It’s never been altogether clear how, exactly, the so-called Department of Government Efficiency (or “DOGE”) is supposed to work. On the surface, Donald Trump has tapped Elon Musk and failed White House hopeful Vivek Ramaswamy to oversee the advisory panel and, according to the president-elect’s campaign promises, the informal council will identify $2 trillion to cut from the federal budget.
Just below the surface, however, the entire endeavor is highly suspect.
For one thing, Musk and Ramaswamy have no background in auditing or the federal budget. For another, their “department” will have no actual power: If they came up with ideas for cuts, the panel could write a sternly worded memo filled with suggestions, but that’s about it.
Making matters considerably worse, the Republican megadonor overseeing the gambit has already admitted that it won’t be able to meet Trump’s goals.
But the larger “DOGE” endeavor is apparently moving forward anyway — in ways that are increasingly discouraging. The New York Times reported:
An unpaid group of billionaires, tech executives and some disciples of Peter Thiel, a powerful Republican donor, are preparing to take up unofficial positions in the U.S. government in the name of cost-cutting. As President-elect Donald J. Trump’s so-called Department of Government Efficiency girds for battle against “wasteful” spending, it is preparing to dispatch individuals with ties to its co-leaders, Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy, to agencies across the federal government.
According to the Times’ reporting, which has not been independently verified by MSNBC or NBC News, a group of private-sector executives will station themselves in actual federal agencies — working on a voluntary basis — for six-month stints.
As for how the executives will be chosen, the Times’ report, which was based on “interviews with roughly a dozen people who have insight into DOGE’s operations,” added: “Mr. Musk’s friends have been intimately involved in choosing people who are set to be deployed to various agencies.”
Collectively, they will effectively function as “a brand for an interlinked group of aspirational leaders who are on joint group chats and share a loyalty to Mr. Musk or Mr. Ramaswamy.”
It’s worth pausing to appreciate just how bizarre these circumstances are. The world’s wealthiest individual and his pals will, according to the reported plan, deploy unpaid volunteers — who will apparently be accountable to no one — to hang out inside federal agencies for several months. The nature of their responsibilities remains murky, but their ostensible goal will be to look for ways to cut costs and make the actual departments more “efficient.”
Why would federal employees and civil servants give these volunteers — private citizens with no legal authority — the time of day? Or let them into meetings? Or let them roam the halls? Your guess is as good as mine. What’s more, just to reemphasize, even if these unpaid billionaires, tech executives and Thiel disciples made dramatic recommendations about firing parts of the workforce and/or streamlining departmental work, “DOGE” isn’t a real department, so there’s no reason to believe the suggestions would amount to much. Punchbowl News’ Jake Sherman, an MSNBC contributor, spoke to a senior Republican aide last month who described Musk and Ramaswamy as “two people who know nothing about how the government works pretending they can cut a trillion dollars.” The same aide predicted that the entire endeavor will likely end in “disaster.” The more the “DOGE” plan comes into focus, the easier it is to take that prediction seriously. This post updates our related earlier coverage.
Steve Benen is a producer for "The Rachel Maddow Show," the editor of MaddowBlog and an MS NOW political contributor. He's also the bestselling author of "Ministry of Truth: Democracy, Reality, and the Republicans' War on the Recent Past."
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