Elon Musk, DOGE isn't helping our national debt, it's hurting Florida wildlife

Yahoo

26-02-2025

The wholesale, indiscriminate firings of federal workers going on in the name of 'government efficiency' is a shame.
Take, for example, what has happened at the Crystal River National Wildlife Refuge, the nation's only dedicated refuge for Florida's iconic mammal, the manatee.
Two of the eight park rangers on staff were fired without notice there last week as part of the DOGE – Department of Government Efficiency – effort led by the world's richest man, Elon Musk, who seems to revel in his role.
While the wildlife rangers were being fired without cause at the Florida refuge, Musk appeared at a political event brandishing a chain-saw prop and wearing sunglasses indoors as a kind of self-imagined super hero.
'We're trying to get good things done, but also having a good time doing it,' Musk explained to a cheering audience at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) in Maryland.
It wasn't a good time at the Florida manatee refuge as the workers received form-letter emails from the U.S. Department of Interior.
'The Department has determined your knowledge, skills, and abilities do not meet the Department's current needs, and it is necessary and appropriate to terminate, during the probationary period, your appointment to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service,' the email read.
One of the two fired workers, Brier Ryver, was in the middle of a six-week program teaching hundreds of Citrus County students about the importance of restoring Florida's natural springs, the Tampa Bay Times reported.
'I want people to know that we were important,' Ryver told the newspaper. 'We were working hard trying to do what we felt was right: connecting people to the environment, and protecting this place. It was not wasteful.'
She made about $61,000 a year. Now, she's another victim of the 'good times' cruelty practiced by President Donald Trump and his henchman Musk, who makes an estimated $54.5 million a day for himself.
Or to put it another way, one day of Musk's earnings would fund the yearly salary of Ryver and 884 park rangers at the same pay scale.
DOGE cuts at Loxahatchee Refuge: National parks and refuges in Florida hit with staffing cuts under new administration's DOGE
I know what you're thinking:
'Frank, you're missing the point. We have a $31.5 trillion national debt. We have to balance the budget and start chipping away at that debt immediately.
'Every $61,000 helps. It all adds up. So, we need to trim the federal workforce just like Trump and Musk are doing. While it hurts some in the short run, it benefits most Americans and their children to live in a more fiscally responsible country.'
Here's why that thinking misses the point. For starters, it doesn't add up. Let me explain.
Actually, I'm going to let Justin Wolfers explain. Wolfers is a professor of public policy and economics at the University of Michigan. I recently listened to him talking on a podcast about America's national debt.
Wolfers said that talking about numbers in the trillions, billions and millions become meaningless without a reference we can all understand.
'Our human minds are not very good at thinking about big numbers,' he said on the Fast Politics with Molly Jong-Fast podcast.
That reference for him is thinking of federal spending as yards on a football field.
Musk says he wants to save $2 trillion to balance the budget. That's his goal. So, we should visualize $2 trillion as the length of a 100-yard football field, Wolfers said.
That makes each yard the equivalent to $20 billion. Every $20 billion you save in federal payroll, you advance the ball one yard toward the goal line.
So, when Musk announced that he has already found $7.2 billion of savings in the first month with DOGE, it may sound like a significant amount of savings, but it is equivalent to advancing the football just one foot.
'So whenever you hear a word that begins with 'm' for million, realize it's doing no work whatsoever. It's moving you forward maybe a quarter of an inch. It's tiny. It's infinitesimal,' Wolfers said.
'If what you think you're going to do is fundamentally transform our country's finances, you can't even look at stuff that begins with the letter 'm' for million. You've got to start with billion.
'If you want a yard, you've got to start with 20 billion.'
So Musk has been crowing about moving this economic football less than a yard with 99-plus yards to go.
And he'll never get to the goal line no matter how many federal workers he eliminates, Wolfers points out.
'Total federal spending on payroll on people who work in the federal government is about $200 billion, which is to say 10 yards. You could fire everyone who works for the federal government and you'd move the ball up 10 yards,' he said.
Realistically, if DOGE wipes out about 10 percent of federal workers, which is more like what could happen, it's just $20 billion – a one-yard gain with 99 to go.
'The point is, it's not about workforce reduction,' Wolfers said. That's not where the money is.'
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The real budget-altering money is in military spending, the popular Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid programs and in the Trump tax cuts that heavily favor the rich.
Trump is promising $4 trillion in tax cuts. That's a significant number when compared with Musk cutting 10 percent of the federal workforce to save $20 billion.
'Back to the football field, $4 trillion is two football fields,' Wolfers explained. 'So, Elon is going to move the ball one yard, and then Trump is going to run it back 200 yards.'
That's not government efficiency. That's just cruelty in the service of stupidity.
And to look at the cost of workers like Ryver at the Crystal River National Wildlife Refuge, without considering the benefits those workers provide is, to use another football metaphor, a fumble.
Frank Cerabino is a news columnist for The Palm Beach Post, part of the USA Today Florida Network. He can be reached at [e-mail].
This article originally appeared on Palm Beach Post: Trump, Musk national debt battle is harming Florida wildlife | Opinion