DOGE Theory

Can Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy’s plan to slash the bureaucracy succeed?

One of the most intriguing developments following Donald Trump’s election victory has been the announcement of Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy’s Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE. The initiative, which hopes to cut up to $2 trillion from the federal budget, has generated notable excitement, momentum, and memes. The world’s richest man and a successful biotech entrepreneur, Ramaswamy, have revitalized what seemed to be a mostly dormant libertarianism, drawing on the inspiration of Milton Friedman and promising to slash the bureaucracy to the bone. But what are its prospects for real-world success?

Elon Musk is our era’s most gifted entrepreneur, having revolutionized several industries and run multiple major companies. But the private sector operates on radically different principles than the public sector, which has a way of stalling or disarming even the most determined efforts. I foresee three potential impediments to DOGE’s success.

First is the problem of authority. While President-elect Trump has dubbed the effort the “Department of Government Efficiency,” it is not a government department at all. Rather, Musk and Ramaswamy will remain in the private sector and preside over what is, in effect, a blue-ribbon committee providing recommendations to the president and to Congress about potential cuts. In practice, though, blue-ribbon committees are often where ideas go to die. Politicians who feel the need to “do something” about a given problem often establish such committees to create the perception of action, which masks their true desire or, at least, the eventual result: inaction.

DOGE’s challenge will be to translate its recommendations into policy. It is almost certain that an entrepreneur of Musk’s ambition will not be content with writing a report. His and Ramaswamy’s task, then, is to persuade the president and the director of the Office of Management and Budget to enact real (and politically risky) cuts, and, if possible, to persuade Congress to abolish entire departments, such as the Department of Education, in the face of left-wing backlash.

The second problem for Musk and Ramaswamy is public opinion. Libertarians and small-government conservatives have long promised to reduce the size of government; one reason that they have never done so is that federal programs and agencies are generally popular. All of the major federal departments, with the exception of the IRS, the Department of Education, and the Department of Justice, have net-positive favorability numbers. Congressional members, even conservative Republicans, fear that slashing these departments would expose them to savage criticism from the Left and backlash from voters. They know that Americans complain about the size of government in theory but oppose almost all spending cuts in practice—the key paradox that libertarians have been unable to resolve.

Musk and Ramaswamy have repeatedly appealed to the work of Argentinian president Javier Milei, who has dramatically reduced the number of departments and created flashy video clips of himself stripping down organizational charts and yelling, “Afuera!” But what is possible in Argentina, which has been mired in a decades-long economic crisis, may not be achievable in the United States, which is much more stable, and, consequently, may not have the appetite for such dramatic action.

Which brings us to the problem of politics. Sending a rocket into space requires mastery over physics, but cutting government departments requires mastery over a more formidable enemy: bureaucracy. As Musk and Ramaswamy will see, the relationship between would-be reformers and Congress is vastly different from that between a CEO and a board of directors. To succeed, Musk and Ramaswamy must persuade a group of politicians, each with their own interests, to assume a high level of risk.

DOGE’s first task—identifying the budget items to cut—is the easy part. The hard part will be actually cutting them. They will have to convince Congress, which, for nearly 100 years, has refused to reduce the size of government, even when that notion had bipartisan support, as it did during the presidency of Bill Clinton, who promised that “the era of big government is over.”

This does not mean that DOGE cannot succeed. Though there may not be an appetite for a $2 trillion reduction in government spending, there is a hunger for targeted cuts that would strip the federal government of hostile ideologies that have made our institutions dysfunctional and our national life worse. For example, slashing grant funding for critical race theory would likely win support from voters; cutting the budget for USDA meat inspectors would not, and, given opportunity costs, would probably prove unproductive as well.

Perhaps the name of this committee—the Department of Government Efficiency—is also slightly off the mark. The problem is not only about efficiency, which suggests quantity, but about orientation, which implies quality. The federal government has long been captured by ideologies that misdirect its efforts. Simply making the bureaucracy more efficient will not solve that problem. DOGE must first determine what federal spending is worthwhile; from there, it can focus on creating “efficiencies.”

I hope that Musk and Ramaswamy can dispel my pessimism. Political realities have stifled countless reform efforts before now, and DOGE is an enterprise that would be difficult, if not impossible, under normal circumstances. But these are two remarkably talented men; if anyone is capable of shattering the mold, they can.

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