What Can DOGE Do For You? – career civil servant types, anti-humanitarian budget cuts, & why wasteful government spending is likely to continue

A government needs people who tenaciously do the right thing. Resilient rationalists are a rare type of government employee that represent the better angels of civil service. Three other stereotypical government workers include free-riders, quick-risers, and rescuers or humanitarian types.

Riders, Risers, & Rescuers:

• Riders – free-riders want to do as little as possible for their paycheck. They slack off at work and live for evenings and weekends.
• Risers – quick-risers want to get promoted as quickly as possible. They work for better benefits and higher pensions.
• Rescuers – aspiring humanitarian types try to help people. But are they doing the right thing or only trying to look like they are doing the right thing? Are they being good or just looking good?

Government employees will not perfectly fit any of these stereotypes. But civil servants and uniformed service members may demonstrate one tendency more consistently. 

• Riders demonstrate absurd amounts of indifference towards their work. Their art is doing just enough work not to get fired. They only care more if you threaten to fire them. They are apathetic.
• Risers are obsessed with promotion. Their art is in pleasing people above and beside them. Risers know how to kiss-up and shut-up. They only care about their careers. They are ambitious.
• Rescuers couldn’t shut-up if their lives depended on it. Their art is a relentless focus on what they think needs to be addressed or fixed. They only care about the cause. They are anxious.

A few recent articles (Samantha Power, “the blob“) got me thinking about humanitarian workers in government. The so-called “blob” seems to include a lot of anxious humanitarian types. These “rescuers” love to talk about the perceived needs of the populations they serve. Some of these people are genuine social justice warriors, but many may be riders or risers in disguise.

You cannot know a person’s preferred stereotypes without getting to know that person. And no one knows what events brought the rider, riser, or rescuer to his or her perceived status. A person’s predominant trait may change with their career potential and current position. Many riders may have once been risers or rescuers. Or, you may be a rider in one organization and a rescuer or riser in another agency.

While no stereotype is perfect, these stereotypes may be most useful for self-study. What are you in it for? The ease, benefits, or mission? Are you more of a rider, riser, or rescuer?

The Domesticated-Expat Lifestyle:

I displayed each of these stereotypical characteristics during my seven years of government work. I may have been 60% rescuer, 30% rider, and 10% riser, but I advertised myself as a rescuer. Letters of intent and curriculum vitae’s touted what I did or wanted to do to help the populations I served. 

When I asked myself why I identified as a rescuer, I eventually decided it was because I was raised that way. My dad was a pastor. My mom was a nurse. And for a good decade of my youth, I watched my parents transform into Christian missionaries and conform to social circles with Protestant-evangelical values. Jesus was God, His story was the good news, and rescuing was what it was all about.

But, as a “missionary kid”, I was also conditioned to the expat lifestyle. Expats typically live and work in a country outside of the nation in which the organization that employs them resides. similar to ambassadors. My parents appealed to their organization’s domestic headquarters by representing their interests in a foreign land. Later, as a government employee, I sought to represent my headquarters well by executing the mission of my organization at my assigned location. With one exception, my childhood programming had prepared me well for the domesticated-expat lifestyle.

That one exception was my identity as a rescuer. My humanitarian ideals and truth-seeking tendencies began to conflict with the expat-life. My organization was designed to serve a small subset of U.S. taxpayers, but it took orders from employees, officials, and politicians who were also tasked to represent other small subsets of U.S. taxpayers. I thought I was working for a local underserved population when I was really working for decision-makers that lived halfway across the country, and taxpayers that lived all across the country. Institutional knowledge, accountability, and empathy dispersed over that distance. But the paycheck didn’t.

It took far too long for me to realize the convoluted influence of a paycheck on me and my compatriots. What incentive did I have to (1) do productive work, (2) make beneficial changes, and (3) create sustainable programs if my pay and promotions were largely dependent on distant subjective perceptions of my work? My resume, annual letter, and supervisor ratings (all largely subjective) would be sent halfway across the country to a board of high-ranking bosses who controlled pay raises.

That distance and dispersion between me and the people responsible for my paycheck made accountability difficult. What happened if I exaggerated the impact of my work in my resume? What happened if I lied about my beliefs in my letter of intent? What happened if I kissed-up to my immediate supervisors but ignored the best-interests of the local population? Largely, nothing…

Or, promotion… If I wanted to ascend to the top of my organization and serve on that board of high-ranking officials, I needed to (1) build a great reputation among future high-ranking officials and my immediate-supervisors, and (2) plot a career path to my organization’s headquarters. Strategic career moves combined with an exemplary reputation and objective short-term improvements could eventually get me near the top.

That’s the path of a riser or resilient rationalist. Long-term fates of local populations are superfluous to risers who willingly fib, act, and move their way the top. Resilient rationalists will strike a balance between practicality and idealism by continually seeking long-term benefits for local populations as they ascend within their organizations. But that’s not the path of a rescue-rider.

The Rescue-Rider:

Rescue-riders persist in their efforts to improve the fate of local populations while protesting just enough not to get fired. This combination of persistent protesting rescue-riders, exceptional resilient–rationalists, and kiss-up risers creates a cacophony of noise for organizational leaders. Risers say and do whatever you want to hear and see and resilient-rationalists periodically kindly disagree with you, but both make you look good. Rescuers won’t stop disagreeing with you, and riders just fill in the gaps. But they all want promotions.

This results in a too-many-experts problem and what one of my fellow government employees referred to as “silos of excellence“. Any large organization dispersed over many small agencies and offices must contend with a multitude of isolated employees advertising themselves and their causes to top-level executives. Everyone is purported to be smart, resourceful, and deserving, but there’s no fool-proof way to rank them objectively. On top of all that, few of them are regularly communicating with each other or working together. The structure of the organization actually incentivizes intense competition.

As a self-identifying rescuer, I sold and was sold on my organization’s mission to serve underserved populations. But missions do not determine the goals and objectives of organizations. The system does. And, as another one of my coworkers liked to quote:

“Every system is perfectly designed to get the results it gets.” – W. Edwards Deming, Paul Batalden, etc.

Some of the pervasive systemic problems with this nation’s bureaucracy include the dispersion of distance, Parkinson’s Law (Parkinson, 1980), The Peter Principle (Peter et al., 1969) prospective budgets (Finkler et al., 2017), penalties for under-spending your funding, and other top-down interventionist tendencies that are prevalent in many large organizations. But if you want to discover what any organization is really about, it may be best to take some colloquial advice and just “follow the money”. Unfortunately, many taxpayers never do.

Public businesses and nonprofit organizations have stricter rules for financial reporting. Private and government organizations often neglect the financial details in annual reports if they have them at all. So, even if a taxpayer wants to “follow the money”, he or she will quickly lose the money trail at the edge of the government forrest. Without insider information, U.S. taxpayers cannot see the trees of government offices in the forrest of government spending. When it comes to outside observation of government budgets, the forrest is all you can see. And at $36 trillion in debt, the forest of U.S. government financials is not looking good.

Don’t believe me? No worries. Here’s a link to some government financial reports. Decide for yourself. Do you see trees or a forrest? How does that forrest look to you?

“Tell me the difference between stupid and illegal and I’ll have my wife’s brother arrested.” – Jared (played by Ryan Gosling), The Big Short (2015)

Like Jared in The Big Short, I’m skeptical about the difference between stupid and illegal. Jared suggests his brother-in-law will only be arrested when his stupidity is labeled as illegal. So, can government budgets also be remarkably stupid without being classified as illegal?

Two billionaire businessmen, three if you include the President, have proposed large government spending cuts via a new Department Of Government Efficiency (DOGE). One stated as much as $2 trillion dollars can be cut from the annual budget. Both have suggested it may be a messy process that includes the removal of many government employees.

But who? Will people who lay-low, kiss-up, or punch-up be most likely to keep their jobs? Is DOGE more about consolidating power or cutting wasteful spending?

(1) Consolidating Power

How can you know if a rescuer is humanitarian or if they are really a rider, riser, or resilient rationalist? You can’t. These labels are stereotypes. Even if you feel confident in your assessment of a person’s historical behavior and personal beliefs, you cannot predict their future behavior. So, many firings may be an attempt to detect the undetectable or control the uncontrollable.

But if the administration is trying to control the uncontrollable, who do they think should be fired to control it? Riders, risers, rescuers, or – God(s) forbid – resilient rationalists? Obviously, it’s not that simple. No one comes with a “rider”, “riser”, or “rescuer” label stamped on their forehead. Past performance is not an indicator of future results. But past behavior still matters.

Government employees blend work and politics in spite of the Hatch Act. And some agencies build reputations along party-lines. Charitable agencies like USAID may attract more liberal-types while law and order agencies like the Federal Bureau of Investigation may attract more conservative-types. While we can’t see the party-affiliations of government agency employees, we can see partisan public opinion polls of government agencies.

These public opinion survey results suggest any partisan executive branch could seek to consolidate power by trimming the government agencies that constituents rate poorly. If you want to use public opinion to gain power, why not slash government budgets in the name of “efficiency”? Why not funnel some of those federal funds to your more “efficient” companies?

The lack of quality objective measures limits a bureaucracy’s ability to recognize its most productive employees. These rider, riser, and rescuer categories may be as flawed as one’s ability to recognize integrity in themselves, never mind others. So, top-down slashing of government jobs may be largely subjective and result in a smaller but similar mix of productive & unproductive or high-integrity & low-integrity employees.

But it’s also possible that rider, riser, or rescuer types could be targeted for firings. Or, party-loyalty could be a leading factor when choosing what agencies, offices, and positions will be on the chopping block. And if the incoming administration really wants to cut one or two trillion dollars out of the annual budget, they will need to make some quick decisions.

If there are a lot of firings, the U.S. government’s so-called “blob” employees may bear the brunt of them. This stereotypical category of government employees has reportedly experienced an increase in voluntary resignations in protest of some of the policies of the Biden administration. And the descriptors of the resignations seem to best fit the rescuer not the rider or riser stereotype(s).

Firing government employees who are disagreeable with Presidential prerogatives may oust more humanitarian-types (rescuers) than riders or risers. The apparent trend of 2024 protest resignations among “blob“-like or rescuer-type government employees with humanitarian concerns appears to have accelerated via 2025 pressure-tactics and terminations. The 2025 suspension of humanitarian aid appears to have angered a lot of rescuer or wannabe-humanitarian types. And the recent pressure on inspector generals and State Department employees could be targeting rescuers.

(2) Cutting Wasteful Spending

Whatever happens to the government in these next few years, it seems unlikely that (1) $2 trillion of spending cuts will be realized and (2) that government offices will begin publishing detailed annual financial reports. If government spending continues to be opaque and top-down, real-time resistance to the incoming administration’s spending cuts may largely depend on the few riders, risers, or rescuers who remain in positions of power within the government.

The U.S. public (i.e. constituents, citizen voters and residents) could begin to demand more fiscal transparency from the U.S. government. We can label ourselves or others all day long: lazy free-riders, yes-people & kiss-ups, woke social justice warriors, or whatever other stereotypes we can conjure. But these labels are just distractions if we can’t “follow the money” of taxpayers. “The proof is in the pudding” and “the devil is in the details”.

Here’s the takeaway: this nation’s people would be better able to hold their government accountable if its offices were required to publish itemized annual financial reports. “Top-secret” spending could simply be labeled as “top-secret”. And, of course, there would be a lot of it. But enforcing itemized financial reports could drastically reduce wasteful spending through public accountability.

What we don’t know can hurt us, and it often does. One of the current realities of the U.S. government is far-too little accountability. Many may disagree, but what do they make of the nation’s historically low levels of trust in its government?

The DOGE seems unlikely to mandate itemized financial reports across government agencies. The continued accumulation of power and financial capital seems a more likely goal of these billionaire bureaucrats. If past behavior is a decent indicator for future behavior, these billionaires will be unconcerned with more perfect government representation and more interested in maximizing the efficiency and effectiveness of their egos, organizations, stock portfolios, and net worth. I would be happy to see this prediction disproved.

But as one of my professors used to say, “Show me the data.” Since itemized financial data is absent and government spending is not transparent, the nation’s fate will continue to depend on the long-suffering heroes and better angels of our civil service: resilient rationalists. They must savvily withstand the potential onslaught of budget and employee cuts that appears likely to hit left-leaning humanitarian-types hardest. And those left-leaning rescuer types would be wise to dig deep for a more resilient, rational, or riser mindset if they want to keep their salary and sanity intact for the foreseeable future.

Mandatory itemized financial reporting across government offices and agencies would not solve all of the nation’s ills. But it could provide more public pressure for fiscal frugality at the federal level. At the very least, it would demonstrate the apathy for fiscal responsibility among the general public and provide less of an excuse for government scapegoating. So, if the only thing the Department Of Government Efficiency manages to do is enforce the publication of honestly detailed annual financial reports, it will have made a tremendous contribution to the U.S. government.

But, until that day comes, I’ll leave you with this…

Tell me the difference between transparent integrity and trust and I will shut up about itemized financial reports.

Sources:

Finkler, S. A., Smith, D. L., Calabrese, T. D., & Purtell, R. M. (2017). Financial Management for Public, Health, and Not-for-Profit Organizations. 5th Ed.

Guyer, J. (2024, October 4). The Price of Power America’s chief humanitarian official rose to fame by speaking out against atrocities. Now she’s trapped by one. Intelligencer. https://nymag.com/intelligencer/article/samantha-power-usaid-gaza-israel-hamas.html

Parkinson, C. N. 1. (1980). Parkinson, the law. 1st American ed. Boston, Houghton Mifflin.

Peter, L. J., Hull, R., & Hull, R. (1969). The Peter principle. New York, W. Morrow.

UNAIDS. (1 Feb 2025). UNAIDS urges that all essential HIV services must continue while U.S. pauses its funding for foreign aid. https://www.unaids.org/en/resources/presscentre/pressreleaseandstatementarchive/2025/february/20250201_us-funding

https://www.unaids.org/en/resources/presscentre/pressreleaseandstatementarchive/2025/february/20250201_us-funding Barry-Jester, B. M. M. (2025, January 31). Trump ban on lifesaving humanitarian aid still in place, despite administration claims. ProPublica. https://www.propublica.org/article/trump-state-department-usaid-humanitarian-aid-freeze-ukraine-gaza-sudan

Video Sources:

(Al Jazeera English, 2025)

Al Jazeera English. (2025, February 1). How will the US aid freeze affect countries around the world? | Inside Story [Video]. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IzQAI7ID2e8

(LiveNOW from FOX, 2025)

LiveNOW from FOX. (2025, February 3). President Trump & Elon Musk agree to “shut down” USAID | LiveNOW from FOX[Video]. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jCrKM6p4_uY

The Big Short (McKay, 2015) Paramount Pictures

McKay, Adam. 2015. The Big Short. United States: Paramount Pictures.

(Bloomberg Television, 2025)

Bloomberg Television. (2025, February 3). Musk and DOGE appear to have access to sensitive Treasury payment systems[Video]. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-kXzTD64Amk

(CBS News, 2025)

CBS News. (2025, February 3). Elon Musk says Trump agreed to “shut down” USAID, government’s primary humanitarian aid agency [Video]. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dGpESUa3bPU

(CNN, 2025)

CNN. (2025, February 3). USAID workers told to stay home in unexpected, early-morning email [Video]. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9n4VJS-t12g

(DW News, 2025)

DW News. (2025, February 2). Trump’s aid freeze sends shock waves across Africa | DW News [Video]. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rH2Wj8WsIEs

(Face the Nation, 2025)

Face the Nation. (2025, February 2). Rep. Brian Mast says he supports potential plan moving USAID into the State Department[Video]. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W37meHAVTYo

(USAID Video, 2023)

USAID Video. (2023, December 21). 2023 at USAID: Year in Review [Video]. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hPhSMUiiqEw

(WION, 2025)

WION. (2025, February 3). Trump slams USAID, calls it “Run by radical lunatics” amid merger reports | World News | WION[Video]. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QPQE600SPEQ

Music:

Mozart, Piano Sonata #11 -1 -Played by Brass Ensemble Music by Trygve Larsen from Pixabay https://pixabay.com/music/search/mozart/

Mozart, Piano Sonata 16 In C Major -2 -Played by Brass Ensemble Music by Trygve Larsen from Pixabay https://pixabay.com/music/search/mozart/