It’s an abiding promise of newly elected American presidents: The executive branch henceforth will be liberated from the perils of waste, fraud and abuse.
President-elect Donald Trump, in his contribution to the canon, has announced he’ll create the Department of Government Efficiency, led by tech impresarios Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy. The aim, Trump says, is to “dismantle government bureaucracy, slash excess regulations, cut wasteful expenditures, and restructure federal agencies.”
There’s reason to be skeptical about Trump’s ambitions for this body. And many previous efforts along these lines — from the Truman Committee to Al Gore’s “reinventing government” initiative — have failed to tame the federal leviathan. But the goal of getting taxpayers better value for their money remains eminently desirable.
As a start, any effort of this kind requires setting achievable goals — and Musk and Ramaswamy have already emphasized a good one. They want to get federal workers back to the office. Long after the pandemic, government buildings are still conspicuously underpopulated. In his 2022 State of the Union address, President Joe Biden called on federal workers to return to their offices, and his administration has periodically urged people back to their desks, but with little apparent effect.
A recent report on telework arrangements at four agencies found that one (the Veterans Benefits Administration) has failed to collect the data it needs to manage the system effectively, and that the other three (the Farm Service Agency, the Internal Revenue Service and U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services) haven’t evaluated telework’s effects on performance. There’s little here to allay taxpayers’ suspicions that absence from the office means less work being done.
What taxpayers should expect from public services would, more generally, be a good focus for DOGE’s efforts. The client-facing aspects of the U.S. government badly need attention. Whether it’s filing taxes, claiming benefits, buying savings bonds from TreasuryDirect, securing licenses and permissions, or dealing with regulators with overlapping jurisdictions, effective customer service rarely seems to be a priority. Entrepreneurs like Musk and Ramaswamy don’t need to be told why this matters.
As important as this mission is, however, voters should be realistic. Musk once said he aimed to cut “at least $2 trillion” from Biden’s proposed $6.5 trillion-a-year budget. On the face of it, such a claim isn’t credible: It would mean cutting all spending, including defense, Medicare and Social Security, by a third. Trump has already promised to protect the main entitlement programs. Regardless of who’s in charge, even modest cuts in such spending are politically perilous. The savings from thinning the federal workforce, as Musk and Ramaswamy have advocated, are trivial when set against the biggest outlays.
Another concern is that both men may have conflicts of interest and, as outside advisers, may not be subject to normal disclosure rules. For their effort to work, they’ll need to be forthright with the public about their financial involvements.
Ideally, DOGE would aim to strengthen and broaden the audit powers that currently reside with the Government Accountability Office (which advises Congress) and the Office of Management and Budget (a branch of the White House). To the general public, these existing functions are all but invisible and lack teeth: Too often, reports are issued and little if anything happens. DOGE could improve this oversight by publicizing opportunities to make government work better — by highlighting the real waste, duplication, underperformance and poor customer service that the existing audit systems let slide, as well as recommending changes.
Set up that way, DOGE can promote accountability as well as transparency. But to succeed, its leaders will need to know what they’re talking about and command credibility with taxpayers. Musk and Ramaswamy should be commended for their ambition. They should also remember that fixing the government is an incredibly arduous task — and making ridiculous promises doesn’t help.
