During my lifetime, I’ve seen Republican Presidents struggle to balance the budget and shrink the federal bureaucracy, and worse, not struggle to do so. Ford quite rightly vetoed numerous spending bills he said would cost too much money, and Reagan attempted to control the budget, submitted budgets lower than those the Democratic-controlled congress passed in 7 out of eight years (check with David Stockman on how those budget-cutting plans went awry), but neither Bush41, Bush43 or Trump45 expressed any particular zeal for budget cutting.
With the Elon Musk/Vivek Ramaswamy-led Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), Trump47 appears to be doing things differently, not least of which because Trump finally understands how various elements of the Deep State set out to attack him and thwart his agenda.
The pair think there are ways to cut down the administrative state even without new legislation or a new budget.
Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy detailed how their Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) will reduce government waste in a Wall Street Journal op-ed.
Musk and Ramaswamy are correct: unelected bureaucrats passing “rules and regulations” have detracted America from what the Founders framed in the Constitution.
DOGE is there to stop it.
“The entrenched and ever-growing bureaucracy represents an existential threat to our republic, and politicians have abetted it for too long,” the entrepreneurs wrote. “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.”
Might I suggest you start with the Department of Education?
DOGE will work with the White House Office of Management and Budget to target three reforms:
Regulatory rescissions
Administrative reduction
Cost savings
Instead of new laws, existing legislation will lead DOGE to make the changes.
Musk and Ramaswamy will use the Constitution and two recent SCOTUS decisions:
In West Virginia v. Environmental Protection Agency (2022), the justices held that agencies can’t impose regulations dealing with major economic or policy questions unless Congress specifically authorizes them to do so. In Loper Bright v. Raimondo (2024), the court overturned the Chevron doctrine and held that federal courts should no longer defer to federal agencies’ interpretations of the law or their own rulemaking authority. Together, these cases suggest that a plethora of current federal regulations exceed the authority Congress has granted under the law.
DOGE will work with legal experts embedded in government agencies, aided by advanced technology, to apply these rulings to federal regulations enacted by such agencies. DOGE will present this list of regulations to President Trump, who can, by executive action, immediately pause the enforcement of those regulations and initiate the process for review and rescission. This would liberate individuals and businesses from illicit regulations never passed by Congress and stimulate the U.S. economy.
When the president nullifies thousands of such regulations, critics will allege executive overreach. In fact, it will be correcting the executive overreach of thousands of regulations promulgated by administrative fiat that were never authorized by Congress. The president owes lawmaking deference to Congress, not to bureaucrats deep within federal agencies. The use of executive orders to substitute for lawmaking by adding burdensome new rules is a constitutional affront, but the use of executive orders to roll back regulations that wrongly bypassed Congress is legitimate and necessary to comply with the Supreme Court’s recent mandates. And after those regulations are fully rescinded, a future president couldn’t simply flip the switch and revive them but would instead have to ask Congress to do so.
The government is the largest employer in America. That should not happen. It has over two million Americans.
The largest employers are:
Department of Defense: 1.3 million military service members, 825,000 Reserve and National Guard members, and 600,000 civilian employees
Department of Veterans Affairs: 371,000 healthcare professionals and support staff
Department of Homeland Security: 260,000 employees
Postal Service: As of 2022, 635,350 employees
“DOGE intends to work with embedded appointees in agencies to identify the minimum number of employees required at an agency for it to perform its constitutionally permissible and statutorily mandated functions,” explained Musk and Ramaswamy.
Other ways they’ll attack the problem.
The to-be-established Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) has already begun to eye possible cuts to the federal budget.
In a series of posts on X this week, the official DOGE account published examples of what it called a waste of taxpayer money.
“Federal government agencies are using, on average, just 12% of the space in their DC headquarters,” a Thursday post reads. “The Department of Agriculture, with space for more than 7,400 people, averaged 456 workers each day (6% occupancy). Why are American taxpayer dollars being spent to maintain empty buildings?”
Citing a report published in July 2024 by the Congressional Budget Office, the DOGE said the agency identified authorizations of appropriations that expired before the beginning of fiscal year 2024.
“In FY2024, U.S. Congress provided $516 billion to programs whose authorizations previously expired under federal law. Nearly $320 billion of that $516 billion expired more a decade ago,” a Wednesday post on X states.
On Tuesday, the DOGE criticized the Pentagon for not being able to fully account for $824 billion and failing its seventh annual audit in a row.
The department on Monday posted a video of Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) outlining examples of wasteful spending of taxpayer money. According to Paul, one example is the all0cation of $100,000 to study if tequila or gin makes sunfish more aggressive, according to Paul.
According to the latest figures from the Treasury Department, most of the revenue that the U.S. government collects comes from contributions from individual taxpayers, small businesses, and corporations through taxes. The combined contribution of individual and corporate income taxes totals $181 billion. This represents 55 percent of total revenue in fiscal year 2025.
The data shows that the federal government largely depends on taxpayer money to run its agencies and programs.
However, according to a survey by GOBankingRates, more than half of Americans don’t believe their tax dollars are being spent effectively, compared to nearly 18 percent who do think their tax dollars are being spent the right way. Nearly 27 percent said they don’t know how their tax dollars are being spent, the poll shows.
President-elect Donald Trump has tapped billionaire entrepreneur Elon Musk and former Republican presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy to head the DOGE.
According to Trump, Musk and Ramaswamy will be responsible for large-scale structural reform, focusing on dismantling government bureaucracy, slashing excess regulations, and restructuring federal agencies. The pair will lead a team to identify and weed out what they called massive waste and fraud in the annual $6.5 trillion of government spending, according to Trump.
I’m hoping that Musk and Ramaswamy are right, that they start massive cost-cutting and reigning in the administrative state before the first Trump47 budget is even passed. But the Deep State and public employees unions have an awful lot of ways to fight back.
It’s going to take all of Trump, Musk and Ramaswamy’s considerably disruptive talents to win this fight.
