Gene Healy at the Cato Institute has an excellent piece about The libertarian DOGE derangement syndrome. He claims that libertarians are hard to please. Here you have DOGE taking the knife to agencies that we libertarians have long argued are unconstitutional or destructive and need to be cut, and still we are not happy.

Healy is correct. The same idea has crossed my mind as I — as he notes in his piece — have mixed feelings about DOGE. I’m bullish on the ends that the DOGE team is pursuing. I believe that DOGE can make an incredible difference in addressing fraud and improper payments and in bringing about necessary technological improvements to our massively outdated government. But I have some trepidation about its means of doing so. A few weeks ago, I wrote a piece for Reason about my thoughts on the topic, which you can find here.

I will admit that while writing that piece, I got to thinking a lot about what a weird bunch we libertarians are. On one hand, we are radicals — we oppose a great many government programs and actions that most people support. At the same time, we also have a principled attachment to process and the rule of law. And, in addition, we recognize that who does what matters enormously. The ends don’t justify the means, and all that. In other words, we want to achieve radical ends but in very disciplined — shall we say, nonradical — ways.

With this in mind, Healy writes :

Be careful what you wish for, Veronique de Rugy cautions in Reason. When one president “circumvents legal constraints to impose libertarian-leaning policies,” the next can use “the same unchecked powers to expand government.” In the worst case, DOGE could leave us with a “presidency on steroids,” “opening the door to the same abuse when the left is in power.”

That’s sound advice in general, but in this particular case, I’m struggling to come up with true nightmare scenarios.

There are three main areas where DOGE might further weaken the remaining constraints on executive power:

• Impoundment: The administration insists the “power of the pen” trumps Congress’s power of the purse, and the president can simply nullify appropriations he doesn’t like.
• Bypassing Senate confirmation: They’ve also played fast and loosewith Musk’s legal status, arguably flouting the Constitution’s Appointments Clause.
• Expanded removal powers: And they’ve claimed sweeping authorityto pink-slip federal employees en masse, civil-service protections notwithstanding.

Which of these moves, if successful, would spell doomsday for libertarians when “the left is in power”?

Is the big threat here impoundment? Beware, lest come 2029, President Gavin Newsom starts zeroing out all the agencies libertarians like? (NASA geeks and “state capacity libertarians” hardest hit).

Is it bypassing the Senate? Will Newsom govern through unconfirmed apparatchiks? What if he enthrones a “pay czar” to determine CEO salaries or a “car czar” who calls the shots for US auto manufacturers?

Or is it the threat to federal civil-service laws that’s supposed to keep libertarians up at night? If Trump’s “Schedule F” gambit succeeds, will President Newsom pack the commanding heights of the administrative state with Democratic loyalists?

Please read the whole thing; it’s worth it.

I agree with Healy on all these points. My worries about DOGE were never that Democrats would come to power and cut spending further or fire even more bureaucrats. In a sense, then, this section isn’t really about what I wrote, although it starts with my quote.

But it gives me an opportunity to spell out my worries. To be sure, they are broader than DOGE itself. These worries are more about the signal that this administration is sending about the role of the executive branch and how far it can stretch its interpretation of the powers delegated to it by Congress. The whole Trump-administration vibe is that the executive has enormously expansive — indeed, imperial — power. (No one has documented the rise and dangers of the imperial presidency better than Healy has done.)

From the start, this administration has made no apologies for using these powers to their full potential, even testing how far they can push it. I don’t like it, but in addition, I do worry about what future Democratic administrations could do with this encompassing theory of an imperial executive branch. I have little doubt that they will devise yet newer ways to use these powers to achieve their progressive ends.

DOGE is part of this enterprise. Its entire messaging is that it is cutting spending without the need for Congress. Consequently, even without assuming that DOGE is doing anything illegal (on this topic, this is a must-read), we should be nervous about what it may mean in the hands of those who don’t want to cut spending. Democrats could, for instance, find impoundment powers handy, as Healy concedes:

I think impoundment is a power grab worth worrying about — but not because I fear a future president may cut too much (don’t threaten me with an imaginary good time). Instead, the risk is that presidents will use budget-slashing authority to punish legislators who don’t fall into line — further accelerating our slide toward one-man rule.

Where does it leave us? I am not sure. Time will tell if DOGE succeeds in permanently shrinking the size and scope of government. Time will also tell what Democrats do when they are again in power.