Is Elon Musk’s DOGE task force exposing federal spending or putting lives at risk?

It took more than eight years for former Clinton administration adviser Elaine Kamarck to cut approximately 426,000 jobs, 16,000 pages and $136 billion — in 1990s dollars — from the federal government.

It took more than eight years for former Clinton administration adviser Elaine Kamarck to cut approximately 426,000 jobs, 16,000 pages and $136 billion — in 1990s dollars — from the federal government.

So Kamarck, who ran the first phase of President Bill Clinton’s Reforming Government (“REGO”) effort, understands the impulse to scrutinize the extent of Washington’s spending excesses — and that it can be addressed. 

Yet Kamarck, now a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, told NBC News that while the “slash and burn” approach currently being taken by Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency can work in Silicon Valley, it can cost actual lives when used to implement changes in government outlays.

“If you apply that same slash and burn to air traffic control, or slash and burn to CDC investigating food poisonings, guess what: People die,” Kamarck said. “It’s a big f-----g deal. It’s a completely different level of risk.”

Over the past week or so, Musk and his DOGE team have ignited a firestorm by highlighting — sometimes in false, misleading, or erroneous ways — government spending that may have come as a surprise to the American public.

https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/doge/elon-musk-doge-task-force-federal-spending-rcna190963

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