Trump's beclowning of DOGE shows how little waste they'll cut

The clock is ticking on Trump claiming he doesn't really know Elon and then throwing him under a bus.

Placing DOGE inside of the White House's IT group, with having revised their grand goal of cutting over two trillion dollars from the budget to more like $500B, it looks like Elon, much like everyone else, is just set up to be a fall guy when Trump needs one later. Pennies is a problem other people have tried to tackle in the US past, and might save a few hundred million dollars, but on the scale Elon has boasted about it is pennies.

"The penny costs over 3 cents to make and cost U.S. taxpayers over $179 million in FY2023," DOGE wrote. "The Mint produced over 4.5 billion pennies in FY2023, around 40% of the 11.4 billion coins for circulation produced."

In pointing out the penny's costliness, DOGE is taking aim at an issue that has sparked debate for years, although the price of manufacturing the cent has only grown over the past several years. In 2016, for instance, the U.S. was spending about 1.5 cents to mint each penny, or less than half of its current manufacturing cost. 

On Monday, Mr. Trump signed an executive order officially creating DOGE, which will be housed within the executive branch and focus on upgrading the government's IT systems to "maximize governmental efficiency and productivity."

CBS

It sounds like Trump would like Elon to fix the White House wifi, and isn't really asking for monetary policy.

Previously:
Vivek Ramaswamy fired from 'DOGE' co-role with Elon Musk
Elon Musk dispatches DOGE agents across country before he's even inaugurated
Musk abandons DOGE's $2 trillion pledge to cut costs