DOGE Bar: What’ll It Be?
The currently unofficial, unfunded, “Department of Government Efficiency,” or DOGE, is open for business. Both Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy are leading DOGE.
DOGE’s potential efficiency targets run the gamut: regulations, wasteful spending, good spending, agency structures, expired programs, etcetera, etcetera. What’s on the DOGE menu? Pretty much anything at this point…or maybe not. Who knows at this point?
At this article location, there will be a running list of the most important things to know about what is happening and being offered at the DOGE Bar.
Less opinion, mostly facts, and (sadly) no beer.
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1/15/2025
Reporting by the New York Times, summarized in a Government Executive article, indicates that the DOGE will deploy non-governmental staff within government agencies, including within the central Executive Branch management agency of the President: the Office of Management and Budget (OMB). These persons will be categorized as a form of temporary workers who can only work for 130 days or less over the course of a full year.
Compensation is not certain, as Elon Musk stated previously that workers would not be paid. What seems more likely is that worker-bee types will, at some point, receive some kind of minimal government compensation if they are working in an agency. Higher-level types may not. Ultimately, many folks could eventually transition over to paid political positions of within agencies. There are thousands of open political positions at the start of a new Administration.
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1/8/2025
Elon Musk stated as part of an interview streamed on X that the DOGE’s target of a $2 trillion budget cut is a “best case outcome.” This statement suggests that the $2 trillion target may be unrealistic, and perhaps unlikely to be achieved. Indeed, he stated further during the interview that he thinks “if we try for $2 trillion, we’ve got a good shot at getting $1.”
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12/22/24
President-elect Donald Trump stated that Katie Miller, spouse of incoming Deputy Chief of Staff Steven Miller, will be joining DOGE.
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Through 12/20/2024
Elon Musk, with or without Vivek Ramswamy, reportedly helped tank a House of Representatives vote on a Continuing Resolution (CR) to temporarily fund much of the US federal government for the current fiscal year through March 14, 2025.
That CR was revived not long after failing in the House, with the same $117 billion level in emergency funding, mostly for disaster response and recovery, but without several other elements. The House and Senate passed the CR by wide margins, and President Biden signed the CR into law.
Beyond this, and up to the 2024 holidays, speculation on what the DOGE will do amounts to an assemblage of tweets, off-the-cuff statements, and non-DOGE proposals.
Perhaps most importantly, Elon Musk has stated he will seek $2 trillion in spending savings. During the last fiscal year (2024), the federal government spent $6.75 trillion. And so, if achieved, a $2 trillion budget cut amounts to about a 30% reduction on an annual basis.
Will DOGE stick to a proposal of this magnitude on an annual basis? Most often, budget change commitments are made over five- and ten-year budget windows. And, also often, savings offered by new Presidents typically focus on offsets to planned new spending. In the present situation, President-elect Trump says he’s planning a massively-expanded border security program that could cost hundreds of billions of dollars.
Ultimately, a multi-year spending reduction approach could be the likely fallback compromise that buys political acceptance and enables DOGE and the Trump Administration to claim victory. Still, under any budget window, $2 trillion in budget savings will be extremely difficult to achieve.