DOGE Doesn’t Think Big Enough
Near-daily news of the ambitious Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) project has dominated the first 50 days of the second Trump administration. DOGE was originally understood to be a commission that would generate a report identifying needed reforms, much like prior waste-reduction attempts, and confidence for significant change was low. The reality—a slash-and-burn ambush on federal agencies—has been far more gripping and aggressive than expected, but outcomes will still likely fall short of the improvements necessary to fully right the fiscal ship.
Experts were right to raise concerns and point out shortcomings in the “O.G.” DOGE plan. It wasn’t going to tackle mandatory spending—the primary culprit for our deepening debt. The project that aimed to eliminate waste and duplication was itself duplicative of other ongoing waste-reduction efforts. It was likely to run afoul of congressional authority over the federal purse strings. Still, the goal of reducing waste and increasing efficiency was and is a laudable one.
Unfortunately, DOGE in action, typified by massive layoffs, erroneous assumptions, abrupt reversals, and data requests on ambiguous authority, hasn’t addressed those shortcomings and seems far from its stated goals. Instead, sweeping actions have spawned massive uncertainty from veterans at the Department of Defense to study-abroad students and fellows who are stranded in foreign countries. It is unclear whether this fire-first, ask-questions-later approach is any improvement from the commission that was first imagined. It’s important to acknowledge that the virtual elimination of an entire federal agency like what was done with the U.S. Agency for International Development creates major challenges for affected workers who then have to navigate joblessness and affected grantees counting funds. But in terms of federal spending, on net, the end result is likely to be paltry compared to the promises made and the reforms taxpayers need to avoid fiscal calamity.
DOGE—and Congress—need to be thinking, much much bigger.
At the end of February, Comptroller General Gene Dodaro of the Government Accountability Office (GAO) testified before the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform about the GAO’s 2025 “High Risk List,” an annual report on areas of the federal government prone to “waste, fraud, abuse, or mismanagement.” With professional neutrality, Dodaro and his staff drove home the severe financial-accountability issues plaguing the programs on the list, some for many years without improvement. In response to a partisan jab aimed at the DOGE project, Dodaro, who is nearing the end of his 15-year term as comptroller general and his 51-year career at GAO, raised the big issue everyone–DOGE, the president, Congress—has been ignoring.
He explained that he has spent his career “butting heads with the bureaucracies across the government. There’s a need for change, but how you do it matters […] the way I’ve suggested in the past that this be done is [for] the government [to] figure out what functions it does not want to do anymore…”
This is the heart of the matter and the type of bigger thinking that needs to take place not only in Washington, but also by voters around the country. It is the crux of the spending crisis, the source of the immense frustration playing out through the reconciliation process, and a question that needs to be answered to achieve long-term prosperity and security.
Currently, any spending or revenue changes are walled in by a self-constructed prison of tradeoffs. Tax reform, farm bill, appropriations, and any other federal funding debate quickly comes down to “pay-fors” or “what can we change in an area we consider less important in order to pay for more of what we find important” rather than seeking savings or revenues for the purposes of debt reduction. We keep trying to do more with less when we need to do less with the same. The results of this bipartisan grasping are an increasingly broken budget process, an extremely frustrating legislative environment, and widespread disappointment with our elected officials.
Dodaro gave examples of where the government has asked for too much and fallen short, explaining that the Federal Emergency Management Agency is spread thin, managing more than 600 major disaster declarations—some of which are more than 20 years old. In the past, the GAO found that more than 20 different entities administered over 160 different programs aimed at providing housing assistance, yet statistics on homelessness remain stubbornly high.
Despite the long-term consequences (those, of course, are a problem for a future Congress), decision-makers keep looking for the most painless way to skim a few dollars here and there to get by, often relying on gimmicks, and never addressing the big, big questions about not just what we want our government to do but also about what it can do well. This is not only a fiscal imperative. As Dodaro stated, addressing these issues and improving the effectiveness and efficiency of our government in the long term will provide taxpayers a better return on their investment and “build better trust in our government institutions.”
The current DOGE playbook is missing this bigger picture, and shifting tactics can’t resolve that. The proper place for restraining waste, improving efficiency, and making key spending decisions is Congress. Just as it is the proper place to think bigger and ask what functions we expect from our federal government. Congress should stop ignoring the question and think much, much bigger.