Short Stack: Obama's Ghost Agency Chortles
Obama’s secret USDS pet is now Trump’s highly-visible swamp draining machine: DOGE. How is that for irony?
Three weeks. That’s all it took for President Trump’s new Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) to drop blockbuster bombshells—like the jaw-dropping fact that $100 billion of your tax money is sent each year to people with no Social Security number. Not even a fake ID. Just vibes, apparently.
How much of that is pure fraud? We The People don’t know, yet. But we’re going to find out.
DOGE’s rapid-fire exposés are terrifying D.C. swamp creatures who’ve been feasting on taxpayer cash for decades, sparking all kinds of desperate accusations and attacks on the work of Elon Musk and his crew.
So, what is DOGE? Many Americans don’t seem to know. Let’s clarify.
Obama’s Stealthy USDS
Remember Trump’s recent January 20, 2025, Executive Order, which established the Department of Government Efficiency? In Section 3 is a clever political jiu-jitsu move: DOGE isn’t new. It’s Obama’s United States Digital Service (USDS) rebranded by Trump.
Same acronym. Same Power. New attitude.
Back in 2014, Obama quietly created the United States Digital Service (USDS)—not via law, or even an Executive Order—but with an internal Presidential memo followed by a White House blog post written by an IT bureaucrat.
No press conference. No fanfare. No podium—or, in Obama’s case, no teleprompter. Just a digital shrug: “Hey, we’re here to fix government efficiency. Maybe. Sort of.”
Under Obama, the USDS operated within the Executive Office of the President, specifically as part of the Office of Management and Budget (OMB), sniffing out waste and tech disasters after the failed launch of the government’s heralded health insurance website (HealthCare.gov).
Money for the USDS came from the OMB’s budget.
But here’s the kicker: Later, in January 2021, Congress granted standalone statutory authority to the USDS—which also meant guaranteed Congressional funding—by overriding President Trump’s veto.
Congress transformed Obama’s sketchy memo-creation into a permanent government Frankenstein. That’s how the administrative state grows.
Political Jiu-Jitsu
Let’s return to President Trump’s recent Executive Order: “The United States Digital Service is hereby publicly renamed as the United States DOGE Service (USDS) and shall be established in the Executive Office of the President.”
This is why it is clever political jiu-jitsu: DOGE is not some private group outside of government. DOGE is not even new.
Trump simply changed the name of Obama’s zombie agency from United States Digital Service to United States DOGE Service—still USDS—and took off the leash.
DOGE’s mission? Same as the mission of Obama’s USDS: “modernize government tech” and “maximize government efficiency,” which of course requires identifying government inefficiencies by exposing every dirty secret, grift, and clown-show failure in the federal machinery of progressive crony corruption.
And boy, is it working. DOGE is pulling back the curtain on decades of progressive administrative state lies—the kind of corruption that’s been stinking up D.C. since the Titanic was new.
Blame Game 2025
For progressive critics who don’t like DOGE’s fireworks: Don’t blame Trump. Blame Obama. He’s the one who created this administrative agency with a mere memo. Blame the swamp monsters in Congress who later locked it into law after Trump objected and vetoed their legislation at the end of his First Administration.
For those who worry that the USDS is constitutionally illegitimate, or unaccountable, or too powerful, or that it is—gasp!—unelected, why couldn’t we hear your voices of concern when Obama created it? Where were you then?
Government agencies born in secrecy are now shining a spotlight on government secrets for the world to see. Obama’s “efficiency” pet is now Trump’s swamp draining DOGE. How is that for irony?
“Follow the money.” Those of us who make it past puberty quickly come to grasp a reliable truth. If you want to understand what’s going on wherein there are money flows, nothing provides such understanding of them better than simply tracking them. Of course, to do so presupposes that one be able to follow the money’s “trails.” You know, the basics of Accounting and its handmaiden, the dreaded audit.
With all the frantic and hysterical theater surrounding Trumpanoia, the primary object of which is Musk’s cadre of young and capable wizards in starring roles; amid all that is being revealed; the one thing that has emerged which establishes the context surrounding all the others, is this:
Apparently, since 1946, no President – none, zero, zilch - nor any of their appointed staff of other appointees, up to and including the Treasury secretary, has had access to the U.S. government’s payment system????
Holy Accounting/Auditing 101, Batman!!!!
Simple me, having made it past puberty, THAT fact is all I needed to discover. It inescapably leads to this: the nation’s payment system has, for 79 years, been operated by a very small group of - and let me put this term into particularly relevant quotes, “NONPARTISAN” career civil servants!
Furthermore, this 79 years-in-the-making obscenity helps explain why the historical process of annual budgeting and the increasingly necessary increases in the debt ceiling, have given way to first, those shadowy “Omnibus” spending bills - beginning in the eighties, to the far more obscene, “Continuing Resolution“ spending bills that have come to be so “routine!” They can now be seen as but a logical progression of the on-going bi-partisan institutionalizing of unaudited, unreconciled, obscure-disbursements from the Treasury!
I would urge AG Bondi to make haste and get the rulings of several NONPARTISAN career civil servants, disguised as judges, before the SCOTUS. They are attempting to buy a huge throng of other, NONPARTISAN career civil servants, some badly needed time!
Good background information, didn't know that about USDS.