There is not a lot of information out there on the nature of the new Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) that Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy are supposed to lead during Donald Trump’s presidency.
The purpose is to reduce government waste, apparently by cutting entire federal agencies and purging unnecessary public servants, among other proposals. A mailwoman once maced my small Cocker Spaniel, Muffin, who was barking at her from behind a fence, so I’d like to submit a request to Mr. Musk and Mr. Ramaswamy that the USPS be first in line for annihilation.We can all do with less government waste so the department sounds like a fine idea. On the other hand, we already have an institution with the power to cut spending and deallocate resources: Congress. Congress isn’t likely to cede so much of its power by making DOGE a federal agency and that doesn’t seem to be the intention anyway.
Comments made by Trump and Musk suggest that the agency is not meant to be an actual part of the government, which suggests that its function is to make recommendations to the executive and legislative branches.
Indeed, in a statement announcing the creation of this department, Trump stated, “To drive this kind of drastic change, the Department of Government Efficiency will provide advice and guidance from outside of Government.” That just sounds like a think tank with some extra South African pizzazz – DOGE, Musk, and Ramaswamy will have no power at all.
Our billionaire saviors are promising to cut $2 trillion in waste. That’s not going to happen of course.
But even without being federal employees, there’s nothing stopping Musk from directing the Trump administration on where to look for fat to trim, although to put it mildly, it’s not clear that the president has much authority over such matters either.
Executive orders have the power to clarify and enforce existing laws, not override them or create new ones. Much of the federal budget is distributed according to laws passed by Congress, placing it out of reach from executive orders. Similarly, agencies like the Department of Education and the Environmental Protection Agency are established and funded by law.
Perhaps what Trump will be targeting with executive orders is the instances where Congress has allowed individual agencies to have some discretion over budgetary concerns. Presumably, these would be viable targets for Musk and Trump seeing as the President has the power to direct some of the decision-making of federal agencies in accordance with the law. Will that allow DOGE and the Trump administration to approach $2 trillion in savings? No, that would only be a tiny sliver of the federal budget.
Some are hopeful that Trump will bring back Schedule F, which came at the end of his last term and which Biden quickly rescinded. Schedule F was an executive order that reclassified some federal workers to make it easier to fire them. Unfortunately for Trump, as soon as he revives it, federal workers unions will secure an injunction against it and it’ll be tied up all the way to the Supreme Court. It’s hard to say how the Trump-friendly Supreme Court will rule on Schedule F but the current prospects for cutting so many federal jobs don’t necessarily look great.
The government is simply not amenable to cost-cutting. Even with the help of our two industrious friends, government waste is strongly biased toward increasing rather than decreasing. Those hoping that Musk will do to the government what he did to Twitter (firing the superfluous people) will be disappointed.
Having the president’s ear is not enough to overcome the structural failures that have prevented Congress from doing this themselves. Cutting waste has always been popular among voters and a popular campaign slogan and yet the government never seems to be able to do so. This isn’t because we haven’t had the great and powerful Trump in charge – he already had a shot at it and he was just as fast and loose with our taxes as those that came before him.
In announcing DOGE, Trump claimed that, “It will become, potentially, “The Manhattan Project” of our time.” The only way that hyperbolic comparison will hold is if Trump literally nuked the Department of Education. The best case scenario for DOGE is that it brings a bit more public attention to some of the more subtle ways in which our federal government wastes our resources.
Rafael Perez is a columnist for the Southern California News Group. You can reach him at [email protected].