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cover of episode 100 days of DOGE

100 days of DOGE

2025/4/29
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Marketplace Morning Report

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Bobby Kogan
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Brendan Duke
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Jessica Riedel
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Nancy Marshall-Genzer
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Nova Suffo
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Rebecca Shea
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Nova Suffo: 马斯克领导的"政府效率部门"(Doge)承诺的政府开支削减目标远未实现,实际节省金额远低于预期,甚至遭到分析人士的质疑。最初承诺的2万亿美元的节省目标,最终缩水至1500亿美元,与实际情况相差甚远。 Jessica Riedel: "政府效率部门"(Doge)的节支计划并未取得成功,实际节省金额远低于预期,仅为联邦支出的不到千分之一。这表明该计划并未有效地实现其目标。 Rebecca Shea: 根据对以往欺诈模式的研究,联邦政府每年因欺诈造成的直接经济损失高达2330亿至5210亿美元。由于许多欺诈行为未被发现,因此无法准确获知实际损失金额。 Bobby Kogan: 查处欺诈需要投入资金和专业技术人员,而不是简单地削减预算。特朗普政府的"政府效率部门"(Doge)在最初的100天里,主要关注的是消除浪费和滥用,采取了裁员、削减科研经费和取消合同等措施,但这些措施并未显著减少政府开支,反而可能因为人员变动等原因增加了额外支出。 Brendan Duke: 特朗普政府的节支努力收效甚微,因为其主要目标并非联邦政府最大的支出类别,例如社会保障和医疗保险。裁员、重新雇佣和休假等措施反而增加了政府开支。政府今年的支出比去年同期更高,这表明节支计划并未奏效。 Nancy Marshall-Genzer: 特朗普总统将调整关税政策,以减轻汽车制造商的负担,这被认为是政府为了刺激国内汽车制造业而采取的措施。这项政策旨在奖励在美国生产汽车的公司,并为那些承诺在美国投资或扩大国内制造业的公司提供支持。

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Marketplace listeners get special access to one month of Gamma Pro free with promo code marketplace. Gamma, how good ideas get into the universe. To realize the future America needs, we understand what's needed from us to face each threat head on. We've earned our place in the fight for our nation's future. We are Marines. We were made for this. Checking up on Doge 100 days in.

I'm David Brancaccio in Los Angeles. On President Trump's 100th day back at the White House, we've been looking at the widespread economic effects. A checkup now on the independent agency cutting programs and jobs at the federal government, not a department, but called the Department of Government Efficiency.

Doge is a reference to a kind of cryptocurrency started as a joke. Led by entrepreneur Elon Musk, Doge claims to have saved the country $150 billion. Now, that is far short of what Musk promised, and analysts dispute even that number. Marketplace's Nova Suffo has more. You may remember that moment during last year's election when Elon Musk was asked how much spending he thought he could cut from the federal government. Well, I think we can do at least $2 trillion. Yeah! Yeah!

Trump's Department of Government Efficiency went from promising $2 trillion in savings to $1 trillion to $150 billion. Jessica Riedel is a senior fellow focused on budget, tax, and economic policy at the Manhattan Institute, a conservative-leaning think tank. And they really only verified about $5 billion in savings or less than one-tenth of 1% of federal spending. Clearly,

Clearly, this is not successful by any means. There are savings to be found. Doge has been looking for waste, fraud and abuse. Experts say a good place to look is fraud. That's because we have actual figures, an estimate at least, of how much money the federal government loses to fraud. Rebecca Shea came up with that estimate. She's with the Government Accountability Office, the federal government's auditor.

The government loses between $233 billion to $521 billion annually in direct financial fraud loss. Shea based her findings on patterns of previous fraud.

The actual numbers are unknown because a lot of fraud goes undetected. So we don't have that information to tell us exactly where there's higher rates of fraud. Ferreting that out requires initially spending more money, not immediately slashing budgets, says Bobby Kogan. He is with the left-leaning think tank American Progress, and he was a budget advisor in the Biden White House. It takes technical experts.

And it costs money to go after that fraud. And so what we've seen from the Trump administration has actually been the opposite. In the first 100 days of Trump's presidency, Doge has focused on waste and abuse, subjective terms. It's laid off federal employees, reduced health research funding, canceled numerous federal contracts, and shrunk agencies.

And yet, all those cuts are not really making a dent in the federal government's spending, says Brendan Duke with the Center for Budget and Policy Priorities. When we look at how much the federal government has spent this year, we see that it has spent more during this calendar year than it did over the comparable period last year or the year before. Spent more, not less.

In fact, the Nonprofit Partnership for Public Service says the firings, rehirings, employees put on leave all have a cost as much as $135 billion.

The bottom line, says Brendan Duke, is that the Trump administration's cost-cutting effort has been underwhelming at best because it has so far largely avoided targeting the biggest spending categories. One out of every $5 spent, it goes to Social Security. One out of every $4 spent goes to health insurance. So just off the bat,

That's about almost half of the federal budget. The easier-to-cut portion, so-called discretionary spending, accounts for just a third of total annual expenditures. In the coming weeks and months, Congress will be looking for more cuts as part of its budget-setting process. Those cuts could potentially come from Medicaid and the Children's Health Insurance Program, areas that are likely to prove more politically difficult to target.

I'm Novosafo for Marketplace. They've got LEOs. Why can't we have LEOs?

It stands for Communications Satellites in Low Earth Orbit. Amazon, led by Jeff Bezos, has just launched the first set of a planned big fleet of LEOs. These rival the setup put up there by Elon Musk's company. The ones you can often see with the naked eye is a long choo-choo train in the night sky. Amazon wants to compete in the burgeoning field of Internet and phone service from space. Project Kuiper, K-U-I-P-E-R, after Gerard Kuiper, the late great planetary scientist.

Now at Verizon, we're locking in low prices for three years guaranteed on my plan. And you can get a single line for just $45 a month when you switch and bring your phone. That's our best price ever on unlimited welcome with auto pay plus taxes and fees guaranteed for three years. Because at Verizon, we got you. Visit your local San Jose Verizon store today. $20 monthly promo credits applied over 36 months with a new line on unlimited welcome. In times of congestion, unlimited 5G and 4G LTE may be temporarily slower than other traffic.

Domestic data roaming at 2G speeds. Price guarantee applies to then current base monthly rate. Additional terms and conditions apply. President Trump travels to Michigan today where he's set to modify tariffs in a way that will be welcomed by car and truck companies. Marketplace's Nancy Marshall-Genzer reports.

The president will apparently give automakers a break on some tariffs to keep them from piling on top of others they're paying for things like raw materials. This was first reported by the Wall Street Journal. The journal says U.S. car manufacturers won't have to pay tariffs on steel and aluminum, and they could be reimbursed for duties they've already paid. A new tariff on imported auto parts is set to take effect this Saturday, but domestic automakers will apparently be reimbursed for part

Part of that, the reimbursement will be based on the value of the car they're producing and will be phased out after two years. Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick is quoted as saying the deal is meant to reward companies making vehicles in the U.S. and give a runway to those that have committed to investing in the U.S. or expanding domestic manufacturing.

I'm Nancy Marshall-Genzer for Marketplace. Our producers are Ariana Rosas, Alex Schroeder, Jarrett Dang, and Erica Soderstrom. Our senior producer is Meredith Gerritsen-Morby. In Los Angeles, I'm David Brancaccio. You're listening to the Marketplace Morning Report from APM American Public Media. If there's one thing we know about social media, it's that misinformation is everywhere, especially when it comes to personal finance.

Financially Inclined from Marketplace is a podcast you can trust to help you get serious about your money so you can build a life you've always dreamed of. I'm the host, Janelia Espinal, and each week I ask experts important money questions like how to negotiate job offers, how to choose a college that you can afford, and how to talk about money with friends and family. Listen to Financially Inclined wherever you get your podcasts.