Just because you name a new institution after the Republic of Venice's highest-ranking officer doesn't mean it's necessarily serious. We will no longer be talking about it this summer, predicted Michael Lind, a professor at the University of Texas at Austin.
The "DOGE," or Department of Government Efficiency, the mission entrusted to billionaires Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy to reduce the size of the federal government, got off to a bad start. First, on January 20, there was the resignation of one member of the duo, Ramaswamy, officially to run for governor of Ohio in 2026. Unofficially, because Musk had become fed up with this biotech entrepreneur. Sarcastic minds welcomed this "first budget cut."
Secondly, the DOGE has already been sued by non-governmental organizations for failing to respect the principles governing such commissions listed in a federal law (a fairly balanced make-up, a clear charter, meetings documents that are open to the public, etc.).
Chainsaw-wielding billionaires
Above all, it's hard to see how Musk will be able to keep his promise to find $1 trillion in savings, or one-sixth of the federal budget. (Admittedly, he initially targeted about $2 trillion!) He won't achieve this by cramming departments full of management algorithms. Reforming the government is not like reorganizing a Tesla production line. It's a long and highly political process that can't be improvised.
But the Musk method doesn't seem very well thought-out: "You fire in any direction you're going to hit a target," the billionaire said at a rally. The Department of Government Efficiency doesn't promise to be highly efficient.
Donald Trump is not the first president to have had the idea of creating such an "ax" committee. Theodore Roosevelt in 1905 (who also entrusted this task to a super wealthy individual, Charles Keep), William Taft in 1910; Franklin D Roosevelt in 1936; and Harry Truman in 1947 tried their hand at it. Each time, they ran up against Congress, which threw away a good part of their output. There's no doubt that Congress will also be able to appease the club of chainsaw-wielding billionaires. Since they have to be re-elected every two years, members of the House of Representatives are very sensitive to cuts, which are impossible to achieve without social – and therefore electoral – disruption.
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