Can the DOGE Take a Bite Out of Washington?

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Some years back, one of my smart-aleck sons-in-law (I hasten to note that “smart-aleck” could apply to any of the three) gave me an interesting Christmas gift: a Cold Steel replica of a medieval Viking battle-axe. It’s an interesting thing, big, long, heavy, and no doubt deadly in battle. For any serious difference of opinion, given my age, I’d prefer to have a firearm handy, but if one needed to rely on some pre-gunpowder technology for one’s self-defense, this thing would sure get the job done. Its very appearance might deter a goblin who harbors ill intent. The Viking battle-axe was designed to un-alive opponents by doing immediate and overwhelming damage up to and including the traumatic removal of body parts.

Today, there aren’t many Vikings running around detaching body parts. (That’s a good thing if you ask me.) But Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy have been given the task of taking a metaphorical Viking battle-axe to the federal government. An editorial over at Issues & Insights notes that they may face some serious challenges – and opportunities.

First, a quick look at the damage done: Total spending for fiscal 2024, which ended in September, was $6.752 trillion, a 52% gain from 2019’s pre-COVID $4.447 trillion. Do the math: It’s a 52% gain, for an average of just over 10% a year.

Meanwhile, thanks to our trillion-dollar annual deficits, federal debt has exploded from “just” $22.7 trillion in 2019 to $36 trillion currently, a 59% rise in just five years.

That’s the damage. The federal bureaucracy is, yes, feather-bedded to hell and gone, and that’s a good place for the DOGE to start gnawing away. But to get this madness under control, to stop this hole from getting deeper, we need to stop digging. That means entitlement reform, and not just around the edges.

“We expect mass reductions,” Ramaswamy recently told Fox’s Maria Bartiromo. “We expect certain agencies to be deleted outright. We expect mass reductions in force in areas of the federal government that are bloated. We expect massive cuts of all federal contractors and others who are overbilling the federal government. So, yes, we expect all of the above.”

Hooray! This is a laudable goal, and if they can actually pull it off – that remains to be seen, as the bureaucracy will resist any such effort with the viciousness and tenacity of a boar grizzly guarding a moose carcass. But that’s not enough. Cutting bureaucracy is great and needs doing, but to make it permanent, the structure has to change – and that requires Congress. But more to the point, one can’t talk about slashing spending without talking about entitlement reform; Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid are all taking on water and sinking fast. That’s the other bite the DOGE needs to take.

But here’s an interesting idea:

Start with Social Security and Medicare, which need reform, if only to keep them from financial disaster. Also, kill the costly, unnecessary, and growth-killing “Net-Zero” program, which, according to one estimate, will total more than $4.5 trillion a year in total costs, public and private.

James Pinkerton, who served in the Reagan administration and for years has critiqued America’s budget mistakes, notes that the U.S. has hundreds of trillions of dollars worth of rare earths, oil, gas, and other useful things underground.

Pinkerton asks: Why not take entitlement spending entirely out of the federal budget, and pay for it with royalties from energy on federal properties, just as Texas now pays for its first-rate University of Texas system with state oil royalties?

Who Let the DOGE Out? Elon, Vivek Already Targeting Wasteful Spending

Alaska has a similar program in our Permanent Fund Disbursement (PFD.) Instead of paying a state income tax, Alaskans are quite literally paid for living in the Great Land; last year’s disbursement was $1,300 and change for each Alaskan resident. Could this be a possibility at the federal level? You can (as always) color me skeptical as far as replacing all entitlement spending.

But could such a scheme get us on the way towards making Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid at least solvent again, buying us some time for a permanent fix – like privatizing all three? Or, at least, Social Security?

I’ve long been an advocate for privatizing Social Security. It was a great deal for my grandparent’s generation, the WW1 generation, but the ratio of recipients to contributors has changed a great deal since then, and not for the better. Had someone my age been given my Social Security payments in a locked fund in my name, even if it were just invested in Treasury bonds, I would have realized a far greater return than in the existing system. And I’m a late Boomer – succeeding generations are getting it worse.

The DOGE is a great idea. The reduction of the size and scope of government is a great idea. Entitlement reform is a great idea. But eighteen months isn’t going to be enough time. Getting our federal spending and debt under control will be the work of decades – and will be bitterly fought every step of the way.

In the meantime, well, the DOGE is a good start – only a good start, but a good start. As an inaugural gift, I’m thinking of sending Elon and Vivek each a Cold Steel Viking battle-axe.