AS president-elect Donald Trump finalises his dream team to make the United States great again, the most intriguing appointment is of Elon Musk and former Republican presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy to lead a newly created Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE).
Despite its name, the department is not a government agency, though it has been suggested that it is to help business tycoons, such as Musk, dodge government regulations by leveraging their wealth.
It is an advisory commission that, according to Trump, will work from outside government to offer the White House “advice and guidance” and partner with the Office of Management and Budget to “drive large-scale structural reform and create an entrepreneurial approach to government never seen before”.
Role model for the world?
DOGE is an undertaking which many countries in the world will be looking at closely, not only for its impact in the US but as a possible role model for their own governments.
This applies not only to Western allies of the US, where disillusionment and distrust
of government have become more pronounced as evidenced by recent polls and opinion surveys.
It is also found in countries in the developing world where the rapid and unchecked growth of their bureaucracies – increasingly bloated, outdated, unaccountable and corrupt – has hindered rather than contributed to their socioeconomic progress.
Trump explained that the surprise move was to shock government systems and to “pave the way for my administration to dismantle government bureaucracy, slash excess regulations, cut wasteful expenditures and restructure federal agencies”.
According to Musk, if DOGE succeeds, it can trim up to US$2 trillion (RM8.9 trillion) from the current US federal budget of US$6.4 trillion while Ramaswamy has touted that
it could reduce the number of federal employees by as much as 75%.
Trump has also been vocal that it is to address “massive waste and fraud” in government spending.
Less prominent in pronouncements on DOGE is that it is to drain the swamp and to battle the deep state that Trump and supporters see as the main reason for his inability to implement the policy reforms of his first term.
“Either the deep state destroys America or we destroy the deep state,”
the president-elect told supporters during his first rally of the 2024 election cycle.
This is easier said than done. Not only have previous attempts at trimming back the federal bureaucracy failed – the most recent during Ronald Reagan’s presidency – it can be expected that key forces within Congress, the federal bureaucracy and deep state actors will fight to kill off attempts at downsizing the bureaucracy as this will threaten their influence
and power.
Why it will fail
The campaign to disparage and stymie DOGE has already begun in earnest with US mainstream media giants, such as CNN and The New York Times, fully engaged in bad mouthing the proposed agency even before it has begun work.
The most favoured line of attack for now is that the new agency is an attempt at revenge and retribution by Trump.
Mainstream media voices are being joined by those from the American left, who are concerned that DOGE may be a tool for big businesses.
A recent report in Jacobin, a leading socialist print and social media outfit, described DOGE as “asinine and dystopian”, and expressed the hope that its relationship with the Trump administration “flames out spectacularly”.
There may be other possible outcomes, apart from flaming out, from this unprecedented attempt at institutional reform. The one with the highest possibility is that it will fade out – not spectacularly but probably with a whimper.
Conceived as an advisory task force – a high powered think-tank at best according
to Douglas Holtz-Eakin, former director of the Congressional Budget Office and now president of the centre-right American
Action Forum – there is no evidence of bipartisan support and budget to get its plans going.
DOGE is dependent on the persuasive power of Musk and Ramaswamy. Both are entrepreneurs without political experience to bring to the congressional jungle where their business prowess will not count for much.
Meanwhile, their promoter Trump will have bigger battles on his hands, so this particular “shock and awe” approach is likely to prove short-lived.
A second is that while DOGE may bring about some closure of governmental agencies, the process of downsizing through encouraging early retirement and voluntary departure will be more difficult than in the private sector.
There will be a thicket of legal and political challenges to overcome from progressive
and conservative quarters that have constituents who are a part or supportive of the federal bureaucracy elite ensconced in Washington DC.
As for draining the swamp and fighting the deep state, these too appear a losing battle. More likely is that even if the current Democrat swamp is drained, it will be a partial drainage and will be refilled with supporters from Trump’s own swamp looking out for their own rather than America’s interests and well-being.
The deep state, with its support groups embedded in the FBI, CIA, defence and justice departments and the military industrial complex, will be the hardest obstacle for DOGE to overcome.
The warning shots have already been fired at Trump. Expect these to continue with Musk and Ramaswamy as the latest targets.
Lim Teck Ghee’s Another Take is aimed at demystifying social orthodoxy.
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