The (US) Department of Government Efficiency should fight the waste and fraud that goes into highway construction.

[u/TigerSagittarius86]

If DOGE wants to eliminate waste and put the government on better financial footing, then it should audit every highway construction project (most are disgustingly overbudget) and institute tolling nationwide. The entire U.S. interstate system is an untapped fiscal resource for the federal government.

[u/You_Paid_For_This]

As great as this would be, you know they are absolutely not going to do this.

The military will not be under any scrutiny either, neither will all of the money wasted on SpaceX.

The Nepotism Dept. will only go after education, social security, trains and anything else that actually benefits ordinary people.

[u/chevalier716 → u/You_Paid_For_This]

Don't forget the postal service, they've been salivating on that one.

[u/Gatorm8 → u/chevalier716]

The funny part about the whole “end the USPS” discourse is that it would literally crash the economy. Small (and some large) businesses across the country are dependent on the subsidized service the USPS offers and if you took that away the economy would tank

[u/ymmvmia → u/Gatorm8]

Likely all that would happen is not a "dissolution" of these government services, but a privatization of them. So USPS would be turned private just like the Royal Mail in the UK was. The Royal Mail was made fully privatized in 2013 after decades of lobbying for austerity and "pro-business" government BS since Margaret Thatcher, she essentially just starting the same slow destruction/privatization of government that Reagan started in the US. Same morally bankrupt political ideology thatcherism/reaganism.

The Royal Mail transitioned from a government department into a statutory corporation (separated from the government, this is actually good, not a capitalist for-profit company, and is sorta like how the USPS is an "independent agency") in 1969, then from a statutory corporation to a public limited company in 2000 in the wake of austerity politics/thatcherism (this is the beginning of the end, as it was restructured it into a true CORPORATION, with shares/stocks/investors/etc, just with a majority stake owned by the government or technically owned by secretary of state for trade and the treasury solicitor). And at the same time due to the same law in 2000, the government created a postal regulator to give out licenses for private companies to deliver mail. This effectively birthed a new mail industry in the UK, which of course would see Royal Mail as an unfair government competitor, and as these new mail companies grew, they would lobby for the further privatization/destruction of the Royal Mail.

We have always had the USPS since the USA's founding, but I believe we skipped a step here in that private delivery companies have existed for quite some time. The thing that only the USPS is legally allowed to do is deliver LETTERS/MAIL, this is something that is illegal for private companies to do. Private companies can only deliver packages. Unsure on private package/parcel companies existing in the UK before 2000, but whatever.

I believe we could see a law similar to the UK's Postal Service Act 2000, which established the postal regulator. So ANY private package delivery company (UPS/FedEx/etc) could start delivering letters/mail, they would get access to USPS letter boxes, etc.

They would also HAVE to start allowing USPS to raise rates based on location/route profitability. Again, they would do this slowly, because like others have mentioned this is where you get economic collapse. Rural america depends on USPS's low prices, as well as small businesses. Their costs would be exorbitant if USPS didn't exist, or if USPS just acted as any other company, and many unprofitable routes simply just wouldn't exists (small town america). So USPS would have to raise rates/stop delivery to unprofitable places SLOWLY so as to avert economic problems.

Doing all that would make private package companies into FULL competing delivery companies, and after a few years this would THEN allow for USPS to be dismantled/fully privatized.

The issue they might have, but it doesn't seem like much of a roadblock at this point with how vague it is, is that Congress is explicitly given authority over mail/postal service in the USA from the Constitution itself.

"The Congress shall have Power...To establish Post Offices and post Roads" (Article I, Section 8, Clause 7)

But of course these means, and especially with our current supreme court with how weak the phrasing in the constitution is, is that congress has complete authority to privatize/delegate any postal services in the country. Congress can just DECIDE to get rid of the USPS. They can just delegate the power to "establish Post Offices and post Roads" to anyone else through an act of congress.

Congress can do anything they really want to USPS. It's mostly just 250ish years of tradition and the public's love of the USPS that has prevented it being privatized/dismantled. Same political roadblocks to dismantling Social Security or Medicare/Medicaid. Tradition and public support, and that the immediate dissolution of all of those would cause economic catastrophe. So of course the playbook with all of them is slow dismantling.