WASHINGTON — President-elect Donald Trump has named entrepreneurs Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy to head a new initiative aimed at cutting federal spending.
It’s called the “Department of Government Efficiency,” or DOGE, and it’s named after a vintage meme, based on a picture of Shiba Inu dog, which is also the namesake of Musk’s favorite crypto token. The new DOGE, in other words, is disruptive, it’s exciting, and it’s already got a cool social media account.
But it’s also an old and busted concept with a long history of hype and failure. Though it has “department” in its name, the new project appears more akin to a presidential “blue-ribbon” commission, a panel composed of nongovernment experts that studies an issue and releases a report with nonbinding recommendations.
Whether set up by Congress or the president, expert commissions can be a way for policymakers to cut through issue complexity, break collective action logjams and raise the visibility of a policy problem. They’re also a way for policymakers to defer action, avoid accountability and empower unelected bureaucrats. Trump himself has previously criticized the concept.
“We can’t just keep setting up blue-ribbon committees with your wife and your wife and your husband and they meet and they have a meal and they talk. Talk, talk, talk,” Trump said when he was president in 2018. “That’s what I got in Washington. I got all these blue-ribbon committees. Everybody wants to be on a blue-ribbon committee.”
In his Monday announcement about DOGE, Trump indicated it would not be a formal part of his administration, saying it would instead “provide advice and guidance from outside of Government, and will partner with the White House and Office of Management & Budget to drive large scale structural reform, and create an entrepreneurial approach to Government never seen before.”
Musk has said he could easily identify $2 trillion worth of cuts to the federal government’s $6.5 trillion annual budget, but it’s actually Congress that’s supposed to be in charge of government spending, as several lawmakers noted in interviews with HuffPost this week.
“One of my colleagues said, ‘I thought that’s what Congress was supposed to do,’ like study government and make it more efficient,” Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.) said. “I mean, I’m excited to have people like Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy looking at how to make it more efficient. Then it’s up to us to vote on that.”
Sources in Trump’s orbit are reportedly looking for ways to give the DOGE commission actual power to cut federal spending without congressional approval, though any such effort would undoubtedly face a legal challenge and significant pushback from members of Congress who zealously guard their control of federal spending.
Along with potentially bypassing the Senate for nominations, Trump bypassing lawmakers on spending would be a big step toward neutralizing Congress as a coequal branch of government. Republicans on Capitol Hill love Musk and Ramaswamy, but they also like their constitutional role as stewards of public funds.
“Obviously, ultimately, Congress controls the purse strings,” said Rep. Mike Lawler (R-N.Y.), a moderate member of the House GOP. “In many respects, this is like setting up a debt commission, a blue ribbon panel. They’re going to make recommendations to the executive branch, to Congress, and that’s fine, and then obviously we’ll work through whatever recommendations come forward. Ultimately, Congress will have the final say with respect to spending.”
Asked about the prospect of DOGE having unilateral power over spending, other Republicans suggested Congress should still be involved.
“I hope Musk and Ramaswamy will be fully empowered, to the greatest degree possible,” said outgoing Rep. Bob Good (R-Va.), a former chair of the right-wing House Freedom Caucus. “I hope Congress will come behind and give them additional help and authority.”
“I want to hear their proposals first in terms of how much it’s advisory versus action,” said Rep. Chip Roy (R-Texas), another hardliner. “I’m in favor of all ideas to slash and burn the federal bureaucracy. So whatever they want to do to put that forward, great, let’s just make sure that we’ve got the ability to, as Congress, to do our proper oversight and all things we’re supposed to do.”
The DOGE project resembles a bipartisan commission set up by then-President Barack Obama by executive order in February 2010. Obama charged the commission with “identifying policies to improve the fiscal situation in the medium term and to achieve fiscal sustainability over the long run.”
Obama established the commission at a time when budget deficits were a major focus in Washington, with even Democrats agreeing that Congress should find ways to cut spending. The commission’s recommendations were controversial, especially proposals to raise the Social Security eligibility age and slow growth in benefits, and the panel’s members wound up not approving their own product.
Trump has already ruled out cuts to Social Security and Medicare, leaving DOGE limited budget room in which to operate. But Musk and Ramaswamy remain optimistic, with Ramaswamy suggesting on social media Wednesday the government should ax any program that gets an annual appropriation from Congress even though an underlying authorization has expired. It’s an idea that might make a lot of sense to someone completely unfamiliar with how Congress works.
“There are 1,200+ programs that are no longer authorized but still receive appropriations. This is totally nuts,” Ramaswamy wrote, noting that defunding such programs would save hundreds of billions.
The fact that Congress appropriates money for programs with expired authorizations may seem like Washington opened a money spigot and forgot to shut it off, but it’s actually a category of spending that remains closely scrutinized. The biggest item is more than $100 billion for the Department of Veterans Affairs, meaning health care and benefits for veterans ― a politically untouchable pot of money.
“Trump’s handpicked budget czar calls for eliminating $119 billion in medical care for veterans,” Rep. Debbie Wasserman-Schultz (D-Fla.) said in response to Ramaswamy. “I will not allow the GOP to gut veterans’ hard-earned benefits.”