November 15, 2024 01:19 PM UTC

Heidi Ganahl's Confusing Affirmations on Budget Cuts

• 1 Comments
• by: Colorado Pols

If Heidi Ganahl thinks you are doing something right, you really might want to reassess your plans.

The 2022 Republican nominee for Governor, who lost to incumbent Democrat Jared Polis by nearly 20 points, is inarguably the worst statewide candidate in Colorado history. But rather than allow her ignominy to fade from memory, Ganahl can’t stop not stopping making ridiculous statements about everything from furries to pyramid schemes. Only someone as obtuse as Ganahl could see something that another politician is doing and think, “Hey, I had that same idea one time!”

President-elect Donald Trump recently announced that he was appointing billionaire weirdo Elon Musk and onetime Presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy to head the made-up “Department of Government Efficiency” (a not-so-hilarious reference to “DOGE Coins”) to find ways to shrink government spending.

As CBS News reports, the new sorta-official government slashing organization is going to start slashing government by first…expanding it:

The new Department of Government Efficiency, a group created by President-elect Donald Trump with the task of identifying ways to cut federal spending and headed by billionaires Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy, is already taking resumes.

The request for job applicants was posted Thursday by the new X account for DOGE, which despite its heady mission isn’t an official government department. In his statement on Tuesday announcing the effort, Trump described Musk and Ramaswamy’s role as providing “advice and guidance from outside of government.”

It’s unclear where the funding for DOGE will come from or the size of its budget, as well as whether Musk, the world’s richest person, and Ramaswamy, who has an estimated net worth of $1 billion, will be paid for their efforts. The Trump campaign didn’t respond to a request for information…

…The post didn’t disclose the specific educational or career experience it is looking for in applicants. Instead, it described the kind of person they want to hire: “We need super high-IQ small-government revolutionaries willing to work 80+ hours per week on unglamorous cost-cutting.”

It added that it doesn’t want “more part-time idea generators.”

This is as silly as the initial idea of hiring TWO PEOPLE to suggest spending cuts, but Ganahl is thrilled that the news might reflect well on her:

We don’t recall anyone calling Ganahl’s cost-cutting plans “bullshit” — though that would have been a fair assessment. Either way, Ganahl’s math definitely needs work:

As most middle school students understand, cutting 10% per year for four years does NOT add up to a 40% reduction; it just means you have made 10% annual cuts four times.

Anyway, Ganahl thinks that the mere suggestion of this “DOGE” thingy is proof that her cost-cutting proposal was a valid idea. But as George Will writes for The Washington Post, there’s a big difference between talking about cutting government spending and actually making it work in reality:

Musk says he can cut “at least” $2 trillion from federal spending — say, one dollar in three. (Fiscal 2024 spending: $6.75 trillion.) Well.

Debt service (13.1 percent of fiscal 2024 spending) is not optional and is larger than defense (12.9 percent), which Trump wants to increase. Entitlements (principally Social Security and Medicare) are 34.6 percent and by Trumpian fiat are sacrosanct. So, Musk’s promise is to cut about 30 percent of the total budget from a roughly 40 percent portion of the budget, politics be damned…[Pols emphasis]

…Musk might do some good; Trump’s tariffs will do nothing but harm. Both, however, could cause Congress to rethink its decades of delegating dangerous discretion to presidents. They can unilaterally wreck international commerce and domestic prosperity with vague incantations about “national security” and “unfair” practices.

Businesspeople who get involved in politics like to say that government should be run more like a business, which is always a silly thing to say because government — by design — is not intended to generate a profit. This is sort of like saying that a basketball team should be coached like a football team, when the only thing the two have in common is the word “ball.”

Perhaps George Will is wrong and the “DOGE” will figure out a way to prove Ganahl correct. Accomplishing the latter would be quite the feat on its own.