Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) group has received a tremendous amount of attention in the weeks leading up to President Trump’s inauguration, but will their proposals have a place in the early congressional calendar? Will they be largely implemented administratively, or will they be ignored entirely?
It is likely that House and Senate appropriators will seek to implement some DOGE recommendations in both the March government funding bill(s) and as part of any package to extend the national debt ceiling which hits near the beginning of the new administration.
Proposals that focus upon specific wasteful spending would also fit into the Budget Reconciliation Act which is being prepared by both Houses of Congress alongside the incoming administration, so there are adequate must pass legislative opportunities to make some changes that do more than just skirt around the edges of the overall big government problem.
However, based upon publicly reported conversations surrounding the Budget Reconciliation Act, there is scant attention being paid to essential swamp draining proposals like cutting the overall federal bureaucracy by 20 percent or more. Elected officials seemingly prefer to wait to see if the civil service quit rate due to back to office requirements, which ends bureaucrats work from home status, creates a defacto reduction in force.
One proposal to open the door for significant government restructuring is to incentivize the retirement of current civil service staff. By encouraging current senior managers and other near retirement employees to leave the federal workforce, it would open the doors for new, fresh blood to enter government service as second career employees using their private sector expertise to break the stranglehold of bureaucratic groupthink which dominates the administrative state.
Another simple drain the swamp management proposal is known as the MERIT Act. Introduced by Representative Barry Loudermilk (R-GA), the MERIT Act, at its core, gives federal managers an expedited path to fire employees who either cannot or will not do their job. The basic idea has already been tested in the Veteran’s Administration since 2017, and while not a panacea, it at least ends the significant disincentive to discipline or attempt to fire federal employees under the current law. Not surprisingly, the difficulty in firing or disciplining a failing employee under current law causes managers to ignore the problem and simply allow the employee to get paid without producing work.
The MERIT Act restores the management labor balance needed to effectively manage the operation of government for the benefit of taxpayers while leaving in place employee protections.
It is also reasonable to hope that DOGE develops some management processes which open the doors to much more efficient and less costly government operations. Musk is a genius at developing or identifying better ways of getting things done, and this talent alone could save taxpayers hundreds of billions of dollars annually by ferreting out abuses of various government payment programs ranging from Medicare to Unemployment Insurance.
It is axiomatic that Congress will include ending waste, fraud and abuse as savings the government hopes to at least partially pay for legislation with a big price tag. A focused Musk and Ramaswamy along with other outside entrepreneurs with an eye for streamlining big, cumbersome systems, should be able to translate their mission to real savings simply by implementing cost and time saving private sector methods.
The ugly truth however, is that the people of the United States want more government services than they are willing to pay for.
And with the Biden administration shoving payments for questionable spending programs out to contractors while they still cling to power, the Treasury Department reports that America has been saddled with an additional $624 billion in debt from Biden’s October and November spendathon. For perspective, Biden, in October and November of 2024 alone, has spent $194 billion more than the same two months in 2023.
It will take some real DOGE magic along with dogged determination by both the Trump administration and GOP congressional leadership to restore the fiscal soundness of the U.S. government.
Cost cutting systems will solve part of the problem, and ending spending on wasteful programs will help with some of it as well. Making the federal workforce smaller and more efficient is essential. While cutting regulatory drags on economic growth which harm tax revenues will make a difference. And if we get really lucky, inflation can become a non-factor lowering interest rates sufficiently that our interest payments on the debt don’t continue to climb well beyond the current $1 Trillion they consumed last year.
The bottom line is that it took a long time to get into the deficit disaster we find ourselves in, and it will likely take time to get out of it.
Every difficult journey begins with a first step, and the first three months of the new Trump administration will feature those first steps. As our Constitution mandates that spending and tax bills must start in the House of Representatives, the next few weeks should be instrumental in setting a tone for the future.
And getting President Trump’s big, beautiful Budget Reconciliation bill chock full of reforms and cuts in place in the first 100 days is instrumental in restoring sanity at our border, in our energy policies and in reining in our out of control government spending and administrative state.
Ten days until Trump’s inauguration, it cannot come soon enough.
The author is president of Americans for Limited Government.
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