US President-elect Donald Trump has recently appointed tech billionaire Elon Musk and biotech investor Vivek Ramaswamy to lead the new DOGE (Department of Government Efficiency) in his second administration.
Upon his selection, Trump said that “two wonderful Americans” would “eliminate government bureaucracy, eliminate excess regulation, cut waste and reorganize federal agencies” through the newly formed department. However, Trump made it clear that the pair would act in an advisory capacity and that DOGE would not be an official government department.
With this announcement, Trump created an important role for his ‘friend’ Musk, who had supported him with his time and money during the presidential campaign. Ramaswamy ran as the Republican nominee for president against Trump earlier this year, but later stepped down and endorsed him. Since his re-election, Trump has been busy naming his core team with loyalists, sidestepping concerns of fairness and conflicting interests.
Both Musk and Ramaswamy have companies with ongoing government contracts. Even as consultants, they will have opportunities to pursue their business interests, directly or indirectly, and will not attract conflict of interest laws of the US government.
Both Republican and Democratic presidents have taken different approaches to streamlining government and cutting spending in the past. In fact, a similar effort was made in Trump 1.0, with the establishment of the OAI (Office of American Innovation) under his son-in-law Jared Kushner to “make government operate like a business”. However, OAI met with little success.
What exactly is DOGE?
The concept of DOGE was suggested by Trump during the election campaign in early September. At a meeting, Trump said that in 2022, “taxpayers will lose an estimated hundreds of billions of dollars from fraud and improper payments alone”. Then, just days after his victory, Trump announced that Musk and Ramaswamy would work with the White House and the Office of Management and Budget to tackle “rampant waste and fraud” in the $6.5 trillion annual government spending.
Not much is known about the official structure and functioning of the newly announced DOGE, or its funding. Since it will not be a government department, its creation will not require the approval of the US Congress.
Trump hopes Musk and Ramaswamy’s work will be finished before July 4, 2026, which will also be the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence. On November 14, an In a separate post, Musk said, “The compensation is zero.”
Why are many people skeptical?
DOGE’s ultimate goal is to rationalize federal operations and cut significant government spending by at least $2 trillion, which would mean substantial cuts to all programs, including essential services like Social Security and Medicare, which would potentially anger millions of voters. Will do. However, experts are skeptical about the success of DOGE.
“The chances of DOGE being successful are low for several reasons. The bureaucracy is too strong to make any major gains in reducing the federal workforce; In any case, their salaries form a very small part of the budget,” says Uma Purushothaman, associate professor, US Studies, School of International Studies, JNU. DOGE can provide recommendations to the White House but actually lacks direct authority to cut spending or make regulatory changes. “The US Constitution gives the ‘power of the purse’ to Congress. This means any changes or cuts in the allocation will have to go through Congress, where Trump has a slim majority,” says Purushothaman. “And it’s very possible that some Republicans in both houses may not want to support some of these reforms,” she adds.
Castle in the air?
Rather than comparing the DOGE experiment to similar initiatives of other previous presidents, which largely failed, it would be better to compare it to the OAI envisioned during Trump’s first term.
OAI was a part of the White House Office of Executive Affairs running from 2017 to 2021. Under Kushner’s leadership, the group was to be the link between the US technology industry and the Trump administration. Its purpose was to reform the federal bureaucracy with “new thinking and real change” to tackle the country’s toughest problems. From addressing workforce shortages and infrastructure challenges to reforming prisons and addressing the opioid crisis, the tasks were immense.
However, apart from driving IT modernization in government and holding a CEO summit, which was attended by Amazon’s Jeff Bezos, Apple’s Tim Cook, Microsoft’s Satya Nadella, IBM’s Ginni Rometty and others, there is much to report about it. Nothing is there The OAI certainly faced criticism for influencing Trump’s government policies. The office was quietly closed during the transition after President Joe Biden takes office in 2021. Will DOGE meet the same fate?
“DOGE’s objectives are very ambitious, whether in terms of money or time. It is unlikely that DOGE will succeed on this scale or within this time frame. Yes, it will probably meet the same fate as the US Office of Innovation, especially if the next administration is Democratic,” says Purushottam.
DOGE symbolizes a more exploratory method of governance in the US – one where businessmen will apply their corporate experiences to solve public sector issues. Whether this will bring about any meaningful change or will it remain largely symbolic, only time will tell. Until then, the world cannot escape DOGE stories.
(The author is a contributing editor, NDTV)
Disclaimer: These are the personal opinions of the author
