Yes to DOGE's Aims; No to DOGE's Means
The fiscal aims and potentials of DOGE are admirable, but the institution needs to work under legality and honesty.
Let’s face it: The federal government is disgustingly bloated.
According to the Treasury Department, the federal government spent $6.75 trillion in fiscal year (FY) 2024. Already in FY 2025, nearly $1.8 trillion has been spent. And if you thought the government is only spending money it has on hand, you’d be dead wrong. In FY 2024, only $4.92 trillion was collected in revenue, meaning that the U.S. ran a deficit of $1.83 trillion, and we’re already running a deficit of $711 billion this fiscal year. Now, after countless years of the federal government running deficits, America is in debt $36.22 trillion deep. That debt carries a higher price tag than the last five years of total federal government spending.
America’s finances are in dire straits, and we’re only setting ourselves up for deep pain in the future if the nation doesn’t start getting its books in order.
Enter DOGE.
President Donald Trump created the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) to modernize “Federal technology and software to maximize governmental efficiency and productivity.” With Elon Musk at its helm, the primary way DOGE sells itself as boosting efficiency and productivity is by targeting what it deems to be wasteful spending and attempting to downsize the federal government. Musk himself has described DOGE as “the wood chipper for bureaucracy.”
Indeed, there can be a good amount of waste DOGE can cut. (Though this will all mean virtually nothing fiscally speaking if the biggest drivers of spending aren’t reformed. More on that below.) In an unsympathetic New York Times profile of Elon Musk’s crusade as DOGE lord, the Times admitted an estimated that $236 billion in improper payments were made across 71 federal departments in FY 2023. It would be good news if DOGE could put an end to costly wastes like this.
So, I wish DOGE all the luck in cutting back on spending and shrinking the size of the government. I just want it to do so the right way. DOGE can boast of saving a couple million dollars here, another million there, but the agency and its friends have a nasty tendency of seeping into dishonesty and probable lawlessness.
Take the recent controversy over the shuttering of USAID, for example.
The United States Agency for International Development (USAID) became the target of Musk’s ire in the past two weeks, leading to the Trump Administration laying off thousands of employees and moving to merge the agency with the State Department. At the heart of the complaints against USAID is disapproval of how the agency was managing its funds and awarding grants. Money has gone to fund an Iraqi version of Sesame Street, organizations linked to terrorists linked to the Houthis and Hamas, and Diversity Equity & Inclusion (DEI) initiatives in Serbia.
Though USAID has done plenty of good work, like giving money to a hospital in Jerusalem, rebuilding schools in war-torn Mali, and combatting sex trafficking, it is clear that too much money was being wasted on useless and even counterproductive ends. Since it’s easy enough to point to the bad uses of USAID money (your money), why do the allies of DOGE feel the need to lie about it?
For instance, there’s been a lot of talk about USAID’s so-called “woke” funding. Plenty of this is true, but then you have claims such as the agency spending $70,000 on a DEI musical in Ireland and $32,000 for a transgender comic book in Peru. White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt has even repeated these claims in a news conference. Money was, in fact, being spent on these two weird projects, but, contra Leavitt, they were funded by the State Department, not USAID.
But the biggest pool of lies and half-truths have been told about the agencies’s supposed “funding” of media companies. Elon Musk recently targeted outlets like Politico for receiving money from the government. The White House soon announced it was terminating $8 million for “funded media outlets like Politico” that supposedly USAID was providing. But those supposed funds were for a special in-depth subscription service the outlet provided called Politico Pro, and that $8 million number was the collective total of all government agencies paying for the service, of which USAID was a minuscule contributor — $44,000 over two years. A Politico executive told The Washington Post that the entire federal government spends over $16 million on Politico subscriptions, and other outlets (which Musk is also targeting) have received subscription revenue from the government for years. And notably, the Post also reported that Republicans in the House of Representatives (including the Office of the Speaker of the House) last year spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on their own special Politico Pro subscriptions.
Now, I’m not upset about Politico or any other media outlet losing this money. What I am upset about is all the dishonesty that DOGE allies have been wallowing in when the simple facts alone are enough for them to win the argument.
But other than the dishonesty, the potential lawlessness DOGE has been engaged in is probably the agency’s most troubling trend.
Thanks to DOGE, the White House has been working to dismantle USAID, but there are serious questions about the legality of all this. As the WORLD News Group noted, the law does not permit the president to alter USAID without congressional approval, and Congress has continued to appropriate more money to be spent through USAID. Congress has not been consulted about any of this. Still, it is not clear whether or not the law has been violated, but line into illegality is definitely being blurred. Already, the courts are placing roadblocks in the White House’s way of dismantling the agency, so we’ll see how this gets litigated.
DOGE may have admirable goals (then again, it might be seeped with less admirable intentions), but if the agency hopes to serve the American people, it must operate without caving into quick, dishonest political hits and stay confined within the letter of the law. The more DOGE engages in dishonesty and lawlessness, the greater excuse it gives the projects of future presidents with different ideological commitments to double down on dishonesty and lawlessness of their own.
Finally, it is all well and good to cut Politico subscriptions and whatnot, but we need to keep in mind that if DOGE continues to pursue small targets, America’s spending and debt crisis will continue to get worse. Two-thirds of the federal budget is devoted to mandatory spending (spending that is required by law) like Social Security and Medicare. Making any impactful cuts requires making needed reform to these big spending programs. Musk has signaled he will look into waste within the Social Security apparatus involving checks allegedly going to dead people, but this is still insufficient in dealing with spending.
If DOGE wants to cut government spending effectively, it will have to target the biggest players in federal spending. I totally support going after the low hanging fruit. That's better than nothing. But as of now, the agency has shown little enthusiasm for making a real difference fiscally speaking.
I hope DOGE will be wildly successful, but let’s face it: DOGE has given little to hope for.