I’m not sure if you’ve ever dealt with the US government, but people that work there are famously unmotivated. This isn’t about replacing people with AI, it’s about people that can be replaced with grep. I’m not sure what you mean by people advocating for reducing government spending being on the “receiving end” of reducing government spending.

Finally, this is not capricious, this is absolutely well considered. If you haven’t realised the government has spent vast quantities of money, printed advanced quantities of money to do it, and caused record in inflation.