Elon Musk

But the government, they just print more money.

So it's not like you need caring and competence.

And these are in short supply at the federal level.

I mean, when you go to the DMV, do you think, wow, this is a bastion of confidence?

Well, now imagine it's worse than the DMV because it's the DMV that can print money.

So was it not possible?

At least the state level DMVs need to, the states more or less need to stay within their budget or they go bankrupt.

But the federal government just prints more money.

Because when essentially, we did, we actually, no.

You really have to stand back and recalibrate your expectations for competence.

Because you're operating in a world where you've got to make ends meet.

You've got to pay your bills.

Buy the microphones.

Yeah, exactly.

It's not like there's a giant...

largely uncaring monster bureaucracy, and a bunch of inaccuracy computers that are just sending payments.

One of the things that the Doge team did that was, and it sounds so simple, that probably will save...

let's say $100 billion, maybe $200 billion a year, is simply requiring that payments from the main treasury computer, which is called PAMS, like Payment Accounts Master or something like that, there's $5 trillion PAMS here, requiring that any payment that goes out have a payment appropriation code, make it mandatory, not optional, and that you have anything at all in the comment field.

Because you have to recalibrate how dumb things are.

Papers were being sent out with no appropriation code, not checking back to any congressional appropriation, and no explanation.