Dear DOGE
I’ve discovered an opportunity to save almost half a billion dollars from the annual Federal Budget. Every little bit helps. This will require Congressional action. The Federal Government issues about 960 million payments to individuals as follows. These payments come in the form of physical checks and ACH transactions.
The opportunity:
2M military
70M social security
3M civil service retirees
2M military retirees
80M checks/month x12=960M/year
Round all payments down to the next whole dollar. The obvious amount is $0.50, but cannot be achieved because some payments are already at $X.00. Also, Murphy’s Law applies. Solution: Reduce the “obvious” amount by 10% to $0.45. All individual reductions are perforce capped at $0.99 per payment. Payments to vendors are not contemplated due to contract law.
Implementing this concurrent with a COLA Adjustment recommended.
960M x 0.45=432M$
You’re Welcome
It's like Henry David Thoreau just met William of Ockham.
And while Elon and Vivek are slashing the bureaucracy with Occam's Razor, they should consider simplifying the tax code and replacing thousands of arcane regulations with a flat tax that everyone could understand.
Too simple, but submit this for any similar payout programs. There could be billions.