If nothing else, President Trump sure knows how to own the news cycle. As January turned to February, the headlines were dominated by threats of tariffs on Mexico and Canada that have since been delayed due to those countries agreeing to increased border enforcement. When those tariffs were tabled until March 1, attention quickly shifted to the work of Elon Musk and his Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE). The effectiveness of DOGE’s work so far appears to be in the political eye of the beholder. In today’s column, I would like to provide a clear-eyed perspective on DOGE. First, I will address the stated purpose and plans of DOGE. Second, I’ll discuss what DOGE is doing and attempt to assess the effectiveness of those endeavors. Third, I will look at some of the pros and cons of DOGE and, finally, discuss how DOGE may complement other efforts to help effectively reduce federal deficits to eventually control our country’s debt.
DOGE’s stated purpose is something most Americans can get behind: to reduce wasteful and fraudulent federal spending and eliminate excessive regulations. DOGE has been tied to President Trump’s campaign promises of not only reducing federal spending but also reducing the federal government’s size and influence and, ultimately, reducing the size of the federal deficit. Back in December, when I made my annual predictions, I indicated that DOGE’s most significant impact would come from the reduction of excessive regulations. While limiting such regulation will surely lower federal spending due to reduced oversight, its greater impact would likely come from the economic growth stimulated by companies unshackled from overregulation and tracking of their compliance.
However, what DOGE has emphasized so far has been the reduction of spending by shrinking the federal bureaucracy. President Trump’s Executive Order establishing DOGE emphasized modernizing federal technology and software to maximize governmental efficiency and productivity. Using that Executive Order as its charter, Mr. Musk and his fellow DOGE representatives have begun using upgraded technology to identify duplicative and potentially fraudulent spending in federal departments such as the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), the Treasury Department, the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), the Department of Education, and with plans to examine the Department of Defense as early as this week. Musk and DOGE have claimed to have uncovered tens of millions of dollars of funds that have been spent wastefully and/or fraudulently, but there are many questions to ask.
First, we should ask how effective DOGE has been to date. While it is difficult to say, DOGE has clearly identified instances in which the payment of funds has been duplicative and wasteful. Though this can be expected to a certain extent in large bureaucracies, DOGE has uncovered significant issues in a short period of time. The bigger question is how widespread this problem is, so DOGE’s work should continue to determine if this is a systemic problem in our federal government. While DOGE’s work can improve our faith in the federal government, and the savings of billions of dollars are extremely helpful, those savings are a mere fraction of what is needed to significantly impact the efforts to eliminate federal deficits and reduce the federal debt. (Note: Post-COVID, federal deficits have ranged from $1.4 trillion to $1.8 trillion. The current federal debt is over $36 trillion.)
As noted above, DOGE has started important work that can prove valuable in both improving trust in government and identifying significant cost savings. However, these pluses do come with some costs. DOGE’s work has created significant disruption in many federal programs. While DOGE has clearly identified many wasteful programs, there is some fear of “throwing the baby out with the bath water.” For instance, while many of us might agree that many USAID programs identified in the media as DOGE targets are warranted to be cut, many other development programs are cost-efficient means of foreign policy when used in concert with defense and diplomacy. The problem with DOGE right now is that rather than surgically removing waste, fraud, and redundancy, it is hollowing out or significantly reducing the effectiveness of potentially necessary efforts.
Although not completely tied to DOGE, cuts have been made such that the National Institute of Health (NIH) has reduced funding of indirect costs of research, which may directly impact local efforts at Augusta University.
So, the big question is, where do we go from here with DOGE? While I believe in much of what DOGE is trying to do, I am not sure how effective it will be in impacting future deficits and the nation’s debt on its own. While Musk et al. are finding important savings and shaking up the organizational inertia of the federal government, more is needed. While DOGE methods are basically a “bottoms up” approach to federal government fiscal savings, they will need to be combined with a comprehensive “top-down” plan to eliminate deficits and reduce our debt, like the Simpson-Bowles plan of 2010. Simpson-Bowles recommended improving the federal budget picture through discretionary funding cuts, tax reform, Medicare and Social Security reform, and budget process reforms, which create discretionary spending caps and cap total federal revenue at 20% of GDP (Gross Domestic Product).
The bottom line is this: The goal of DOGE is something that most Americans can get behind. None of us wants our tax dollars to be wasted or frittered away. However, DOGE cannot come close to solving our nation’s fiscal problems on its own. Therefore, this DOGE can’t hunt; unless it is combined with serious budget and entitlement program (i.e., Social Security and Medicare) reform.
