"DOGE", huh? My Thoughts on the Department of Government Efficiency
The Good, the Bad, the Funny, and the Ugly. Not necessarily in that order.
I label myself something of a (relatively new) government efficiency nerd. In each of my government roles, I’ve been lucky to have something to do with at least one (usually way more than one) project related to government efficiency. Whether internally or externally-serving, there are always ways that government leaders at all levels are thinking of decreasing the taxpayer dollars spent while increasing the government’s output. Especially as the government modernizes itself technologically, we are seeing faster benefits services than ever (while far, far, far from perfect). Through these various projects, I have gotten to learn about some really amazing efficiency work completed through a grinding, often years-long, bureaucratic process by hard-working and smart public servants1. To then hear that Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy would be co-leading the newly minted “Department of Government Efficiency” was… disappointing (though not without its slivers of hope).
I’ll breakdown some of my more complex thoughts about it below, but first I want to get the funny parts out of the way.
The Funny
I saw the below Tweet the other day which made me chuckle:
Secondly, and this observation has been made multiple times already so I don’t have a specific source: Hiring two co-leads as the heads of “Government Efficiency” is something nobody could ever write. It’s simply too funny a thought to be conjured in fiction.
That’s pretty much where the laughing stops for me.
The Bad
Other than the two co-leads being some of the most unlikeable people in politics2, there is a lot wrong with what they plan to do with DOGE. Let’s start with Vivek’s wishlist - Cutting half of all federal appointees by firing the ones with an odd digit at the end of their social security number. As Jen Pahlka points out in her most recent Substack post, this is equivalent to the “Thanos effect”. Semi-randomly cutting down the bureaucracy with a snap of the finger and no real bias as to who leaves. There are benefits to this in terms of budgeting (as I will point out later), but not with staffing.
Firstly, a sudden purging of federal workers is not unprecedented. There have been many micro-purges in recent years, but none quite as significant as the 1994 Federal Workforce Restructuring Act (FWRA) where the Clinton administration laid off over 273,000 federal employees in an effort to restructure how the government utilized its federal workers. In stark difference to Vivek’s plans, however, the firings weren’t random. Clinton canned largely blue-collar workers in order to hire contractors that were then led by full-time, federally-employed managers. By making the federal employees managers, and leaving everything else up to contractors, the hope was to reduce spending and increase government output.
Now, agree or disagree with the FWRA (I disagree, and have many thoughts about contractors and how effective the government really became/how much money we wound up saving by firing all of those people) there was an order and a plan to the lay-offs rather than Vivek’s “Thanos” plan. In order to effectively usher in a bureaucratic “Manhattan Project” (Vivek’s words, not mine) there should be order and proper targets. I’m sure there will be some, but with the sweeping changes that Musk and Ramaswamy want to make — I’m not sure how much of a plan there really can be.
Further, as the Tweet above would suggest, I have my reservations about there being a Department of Government Efficiency. I think an office within the White House makes some sense, but to have a whole department dedicated to eliminating bureaucracy seems a little short-sighted. The office will need to be staffed, effectively adding more federal jobs in the short term; There will need to be an office space, adding to government spending; And it (Hypothetically. Wishfully, even) requires the department to understand each federal department’s unique situations and issues (of which there are thousands — Most of them necessary). These things get deep into the grooves and minutiae of the various federal department’s missions. It’s a lot for one department to handle, and I don’t particularly trust either Musk or Ramaswamy to lead it well.
I worry that they will make short-sighted and quick decisions to meet a spending limit or deadline, and that programs will die before reaching fruition and will ultimately lead to some kind of sweeping negative effect. I am thinking of the “shrimp on a treadmill” story here, where Republicans tend to want to make the case that anything that sounds remotely out of line should be immediately cut — Even if it’s sound and necessary science. I think that with Tweedlerich and Tweedlericher in charge, we are likely to see some pretty necessary things cut that we probably won’t feel the effects of until years later.
The Good (it’s not really that good but it’s better than bad)
This all being said, there are a couple of things that I don’t mind or even actively like about DOGE (the name is not one of those things).
Musk and Ramaswamy have promised (we’ll see if they follow through) to host a weekly podcast with updates on what improvements DOGE has made in the week. I like this! Bring back the fireside chat in a more palatable and accessible medium. I think that’s completely fine. Will the updates be truthful? I don’t know. But, I am glad to see at least a mention at government transparency in an administration as mired in distrust and secrets as Trump’s is.
I also don’t necessarily hate Musk’s hope to cut $2 trillion from the federal budget. It reminds me of this story I clinged onto after watching this documentary about how much David Lynch hated creating Dune (1984). Lynch was discussing how after he had made Dune, he wanted to go back to creating independent pictures. I’m paraphrasing here but it went a little like this: He felt that the abundance of funding for a project got rid of any of the struggle - And with struggle, comes innovation. With innovation, come amazing movies. Vivek has promised before that a lack of bureaucracy will lead to further innovation — I don’t disagree with the sentiment, and think that if done appropriately that it could be true.
Don’t get me wrong, federal employees struggle everyday and finding the budget for any federal project can take years. But, if we were to slash the budget and cut spending, government systems would have to reconsider what to prioritize. My thing is: I don’t trust these guys to prioritize the right things.
The Ugly
The issue is really about who’s in charge. I don’t trust Donald Trump or Vivek Ramaswamy or Elon Musk to prioritize the government programs that would maximize public good. I trust them to maximize their’s and their friend’s pockets, but I don’t see them prioritizing food stamps, veteran’s benefits, or any benefits for that matter, really. I am all for government innovation through struggle. I am all for cutting the budget in certain areas (cough, military, cough) to help us focus on what matters, and to reallocate resources to other programs. But, with the rich in power — I fear that the poor, middle, and even lower-upper class will all get poorer.
Thanks for reading.
If you’re interested in real government efficiency, check out Civilla’s work, and Jen Pahlka’s Substack (especially her most recent post on DOGE).
I actually have fewer reservations about Vivek than I did during the Republican primary after watching his Ezra Klein interview. Still not great but less bad than I had assumed.