One of the more intriguing developments following Donald Trump’s reelection as president is the announcement of and recruitment for the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE). Helmed by Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy, the new entity has titillated supporters of smaller government.
(An irresistible aside regarding the acronym DOGE: the Doge of Venice “was the highest role of authority within the Republic of Venice… The Doge of Venice acted as both the head of state and head of the Venetian oligarchy. Doges were elected for life through a complex voting process.” It seems Mr. Musk has a taste for the wry.)
In many ways, the reaction of both the DOGE’s supporters and detractors echoes that of the Reagan administration’s 1982 Grace Commission, which was “a group of ‘outstanding experts from the private sector’ that would conduct an in-depth review of the entire Executive Branch and make recommendations for eliminating waste and inefficiency.” Hamstrung by the opposition of both the burgeoning administrative state and Congressional Democrats, the Grace Commission, at best, served as a foundation for today’s DOGE. The most critical lesson being that “reduction” is not synonymous with “reform.”
Already, the DOGE has commenced identifying egregious examples of government waste, fraud, and abuse and is compiling a list of prospective administrative state entities to downsize and/or eliminate. Such serious reductions in both the expenditures and scope of the administrative state are long past overdue, as Ned Ryun and Mark Corallo earlier averred in “Tearing the Leviathan Apart” here at American Greatness.
Yet, in the MAGA and Republican-Populist movement’s rightfully indignant ardor to tame the unelected, unaccountable administrative state that is ruling Americans as a de facto supreme fourth branch of government, the necessary reductions and eliminations will not prove sufficient for sustainable structural reform. As we have painfully learned since the Grace Commission, a revanchist, ravenous administrative state can survive and metastasize despite periodic efforts to trim its size and scope. […]
— Read More: amgreatness.com
