And they'd better get on it. According to experts, U.S. has about 20 years for corrective action after which no amount of future tax increases or spending cuts could avoid the government defaulting on its debt

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Two weeks after President-elect Donald Trump and the Republican party won the 2024 U.S. election, the new Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) is already hard at work recruiting staff and calling for the federal tax code to be dramatically simplified. Given that DOGE currently consists, so far as anybody knows, of two tech bros and an X account, that’s a promising start. In truth, DOGE will have no enforcement authority and looks like a Hail-Mary pass of a reform effort. But maybe — hopefully — it can succeed in tackling the bloated U.S. government where others failed.

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“In 1955, there were less than 1.5 million words in the U.S. Tax Code,” DOGE posted Nov. 16 on X. “Today, there are more than 16 million words. Because of this complexity, Americans collectively spend 6.5 billion hours preparing and filing their taxes each year. This must be simplified.”

DOGE launched on Nov. 12, a week after the election, when President-elect Trump announced that “the Great Elon Musk, working in conjunction with American Patriot Vivek Ramaswamy, will lead the Department of Government Efficiency.” DOGE, he added, is tasked “to dismantle Government Bureaucracy, slash excess regulations, cut wasteful expenditures, and restructure Federal Agencies.”

The challenge is that DOGE has no official government authorization and “will provide advice and guidance from outside of government.” That means it has no arm-twisting power of its own, just the president’s ear and whatever it can persuade him to do. But it also has the flexibility to........

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