Elon Musk Lifts Lid on Bureaucratic ‘Sinkhole’ in Federal Government
Stephanie Lundquist-Arora is a mother in Fairfax County, Virginia, an author, and the Fairfax chapter leader of Independent Women’s Network. This piece originally appeared in The Daily Signal.
When government bureaucrats talk about efficiency, the average person’s eyes generally glaze over, but not on Feb. 11 when from the Oval Office Elon Musk reported on the new Department of Government Efficiency’s early findings of waste, fraud, and abuse. Americans and reporters across the world sat on the edge of their seats as Musk discussed an old limestone mine in Pennsylvania.
During Musk’s press briefing, as his 4-year-old son lingered next to President Donald Trump, Musk explained the antiquated retirement processing system that is illustrative of our government’s many problems.
The federal government lacks an automated system to process its workers’ retirement paperwork. The paper processing system, which is housed in a former limestone mine located 230 feet underground and is operated by more than 700 workers, takes several months to process an individual’s paperwork and only has the capacity to handle 10,000 retirements per month.
Despite all of the Democrats’ tears regarding Musk’s work and DOGE’s efforts over the last several weeks, in 2014, The Washington Post itself—basically, the Left’s platform—labeled this retirement system “a sinkhole of bureaucracy.”
Indeed. And “a sinkhole of bureaucracy” is such a fitting phrase to describe much of our government’s functions and spending. The Government Accountability Office has known this since its inception, given that its mission is to save taxpayers’ money by finding fraud, waste, and abuse. But average people outside of the Washington beltway don’t know much if anything about the GAO.
Perhaps The New York Times also is unfamiliar with the GAO. This week, the outlet published an article questioning DOGE’s claims of fraud. In a responsive memo to the press corps, the White House referred them to a GAO report from last year, which states, “No area of the federal government is immune to fraud.”
DOGE is providing transparency and proving the GAO’s assertion. The department has launched a website detailing its latest work. On Feb. 10, for example, DOGE announced that it had canceled 89 contracts worth $881 million. Among them was one worth $1.5 million for which the contractor was paid to “observe mailing and clerical operations at a mail center.”
Americans didn’t know we could collect $1.5 million for sitting around and watching people mail things. That didn’t factor into our career day presentations in grade school because it shouldn’t be a real job, particularly not one funded with taxpayers’ money.
As DOGE uncovers and exposes more of these absurdities in federal spending, Trump is sailing on high approval ratings. Meanwhile, residents in Washington, D.C., and its surrounding areas, such as Fairfax County, Virginia, and Montgomery County, Maryland, are in an absolute panic.
Many are federal employees or federal contractors. Some are understandably worried because of job security for themselves or their spouses. Others, as seen on social media platforms, are literally seeking therapy because they now have to show up for work after the president rescinded most COVID-19-era telecommuting or because they are losing promotion opportunities that previously were mostly based on them checking identity boxes.
A federal worker friend shared with me that in a return-to-work meeting at her agency, her colleague demanded a rental car from the General Services Administration because of that person’s anticipated commute. That federal worker should check in with DOGE on that request. I’d love to see the response.
While federal workers lament over their dreaded commutes, Americans outside the Beltway are applauding DOGE. They are sick of many federal workers’ sense of entitlement. It is foreign to the plumber, flight attendant, police officer, salesperson, garbage collector, restaurant worker, mechanic, house cleaner, truck driver, and many other hardworking Americans how collecting a large salary while working from home at the taxpayers’ expense is somehow a permanent entitlement. What an absolute joke.
And while most of those Americans likely were not reading GAO reports or watching congressional budget hearings in the past, they are eating popcorn and following DOGE on X. Against all odds, Trump and Musk have made the incredibly boring topic of government efficiency somehow seem sexy and exciting.
