David Friedberg: DOGE is Zero-Based Budgeting the Federal Government

if you zoom out on what doge is doing I think the best way to describe it is zerob based budgeting in organizations that go through zerob based budgeting you do a cycle typically annually where you take all of your OPAC all of your expenses and running a company down to the studs you take it down to zero and you rebuild it up and you say what are we trying to achieve this year from first principles what's the minimal expense we need to run and that's what doge is effectively doing they're doing a zero based budgeting on the federal government they're looking at every line item and they're asking the fundamental question which I don't think we talk about in the public disc enough which is

what is the essential role of government and there is a great debate to be had around that point should government be providing humanitarian Aid in international markets should the government be providing security to Nations that can't provide security for themselves should the government be providing loans for people to go to universities should the government be providing loans for people to buy homes that are overpriced and as we start to ask the questions of how we're spending money I think it ends up leading to the most important questions which is what is the essential role of government which I think is the Deb that needs to be had in order for the

Democracy to last so I'm very happy to see the effort of Doge and I think that it's the beginning of what I hope will be kind of a long-term process of asking the fundamental questions about essential government