DOGE Project Needs Congressional Action to Avoid Being a Waste
This piece is in response to breaking news and has been updated. You can reach the scholar at pr@rstreet.org.
Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamey likely expected their Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) project to be met with jubilation, maybe even with parades in the street. Instead, even the hawk-iest of budget hawks have expressed some skepticism. To the ranks of outside observers and insider bean counters, news of suspected waste and inefficiency does not come as a surprise. Federal lawmakers could practically paper the globe under the litany of warnings, remedies, reports, and testimonies they have received on these issues from all quarters. Yet Congress, with the help of previous administrations, has done little to steer away from the debt catastrophe ahead.
Not being D.C. swamp creatures themselves, Musk and Ramaswamey unsurprisingly got things very wrong. It is easy to assume the state of persistent wasteful spending, organizational deficiencies, and growing debt must be due to misunderstanding and a paucity of data. Fortunately for the team at DOGE and their poor “employees”—who will be expected to work 80-hour weeks with no compensation—this is not the case.
Much of this essential work is currently underway on an ongoing basis, though better formatting and searchability is always welcome. Thanks to the excellent work of agencies and individuals, experts and outside organizations, trillions of dollars in waste and reforms have already been documented. This should speed up DOGE’s work considerably.
Here are just a few of those resources.
| Inside Sources |
| Government Accountability Office (GAO): Changes as a result of the GAO’s High Risk List have previously led to $100 billion in savings. The GAO also has 5376 open recommendations for improving outcomes and generating savings. |
| Congressional Budget Office (CBO): The CBO regularly publishes lists of large and small reforms that would generate hundreds of billions of dollars in deficit reduction. |
| Inspectors General (IG): IGs serve a critical role at federal agencies, rooting out fraud and abuse. For every $1 invested in the work of the IGs, taxpayers see a return of $26. |
| Whistleblowers: Whistleblowers are an essential source of savings and accountability against corruption or other government failing. Brave whistleblowers have saved taxpayers billions of dollars and brought significant institutional problems to light. |
| Congressional Investigators: It is common for legislators to have investigators on their staff or as part of the committee staff team who can help provide essential oversight. For example, a 2020 Senate Budget Committee report on housing found more than $50 billion is spent annually across 20 departments and 160 different unique programs. Some members of Congress also publish “waste books” which collect examples of unnecessary spending. |
| Outside Sources |
| Pig Book: Founded in 1984, Citizens Against Government Waste carries on the essential work of the famed Grace Commission, which shares many similarities with DOGE. Their famous Congressional Pig Book identifies pork barrel spending. |
| Green Scissors: This is a special project initiated by Taxpayers for Common Sense and Friends of the Earth and now includes R Street, U.S. Public Interest Research Group (U.S. PIRG), and Environment America. The strange bedfellows list billions of dollars in wasteful spending that is also harmful to the environment. |
| Toward Common Ground: This report from political odd-couple National Taxpayers Union Foundation and U.S. PIRG catalogs hundreds of billions of dollars in waste, efficiencies, and other reforms that the two can agree on, despite their different viewpoints. |
Still, for all the groundwork that has already been laid, DOGE could hit a few snags. In their joint Wall Street Journal piece, Musk and Ramaswamy call attention to the Department of Defense (DOD), which recently failed its seventh consecutive audit and remains the only federal agency to never have complied with the 1994 “Government Management Reform Act.” The GAO has cited the department for “serious financial management problems.” DOGE has promised to issue findings by July 4, 2025, but it will likely take more than a report for DOD to mend its ways.
The Pentagon famously buried a 2015 report from the Defense Business Board that would have saved $125 billion over five years. The prescribed changes would have “streamlined the bureaucracy through attrition and early retirements, curtailed high-priced contractors and made better use of information technology.”
Based on Musk and Ramaswamy’s description of DOGE, it appears they plan to focus efforts on the discretionary side of the ledger. It is important to reduce wasteful spending wherever it may be found and to make operational improvements where possible. Each dollar saved is one less (plus interest) taken out of the pocket of the next generation. In addition to the negative effect overspending has on our finances, free-flowing funds tend to create a cozy environment for misuse, fraud, and cronyism to flourish. These, in turn, can weaken institutional trust, perpetuate inequality, and undermine the goals of the agency or program.
But if the DOGE bros want to have a significant impact on the fiscal health of the federal government, they can’t ignore the growing black hole that threatens to send our debt in an unrecoverable spiral: Social Security and Medicare. Again, like the resources already listed, there is no shortage of warnings or reform recommendations on the table. These are extremely well documented and the window for modest reforms is closing. Unfortunately, Musk and Ramaswamey’s incoming boss has long promised to keep such changes off the table.
Though this is bad news for the economic outlook, there is probably a degree of secret relief among decision-makers who dread the potentially unpopular votes and tough choices necessary to turn the tide of debt. Members of Congress, after all, are the ones who have allowed this state of affairs to continue unabated for so long.
Reports, while important, on their own have limited value. Remember, the forebear of DOGE, the Grace Commission, made over 2,500 recommendations, very few of which were actually implemented by Congress. DOGE leadership has laid out a constitutionally dubious course of action that relies heavily on executive fiat in order to get around the people on the east end of the Mall. This sets an extremely dangerous precedent and is likely self-defeating, rendering the DOGE project itself duplicative. Congress remains the rightful holder of the purse strings, regardless of how well they wield this power.
Therein lies the rub. We do not perish for lack of information, but for want of political will. Rather than add to the waste pile, DOGE leaders should outfit our legislators with shiny new spines.