle, as do most. The speed by which Trump spins a crisis to his benefit is lightning, and the speed of the right leaning media jumping on and proliferating his comments is even faster. To many of my family members, that becomes their TRUTH, whether true or not. They repeat and repeat till there is nothing else to believe. This is called propaganda. Another gift from the “strong” leaders named above.
You are so right Joan. The Left just keeps drinking the Left’s coolaid and stay dumb and numb.
Ummmm. I’m pretty sure that reducing federal waste and funneling that back into the coffers that are used for AMERICANS FIRST is a GREAT THING. Unless of course you own a Building the feds are Leasing. And let me assure you, Trump isn’t even getting warmed up yet so get your tissues ready snowflake.
I agree, Irene.
I guess our fellow Americans have had it too good.
THIS IS HOW IT STARTS! Eliminating unused leases from our budget is a DICTATORSHIP!!
Lol, you sound just as gullible, manipulated, and bought as I picture a democrat to be. Biden ran to stay out of jail and pardon criminals including his son who would have likely incriminated his dad even further. Trump was NEVER going to jail and if you think he was it’s because you bought in on the fake charges we all know were created to stop him from winning. Literally every single thing a democrat accuses they’re guilty tenfold of the same.
I think this good idea! No one has questioned the spending of government.
Everyone of us has to watch our spending, this is just common sense.
Thank God for Donald Trump and Elon Musk for their major efforts of eliminating reducing overhead and unwanted properties. Most of these people who work there will be unemployed
I think you should be concerned about a non-American born, who has not been vetted, having access to all the government information. Oh! don’t forget he is the riches man in the world who before now has never done anything that wasn’t in his best interest only and let us not forget he purchased the white house access for $277 million dollars. I don’t think his decisions are necessarily to support America First. Just a thought.
How much wasteful spending has been happening, and for how long? Do we really want that answer? It would make me sick to my stomach, I am sure. When you see how much of your hard-earned money goes towards taxes, and it is then thrown away on wasteful spending. How much better off we would be if we could keep more of our earned income.
It’s beyond waste, it’s Theft and Treason.
Most people agree that government has a lot of waste; however, this waste is HEAVILY supported by many politicians who are funded by the companies that profit off that waste. Don’t kid yourselves here. Companies buy politicians wholly or partially, with only a few politicians with enough spine to NOT lick the hands of those who support them, and even fewer politicians who refuse to take corporate donations.
But it is not just corporations funding politicians who continue to support waste in government.
Get real!
Employees throughout the country who are employed by those companies (companies that receive direct contracts and also massive government subsidies and grants) also support the waste because their jobs are tied to government spending that feeds to their employers and their jobs.
So many people complain about government waste until THEIR jobs are threatened when cutting waste becomes a reality, which rarely happens because citizens then vote for the politicians who will continue the wasteful spending that supports their jobs, no matter how wasteful those jobs and products are.
Waiting to hear how they spin DOGE saving all this money as racist or white supremacy…..
Let’s take a look at all of the billionaires /oligarchs now running the US Govt. Has Musk taken Govt handouts to save his wasteful spending? YES. Did Trump file bankruptcy multiple times losing millions of dollars for his investors? YES. These guys are not the brilliant minds that we need. They gamble with their money and ours. Their wealth is protected. Ours is not. I am not OK with violating the Constitution and the laws of the land. How half the country lost site of this astounds me! Finally, we all agree there is waste. But retaliating against non-supporters, removing experienced, proficient civil servants, and blowing things up as they go is NOT the answer. We will fall before we rise, and the fall will be long and hard. It will not discriminate between those that voted for Trump and those that did not.
Well said!!
Trump’s purges of Agencies.
If Trump had wanted to get 100% support from all citizens and from both major political parties (and Bernie Sanders too), then Trump could have laid out the game plan for how to cut out waste from the Government, and he could have asked Congress to pass bills that would take the necessary (and Constitutionally legal) steps to make a lot of changes and cut costs.
But Trump did not do that. He loves shock and awe and instilling terror, for no reason at all because cutting out waste is a common denominator shared by citizens and politicians, but not everyone really wants to cut waste; they just pretend by saying it.
Trump and Musk have NOT targeted waste in the Defense Department, the home of the most wasteful spending of any segment of the government. I have talked to so many in the military and in defense industries (including my now dead father who was in both) who described in detail the atrocious waste, over-billing, unused materials that are re-ordered and not used yet again (Abram tanks, various planes, etc.), and massive munitions stockpiles that are dumped into the oceans on a yearly basis so that the various military branches can say that they “need a bigger budget” to buy more munitions that they don’t use.
You can read about the many UN-needed projects that the Pentagon did not want but politicians, companies, and employees who profited from that waste do not want the contracts to stop.
Trump & Musk are correct that there is waste in government, yet they have avoided the most obvious and most expensive wasteful agency (The Defense Department) because they now stand to profit themselves and to keep their MAGA supporters happy by directing defense contracts to their supporters.
Julie, you are exactly right!
I will add that everyone wants the waste to stop but instead of starting with corrupt lifelong politicians, they are starting with ordinary people that need those jobs to support their families. Everyone is in favor until it affects them.
It’s been 3 weeks. They will get to the defense dept, waiting for the nominees to be approved.
If Trump really wanted to cut waste, the Defense budget would be the place to start.
How the U.S. budget is split out to various programs.
https://www.cagw.org/content/tanking-taxpayers
and
https://fiscaldata.treasury.gov/americas-finance-guide/federal-spending/
Scroll down to the bar chart.
Lots of good info in this link.
Social Security and Medicare are SEPARATELY funded by working people who pay taxes out of their income and thru payroll taxes on companies who hire employees. These are TRUE entitlements because YOU earned them and paid into SS and Medicare (even if half was paid by your employer).
Independent contractors pay both sides of Social Security and Medicare.
If you earn money and buy a car, then you ARE ENTITLED to that car.
Just like SS and Medicare.
You paid into those programs thru your work, so you ARE entitled to the promised benefits.
It is bizarre how so many people slam SS and Medicare as some kind of welfare program when they are NOT, at all! You paid for SS and Medicare thru your work!
Social Security and Medicare funds cannot be accessed directly, but funds are loaned to the Treasury so as to earn interest, and the principle and interest are required to be paid back to SS and Medicare.
That’s a great thing because you would NOT want your hard earned entitlement money sitting there losing value as inflation rises, which always trends higher.
Outside of the untouchable (for a good reason) SS & Medicare funds, the Defense budget is the largest portion of the U.S. budget and is HALF of the discretionary spending budget. In 2025, Defense spending will be 15% of the National Budget.
So why are Musk and Trump avoiding any peek into the Defense budget to cut out waste?
We know why.
Mega companies nationwide support Trump, and many of the biggest corporations receive direct defense contracts, grants, or subsidies, or they receive money thru the multiplier effects that benefit other companies who rely on money earned and spent by defense contractors (the diner next to a major defense contractor is a multiplier effect due to defense people buying food).
Government spending helps fuel the GDP, which is a measure of economic output.
Strangely, wars, famines, floods, fires cause more government spending and a higher GDP, which does create income but does not necessarily tie to a higher quality of life if YOU are impacted by those crisis events; though federal funds are there to help ease the financial burden.
Cutting the budget makes sense if there is waste, but cutting it too much may mean that critical funds are withheld, especially during crisis events.
People forget that.
No argument about government waste, but are YOU ready to take some waste cutting that impacts you too?
My opinion is this:
When cutting out waste, you have to be careful to not tip people out of the cart.
You need to change laws gradually and with minimal impacts and give time for people to plan for those changes. That means gradual phase outs of existing laws and phase in of new laws.
There are SS & Medicare benefits that could be parred down on NON working people who currently receive benefits from a working spouse. Again, this proposed change would start only with the youngest workers just starting out who have paid little or nothing into SS and Medicare, but those who have worked their 40 quarters (and more) would have no changes or few changes because they have been paying into a system that promised them certain benefits. Age at the time of the benefits change would be one factor because it is harder when your working years are running out, and we all know that age discrimination is a very real factor in landing a decent job (starting at age 36), and so is just getting older.
Social Security currently allows a spouse who has NEVER worked to partially tap into the SS and Medicare benefits of the working spouse. That may have seemed reasonable when many, if not most, people had 1 working spouse and the other stayed home to manage the home or children.
But it was never really a fair law, either, because single, childless working people and single working parents with children were subsidizing that benefit for non-working spouses who were tapping into the SS and Medicare pool of funds, and many of those people were rich too. However, those were the times, and retiring people today lived under those common conditions of ONE working spouse.
I would continue to make exceptions for a low income or non-working spouse who cares for a disabled or elderly person who is part of the family (however you define that, and I would propose that it could apply to those who care for a friend, or any non-blood relative who is part of the family in some manner.)
These are just ideas to cut waste, increase fairness, and to realize that families and working conditions are different now.
https://smartasset.com/retirement/social-security-for-non-working-spouse
Cutting waste in Social Security on the Serial Marrying kind of people
The “ex-spousal benefit” is rarely discussed as part of SS, but there is some waste that could be cut here too. Again, this proposal to cut waste and improve fairness would apply to the youngest workers just starting out, and any partial benefits (quarters earned already) would be on a plan that addresses that (not subject to the changes).
Ex-Spousal Benefits and how weird it can get.
If a spouse divorces and remarries, perhaps remarries 3, 4, even 5 times, then as long as the prior ex-spouses were married for a certain length of time to the one income earner, then ALL those ex-spouses and the current spouse can tap into the ONE working spouse’s SS benefits, even if NONE of those ex-spouses or the current spouse ever worked.
This extraordinary benefit does NOT reduce the benefits of the working spouse.
This benefit applies to anyone who qualifies, man or woman or inter sex. Doesn’t matter.
The ex-spouse remarrying usually ends the benefit coming from the ex-working spouse, except in certain situations.
I’ve known people who were serial marrying people, usually very rich people.
They often lived to be very old and married multiple times, and boy, did they and their string of current and ex-spouses suck off the SS teat, big time!
(These are often the same people who complain about welfare queens and government waste, unless it is their waste and legalized welfare system).
The current extreme benefit for multiple ex-spouses is being subsidized by other workers who never marry or only marry 1 or 2 times at most. I propose curtailing the excesses of this SS law, but I feel that exceptions should be made to allow for at least 1 ex-spouse or up to 2 ex-spouses if the prior spouse died.
Another exception would be for ex-spouses who sacrificed their career to care for a disabled person or an elderly person taken into the family (however you define that) because that is a huge sacrifice with lifelong impacts on income and benefits. Also, that added stress can result in divorces.
Women still make up over 90% of the people who care for the disabled and elderly within families, and they lose a lot of money because of it, but society wins because that cost of care is absorbed by the caretaker, still usually a woman.
There are serial marrying people out there, and they are costing all working people a lot of money.
Again, I would not change the law immediately. I would phase it in slowly, starting with the youngest workers so that they can plan accordingly. But, for the very rich, I would phase it out faster because they do not need that benefit, and they have many tax benefits and write offs that do not apply to middle and lower income people (like a slew of write-offs that are often fraudulent but never investigated; like luxurious vacation costs put on the expense line of a tax statement. I’ve known many people who have remodeled their entire homes and written that off as a business expense when it had ZERO to do with the business; they were never caught, and most are not).
https://www.aarp.org/retirement/social-security/info-2016/divorced-social-security-benefits.html
The Child Tax Deduction and its Unfair Tax burdens.
See link at end of this for details of the current laws.
This is a good area to cut waste in government spending and do it in a fair way.
Before parents go off the rails into a defensive position, just hear me out.
What I am proposing is fair, and for those who care about fair, then this will make sense.
I have ZERO children, and so do many other people, and, yet, we are forced to subsidize people who have children, even an unlimited number of children through the $2,000 per child tax credit and other “child expense” benefits for various types of care, and then school bonds to pay for the combination of babysitting and education for all those kids.
And the current maximum benefit applies to children under 17, but other tax credits apply to children up through age 24 (under certain conditions).
The income levels that can receive these child tax benefits is wide.
Single people earning up to $200,000 and couples earning up to $400,000 receive the benefit, and only after those limits does a phase down happen.
Do I think these child tax credits and benefits are Fair?
HELL NO! At least not the way it is now.
But, even though I want to see the child tax credit limited to a fairer situation, I would never suggest cutting out that credit for people who already have children and rely on that tax credit.
That would NOT be fair and could be a real burden for people who need that promised tax credit.
But I would change child tax credits for children born in the future, starting 2 years into the future after the law changed.
That way, people can plan for the change.
See my proposal in the next post.
My proposal for reining in the Child Tax Credit, making it better and fairer.
Here is the proposal:
The child tax credit remains the same for those who have 1 child per 1 adult (2 children per couple).
Of course, it would apply to adopted children.
After that, a 3rd child receives NO tax credit and no other benefits (explained later).
There is more…and I think most people will like this.
Disabled Children
Children with disabilities would receive more tax credits and extra help to give the parents a real break.
This would apply for the lifetime of the child, provided the disability remains, which it usually does.
A funny story is that a social worker once told our family that our sister should have “gotten over it” (be normal) when she turned 18 years old. My sister had Down’s Syndrome! I’ve never seen someone drop a chromosome to revert to standard count chromosomes. We laughed about that, a lot.
I learned so much by having a Down’s Syndrome sister, and I volunteered for several years at a recreational program for disabled people of all ages. I saw worn out parents, and other relatives who did the primary care, particularly as they aged and realized that they were trapped (for life) by the child or relative that they loved. The small break when someone else took their child out for a few hours of recreation was great, but it was a long drive for them, and it didn’t last that long, not long enough of a break.
That is a terrible situation, and society can help relieve that.
I would like to see extra child tax credits that would apply to paying someone to take care of a disabled child so that a parent (or parents) or other primary caregivers (including foster parents) could take at least 8 weeks vacation per year.
Yeah, you heard me right!
That may sound like a lot of subsidized child care, but if YOU are the one taking care of a disabled child, sometimes through their entire adulthood, I promise you, it is not. Try volunteering for 6 months of round the clock care, 7 days a week, and NO breaks, and do that for a disabled person with pretty serious conditions, and you will wake up to that reality of how hard it is. When that person is your own relative and you love them, there is added guilt for feeling that burden.
Getting 8 weeks per year off (in any way you want to arrange it) would help the disabled child,/disabled adult, and it would help the health of the primary caregivers, and it would help keep that child (turned adult) in a loving home, and likely with fewer divorces and depressions.
That saves society money too by increasing in-home care.
Furthermore, I would propose more subsidies for much better programs for disabled children and throughout their lives. I’ve seen underfunded disabled programs all over the place.
The care is not good enough, and that is not the fault of the under-staffed centers.
There should be more funding to give these disabled people much better education to enhance and maintain their skill sets (mental, emotional, and physical), and they should receive regular stimulating experiences, such as recreational activities several times a week, and field trips too.
Proper food, clothing, medical and dental care should be provided for those families who are under a certain income level (or total asset level).
Many of these disabled people enjoy working in regular jobs, (applicable to their abilities), but they do go slower and often need at least 1 adult per person for supervision. But the benefits are great for them as children and even more so when they are adults to keep them healthy and active. which cuts down on the costs of health care.
The U.S. has a terrible record regarding care for the disabled, usually phasing out education after the age of 18 or 21, and then putting the more disabled people into “glorified” watch T.V. sessions all day.
For many disabled people, this lack of care results in obesity, diabetes, declining coordination, agitation, depression., and earlier deaths. For many disabled people, the family lacks funds for body care, so you routinely see rotted teeth, ear wax that would make a candle jealous, cloths that are strained due to being far too small, shoes that don’t fit, and cloths that are inadequate for the weather.
These are all signs of our societal disregard for the most vulnerable people, particularly among the poor and even the middle class who are strained by the expenses.
It makes me sick when people dismiss the disabled and the families who care for them and dismiss the over-worked and underpaid caregivers at the care centers.
What I strongly object to is that the current child tax credit applies to an UN-limited number of children per family, and that is wildly unfair to other taxpayers who have NO children or only 1 child per 1 adult (2 children per 2 adults). Furthermore, by giving tax credits for unlimited numbers of children, that removes funds for better care for disabled children and into their adulthood.
Having children is a “choice”.
You are not born with a fixed “pre-programmed” pregnancy that just pops up when you enter puberty.
You can try to peddle that story, but besides the Virgin Mary, NO one is buying it.
If you get pregnant, somebody moved, intentionally.
That’s not my call; it’s the responsibility (and choice) of the people involved.
Other people should NOT have to pay child tax credits and benefits in UN-limited ways.
Though, for me, I am willing to compromise via the proposal laid out, and expand credits and help for disabled people throughout their lives.
I think that is pretty darn fair.
https://taxpolicycenter.org/briefing-book/what-child-tax-credit
Trump and Musk appear to be violating the Separation of Powers, while the Republican controlled congress (both houses) sit on their hands and abdicate their duties to the Constitution and allow Trump and Musk to usurp Legislative powers that are solely the duty of Congress.
For those who think that is ok, then you are people who either don’t know history and the dangers this poses, or you love Dictators and the Oligarchy system that many nations have had and have now.
It doesn’t work out as planned by early supporters of authoritarian societies.
Many of them are swept aside in a few years and never get “the benefits” of the Dictatorship that they supported. Some are even killed.
The Brown Shirts aggressively supported Hitler in the early years and were killed later because they were seen as a threat. Saddam Hussein’s supporters were killed as he ascended to more powers and saw them as a threat, and he even killed members of his own family to decided this was too much to take.
The Saudi Family has always been heavy handed and threatened to kill family members and still does. So the wealth may seem awesome for the family members, but they are still in a weird kind of gilded prison.
The glorification of violence and childlike hissy fits of people who think that they are the only ones who deserve power and wealth is absurd, but it has been a part of European and American society for a very long time. We are not the only nation that has this problem, but we are the nation that promised we would steer away from authoritarianism, though most of our history has been just that.
If the courts will not, or cannot, reign in Trump and Musk, and because the Republican Congress has long ago devolved from vertebrates to invertebrates (no spine), it may take a long time to see our way back, if we ever get back from this takeover of our government, our treasury, and the evil that happens when Oligarchs and their Dictators seize power and toss out the Constitution, the document they pledged to uphold. But we knew Trump would not, and Musk never took an oath to anything.
Federal workers are being forced out for doing their jobs, and without the legal protection of due process of termination. This is petty revenge and intimidation.
I hope the Federal employees can get the courts to protect them, but the FBI is having problems as names are released and MAGAs will have names to attack people who simply did their jobs well.
Wow! This Julie Fisher column is getting LONG!
Thank you Julie for reminding people to look beneath the surface.
Stripping the Fed Govt of social services has the potential to increase costs for everyone across the board. Trump (and Musk, who appears to be calling the shots) wants all of government programs and agencies to be privatized so that his cronies could take over and set the standards for how things will be done. Does anyone think once that happens and once government deregulates everything, that we the people will have any say to how much we pay for anything.
Even if Trump eliminates income tax. That income tax isn’t going to make us richer, that’s just gonna give us money to pay for things that we already pay for through our taxes. And perhaps we won’t even be able to afford those anymore because the privatization of a lot of these programs and services will become a money grab for the rich who are already rich. And those among us with the highest level of need will be the ones who can least afford to pay out of their own pockets.
Additionally, rebuilding anything into the private sector will NOT happen over night. This could take years before many of these essential services become available again to any of us. If we can afford them and we live long enough to seek them.
I am not a bleeding heart liberal, just a sensible person with a deeper understanding of what many don’t want to consider.
And for the record, those rich people mentioned above are otherwise known as oligarchs.
I think it is great Musk has access to everyone social security numbers, addresses, credit scores, what they own etc. Who cares? He is a multimillionaire. He will not abuse that information. I trust billionaires. It’s time others did too.
The democrats in this thread TRYING to find a problem with this is kind of mind blowing. Are you so manipulated by media into thinking everything republicans do is bad that your knee jerk commentary is eliminating wasteful spending on unused leases is NOT a good thing??
I don’t see how you can even find fault in that. Just push on if you don’t understand.
If you want to update a bathroom, do you blow up the whole house because it costs too much to maintain? If you want to decrease your household budget, do you hard stop feeding your kids or just kill off a family member? Yes, there is wasteful spending in govt and otherwise in every aspect of society. This in NOT acceptable and careful review and cutting back is necessary. Empty govt buildings to be used for other humane purposes is a great start. The rest of this is blatant over reach.
Violating the Constitution is also NOT acceptable. If that is what it takes to “cut spending” I want no part of this. For anyone that needs a refresher course on what life is like under this type of leadership, I highly suggest a one year move to Russia, China, North Korea, etc to see how this actually works. Your comments thereafter may bear some weight.
Has anyone even wondered what Musk’s’ motivation is for doing all of this? He is obviously much smarter than Trump and who knows what he has on Trump. Musk is the richest man in the world so you have to wonder what he is up to. Going to be very interesting when it comes out. He is not doing this out of the goodness of his heart. My comment has nothing to do with a particular political party so don’t come back at me with any BS!