The promise to cut spending and restore accountability in the federal government is usually dismissed as an unreachable political platitude. But the early returns on President Donald Trump and Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency are promising, and they should call on Congress to make the cuts permanent.
DOGE is poised to disrupt a complacent government of bureaucrats and finally cultivate accountability, transparency, and efficiency for taxpayers. After decades of rampant spending on ridiculous pet projects, it is well past time an agency was created to look inward and audit federal spending.
Trump should be commended for prioritizing this initiative and including it in his day-one presidential actions. It gives teeth to his campaign promise of unburdening the American people from the crippling consequences of government mismanagement.
The agency recently made headlines with its swift offensive against waste and abuse at the U.S. Agency for International Development. While it can be in America’s interests to distribute aid strategically to some foreign countries in rare circumstances, it is wholly inappropriate to use that funding to advance fringe progressive causes. Some of the lowlights include USAID sponsoring diversity, equity, and inclusion programs in Serbia, a transgender opera in Colombia, and a DEI musical in Ireland. These are just the tip of the iceberg. Thanks to DOGE, many of these wasteful policies will be identified.
In the coming weeks, Musk and his team will also likely target the massive amounts of healthcare spending and education funding. Together with other Trump Cabinet members, he will cut back gratuitous governmental expenses that drain our citizens’ pockets and undermine our national strength. Costly and anti-American DEI programs embedded throughout the government and at federally funded institutions and programs, including the U.S. military, and federal employees who lack motivation to serve the American people are high on the chopping block.
The top offending agencies in the initial cuts were the Department of the Treasury, with 21 DEI-related contracts canceled, and the Department of Health and Human Services, with 15 canceled. While the Office of Personnel Management only had three DEI contracts canceled, their funding amounted to a staggering $494 million. The current administration is doing well to weed out these astonishing misappropriations of taxpayer dollars.
Some 75,000 federal employees have already taken the “buyout” offered by Trump in the wake of his order to return to in-person work. This number amounts to about 3.3% of the federal workforce, but the administration has projected that nearly $100 billion can be saved if between 5% to 10% of eligible federal employees accept the offer.
DOGE also targets billions in annual federal expenditures that have never been authorized by Congress, such as $535 million for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, $1.5 billion for grants to international organizations, and nearly $300 million for left-wing groups such as Planned Parenthood. These causes do not serve Americans’ most fundamental needs and interests, ruthlessly draining their valuable resources.
Yet another way the administration intends to trim federal spending is by reevaluating the funds appropriated to the Department of Education. Billions of taxpayer dollars are mindlessly funneled to the department every year, despite its many signs of failure, the plummeting performance of students in publicly funded schools being the most concerning. Reforms will not only curb unnecessary spending burdening taxpayers and exacerbating the national debt but also upend the virtue-signaling policies and priorities of government-run institutions that sacrifice the welfare of future generations.
This pro-efficiency agenda is catching on across the country. DOGE has already inspired a cascade of parallel state-level efforts to slash government spending and increase accountability in Alabama, Arizona, Iowa, and Oklahoma.
While its initial success is encouraging, DOGE is set to close its doors in July 2026, and most of DOGE’s gains have been made through temporary executive orders. The next Democratic administration could wipe them out with the stroke of a pen.
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Trump and Musk should call on Congress to put the DOGE executive orders into law. This would prevent a future Democratic administration from erasing DOGE’s gains overnight. In fact, several members of Congress have already introduced legislation to codify the DOGE executive orders. By cementing DOGE in law, Trump and Musk will shield their legacy of government efficiency from the next big-spending administration, whether Democratic or Republican.
It’s long past time we recognize the reality of government overspending: It’s not only a superfluous, indulgent, and apathetic mismanagement of trillions of dollars, but a willful abuse of our citizens’ hard-earned funds.
Marc Short is the chairman of the board of Advancing American Freedom.