Give DOGE a Chance, But Be Realistic
Why Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy have a good goal, with unrealistic and conflicted strategies
If you’re not a Trump supporter, your initial reaction to the new Department of Government Efficiency (“DOGE”) is probably negative. After all, what’s the likely effect of two billionaires, Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy, trying to add more “efficiency” to the government?
Self-dealing, conflicted decision-making, and policies favoring the rich.
Elon Musk is a government contractor and the CEO of two heavily regulated businesses, SpaceX and Tesla. How he can be an impartial arbiter of government spending is anyone’s guess, especially as the regulatory heat increases on Tesla for environmental violations.
If you want to see how the markets perceive his role, it’s one of self-interest — Tesla stock has increased nearly 30% since Election Day, adding billions to Musk’s coffers. It’s unlikely he will recommend any “efficiencies” that stop this gravy train.
With that said, I’m still cautiously optimistic. America has an efficiency and spending problem. Its $36 trillion in debt has ballooned in recent decades, with debt servicing costs of nearly $1 trillion annually just to keep up with the interest payments.
Seriously think about that — ~$1 trillion per year in interest alone. That’s enough to fund a completely new Defense Department, which currently has a budget of about the same amount.
If we’re able to make any changes that streamline government, cut through unnecessary red tape, and reduce inefficiencies, all Americans stand to benefit. But it must be done thoughtfully and with input from relevant experts, the same “deep state bureaucrats” many MAGA have complete disdain for, but many of whom are necessary for the functioning of government (as we’ll get to below).
I’m also not sure that Donald Trump is the right man for the job. Elon Musk thinks he can chop “at least $2 trillion” from the federal budget, but during Trump’s first administration, Trump added $7.8 trillion to America’s debt. Perhaps Musk should sit ol’ Donald down to discuss his spending habits first before unleashing the DOGE scissors on existing government spending.
Despite all of these concerns, I’m not willing to bet against Elon Musk. As crazy and unstable as Musk has become, he’s a brilliant innovator and entrepreneur who has a history of getting what he wants. He has shown that time and again whether by making electric vehicles mainstream when most people said he couldn’t or by building a private space company when most people laughed at him.
When Musk has a mission, he goes into “demon mode” and almost always succeeds. Like it or not, that’s exactly what he did with Donald Trump, not only through his purchase of Twitter and its subsequent hard right turn but through his pumping in of ~$75 million into Trump’s campaign. Musk took huge personal risks and won.
I hope he can help all Americans win by making the government more efficient, but I have some concerns, some far more serious than others. Before getting into those concerns and how Musk and Ramaswamy can best address them, let’s first focus on one huge factor in their favor — the current state of the law.
Massive legal support for DOGE
Two Supreme Court cases from the past two years struck huge blows to the administrative state. The administrative state is the term for all government agencies that roll up through the Executive Branch. Everything from the Environmental Protection Agency to the Securities and Exchange Commission.
The first of these cases was West Virginia v. Environmental Protection Agency (2022) where the court held that agencies cannot impose regulations with major economic or policy questions unless Congress grants specific authority. Historically, agencies have had significant deference to engage in their own rulemaking. They could draft and pass new rules to govern the industries they covered through a notice and comment process with not only the industry but the general public. After this case, however, they can no longer do this unilaterally without Congressional authority if the regulations or rules they’re trying to impose have “major economic or policy questions.”
The second case was Loper Bright v. Raimondo (2024) where the court overturned the Chevron doctrine and held that federal courts should no longer defer to federal agencies’ interpretations of the law or their own rulemaking authority. Basically, courts will no longer defer to agency “expertise.”
Both of these cases clipped the wings of the administrative state, preventing it from making major new regulations and rules, or from operating independently of congressional or judicial oversight. Whatever your opinion of these cases, they’ve removed much of the power from the administrative state, opening the door for further checks. With the current makeup of the conservative majority on the Supreme Court, DOGE would likely have judicial support for any cuts it wants to make, whether from rules and regulations, government employees, or the agencies themselves.
Streamline understaffed agencies without firing thousands
Both Musk and Ramaswamy have said they want to make spending cuts by firing thousands of the 2.3 million federal employees (excluding the Postal Service). That would be a huge mistake.
First, it would barely make a dent in the federal debt. Salaries and benefits for government employees only amount to some $384 billion, according to the White House Office of Management and Budget.
Second, many existing agencies are severely understaffed. Anyone who has worked for (or with) the government knows how limited the resources are at your disposal.
Instead of cutting staff, why not look to streamline as much as possible? Here’s an example from my personal experience.
I worked in legal and compliance at big financial institutions for almost a decade. It was often unclear who regulated what and when. Depending on the nature of the financial product, the customer, and the institution offering it (bank, hedge fund, etc.), an alphabet soup of financial regulators fought for jurisdiction — the SEC, CFTC, OCC, FRB, CFPB, etc. And that’s just at the federal level!
Many of the laws, rules, and regulations relied on by the financial industry date back to the 1930s and 40s. Nowhere is this more troubling than in the burgeoning crypto industry. One of the biggest disservices the SEC did to crypto during the Biden years was never giving the industry clear guidance. It refused to tell companies when and how to register securities with the SEC (or whether crypto even qualified as a security), but when companies like Coinbase tried clarify, they were fined and hit with lawsuits by the SEC.
Instead of a regulatory maze and alphabet soup of regulators, why not work to streamline regulators as much as possible? We should only need one financial regulator at the federal level instead of overlapping departments that fight for jurisdiction. I’m sure this same situation applies to other industries.
There are many other areas we could streamline in government too. I actually really enjoyed this tweet from Vivek Ramaswamy:
If these buildings are all actually vacant, why do American taxpayers need to pay for them? Perhaps reduce them by at least half? That could save some $7 billion.
These are the types of solutions that Musk and Ramaswamy should be crafting. Mass firings, the elimination of agencies, and the cutting of regulations without a clear understanding of the job or function will only create chaos (remember, many of the Twitter jobs Musk cut eventually had to return).
I’m also skeptical that these cuts won’t disproportionately favor Musk, Ramaswamy, and their rich friends.
Terrible conflicts, with help to fellow billionaires
Goodbye to onerous environmental regulations. Any self-driving car regulations. Food and drug regulations. Labor protections. The list goes on.
Someone convince me that two billionaires have the best interests of America’s working class at heart. Someone please persuade me that an existing CEO of two heavily regulated companies with significant connections to the federal government won’t act purely out of self-interest. Or that his partner, who made his money in drug discovery, won’t favor the pharmaceutical industry.
Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy spoke a big game in their Wall Street Journal op-ed, but this passage in particular stuck out to me:
“The federal government’s procurement process is also badly broken. Many federal contracts have gone unexamined for years. Large-scale audits conducted during a temporary suspension of payments would yield significant savings.”
Will SpaceX be facing such audits? Will the federal contracts for SpaceX receive the same amount of scrutiny as other federal contracts? Will friends of the Trump administration be subject to the same scrutiny?
I’m not saying “don’t do large-scale audits.” On the contrary, I think they could produce massive efficiency benefits. I am very skeptical, however, that Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy (two billionaires with no government experience) are best suited for the job. I know they won’t be doing the auditing themselves, but their strategy and direction will be dictating what to scrutinize, who to pressure, and what to cut.
Proof is in performance of course, and I’m willing to stay cautiously optimistic, but we need to be realistic about the massive conflicts of interest at play here. The actions of Musk and Ramaswamy must be scrutinized as much as they scrutinize the federal government itself.
Musk’s current environmental issues at Tesla alone warrant close examination.
Questionable oversight and authority, but I’m not betting against Elon Musk
It’s important to remember that Musk and Ramaswamy have no real authority with DOGE. It’s a fake government agency. It’s not in the President’s cabinet, let alone part of the federal government. The only nexus it does have to government is through indirect oversight by the one and only Marjorie Taylor Greene.
Greene is set to serve as the chairperson on a new subcommittee within the House Oversight Committee that focuses on DOGE. This is the same woman who showed Hunter Biden’s private parts during a Congressional hearing and has trafficked in disturbing conspiracy theories, including one on “Jewish Space Lasers.”
Now Greene will be in charge of oversight of billions of dollars in government contracts and two unvetted billionaires who have serious conflicts with all of it. Nothing could possibly go wrong, right?
Again, I want to be cautiously optimistic because there is some good DOGE could achieve by streamlining and by focusing on unnecessary waste, fraud, and abuse, but we need to be realistic too. The adults are not in charge here.
Instead, America and the world will watch as one of the greatest Congressional stuntwomen and two billionaire stuntmen dance around with DOGE scissors, proposing various actions and cuts that are sure to offend and enrage millions. If the process is thoughtful and well-researched, potential benefits abound. But if it’s all style and little substance — largely because of the showy players involved — it will only be a distraction that accomplishes little and potentially hurts the American people more (e.g., cuts to necessary social services and environmental regulations).
So here’s to hoping that DOGE can be efficient itself and target unnecessary government spending and red tape. But I’m not completely confident it will.
For more great political articles, check out this publication on Medium: The Political Prism.