Trump’s ‘efficiency’ bid for a second term: Microwaved leftovers

On November 12, President-elect Donald Trump announced his second-term plans for a “Department of Government Efficiency,” which he said would “abolish government bureaucracy, burden excessive regulation, cut wasteful spending, and restructure federal agencies.”

He assigns leadership of the “department” to the world’s most successful corporate welfare queen, Elon Musk, and Vivek Ramaswamy, whose fame lies in trying – not very well and unsuccessfully – to sell himself to the public as some sort of Trump/Musky Hybrid.

Such a DOG! Lots of wows! Creating a backronym from Elon Musk’s favorite memecoin wasn’t difficult, but it was probably the hardest task we’ve seen for this idea.

After noticing the joke and the jokers, the first and most important thing to understand about this new section is that it will not be a “section”.

A “department” is a cabinet-level organization with executive branch authority that has broad authority to administer government operations using taxpayer dollars appropriated for its use by Congress. Currently, the federal government consists of 15 “departments”, ranging from state (diplomacy), defense (military), and justice (law enforcement).

On the other hand, DOGE will act as a Presidential Commission or Federal Advisory Committee. A few of the former and about a thousand of the latter can be identified as operating at any given time, but few of them receive much or sustained attention.

Why? Because presidential commissions and federal advisory committees can only do one thing: make recommendations.

When it comes to recommendations on how to “abolish government bureaucracy, cut excess regulation, slash wasteful spending, and restructure federal agencies,” the difference between Talk to Your Neighbor and DOGE’s recommendations comes down largely to who buys the coffee donuts consumed while talking.

DOGE may get some office space, a small staff, and a small budget for coffee and donuts, but the power to get anything done? NO.

We have been here many times. History is full of commissions and advisory committees. They are one of politicians’ favorite tools to convince them that they will do things that they actually have no intention of doing.

Even escalating from committee/committee fraud to requiring “recommendations” from actual departments usually doesn’t accomplish much. As a recent example, let’s look at Trump’s first term.

In 2016, Trump campaigned on eliminating two federal regulations for every new one. He then ordered government departments to do just that.

Oh wait, no… he ordered government departments to “identify” two regulations “to eliminate” for each new one. There is no requirement that they actually BE eliminated, just that they be “identified”. Results:

As of three days before Trump’s inauguration QuantGov Regulation TrackerThe Federal Register contained 1,079,651 regulations. This number then increased, never again falling below the original figure for almost two years, before it began to rise again, reaching a total of 1,089,742 on the day he left office.

This time, he is not even allowing such recommendations to penetrate the functional areas of the government. He just microwaves his old crap and serves it to Musk, Ramaswamy and you.

Business as usual, business as usual.