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Key Points and Summary: Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) aims to cut $2 trillion from federal spending by targeting inefficiencies and proposing agency eliminations.

-While DOGE has begun hiring and gained influence during legislative debates, it lacks official government status or statutory authority. Critics argue its ambitious goals, like dismantling the Department of Education, require Congressional action and face near-insurmountable legislative hurdles.

-Constitutional experts have also questioned DOGE’s legitimacy, likening it to advisory task forces. Despite Musk’s significant platform and the formation of a “DOGE caucus” in Congress, its future impact remains uncertain.

DOGE: Can It Really Slash the Federal Government? 

During the closing weeks of the 2024 presidential election, Elon Musk started making noises about starting a Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), named as a pun meant to recall the Musk-associated cryptocurrency Dogecoin. 

After Trump won the election, it was announced that DOGE would become a reality, under the leadership of Musk and Ramaswamy. The two then started throwing around ideas for cutting as much as $2 trillion out of the federal budget, including by “deleting” entire government agencies. 

This week, DOGE announced that it was hiring “a very small number” of full-time employees, as reported by Business Insider, indicating that DOGE will exist. How much power it will have, and whether it will serve as anything other than a glorified business council that makes recommendations, is another matter entirely. 

Musk, as the world’s richest man and owner of X, clearly has a large megaphone, and can even move public opinion, as he showed during the December budget showdown. But whether he can accomplish DOGE’s lofty goals remains unclear. 

Ramaswamy and Musk laid out their vision for DOGE in a Wall Street Journal op-ed, not long after the election. 

“The entrenched and ever-growing bureaucracy represents an existential threat to our republic, and politicians have abetted it for too long,” the op-ed said. “That’s why we’re doing things differently. We are entrepreneurs, not politicians. We will serve as outside volunteers, not federal officials or employees. Unlike government commissions or advisory committees, we won’t just write reports or cut ribbons. We’ll cut costs.”

DOGE is hiring people in “software engineering, information security engineering, HR, IT, and finance roles,” BI said. Some Republican Senators have formed a “DOGE caucus.” 

Despite the “Department” in the name, DOGE is not a government “department.” It has not been officially created by any statute, and government departments hire large numbers of people, not very small numbers. 

BI said of DOGE that “it exists outside of the federal government and does not have the power to change laws or agencies, though its leaders have already exerted influence over legislative actions, like a recent spending bill.”

A Wall Street Journal report this week looked at what DOGE can and can’t do. Most of its biggest plans would appear unlikely to happen. 

“Since the Education Department and the CFPB, like other federal agencies, were created by legislation, it would take an act of Congress to eliminate them,” the Journal said. “Even if Republicans could marshal their narrow House majority to dismantle the departments, the odds of passing the Senate are near zero.”

Congress could use the reconciliation process in the Senate to cut taxes, but it could not do so to eliminate the Department of Education. 

An op-ed in The Hill on Tuesday had another argument about DOGE: That it’s unconstitutional. 

Elon Musk. Image Credit: Creative Commons.

According to writer Kimberly Wehle, who called DOGE “mythological,” the agency “amounts to a pure legal fiction at the moment.” 

“It is Congress that creates federal agencies pursuant to its Article I legislative power — not presidents nor private citizens, even if they happen to be the president-elect,” Wehle writes. “The Constitution doesn’t even mention federal agencies, with the exception of the Treasury. The panoply of ‘Departments of’ and ‘Commissions’ that dot Washington, D.C. are instead the work of federal legislation.”

She went on to compare DOGE to the COVID-19 task force supervised by Jared Kushner during Trump’s first term. 

Author Expertise and Experience:

Stephen Silver is an award-winning journalist, essayist and film critic, and contributor to the Philadelphia Inquirer, the Jewish Telegraphic Agency, Broad Street Review and Splice Today. The co-founder of the Philadelphia Film Critics Circle, Stephen lives in suburban Philadelphia with his wife and two sons. For over a decade, Stephen has authored thousands of articles that focus on politics, technology, and the economy. Follow him on X (formerly Twitter) at @StephenSilver, and subscribe to his Substack newsletter