Trump’s second-term ‘efficiency’ offer: microwave leftovers

On November 12, President-elect Donald Trump announced his second-term plans for a “Department of Government Efficiency” that, in his words, “will dismantle government bureaucracy, scale back excess regulations, cut wasteful spending, and restructure federal agencies .’

He assigns leadership of the “department” to the world’s most successful corporate welfare queen, Elon Musk, and to Vivek Ramaswamy, whose claim to fame is selling himself, not very well or successfully, to the public as a kind of Trump. Musk hybrid.

What a DOGE! Lots of wow! Coming up with a backronym for Elon Musk’s favorite memecoin wasn’t difficult, but it’s probably the hardest work we’ll see from the idea.

After noticing the joke and the jokers involved, the first and most important thing to understand about this new department is that it is not going to be a “department.”

A “department” is a cabinet-level organization with an executive branch and broad powers to conduct government operations using taxpayer dollars appropriated for use by Congress. Currently, there are 15 “departments” in the federal government, ranging from state (diplomacy), defense (the military) to justice (law enforcement).

DOGE, on the other hand, will operate as a presidential commission or as a federal advisory committee. A number of the former and a thousand of the latter may be classified as operational at some point, but few of them ever receive much or sustained attention.

Why? Because presidential commissions and federal advisory committees are allowed to do only one thing: make recommendations.

When it comes to recommendations on how to “dismantle government bureaucracy, scale back redundant regulations, reduce wasteful spending, and restructure federal agencies,” the difference between your conversation with a neighbor and DOGE’s recommendations largely comes down to who gets the coffee donuts buys that are consumed during coffee. the talking.

DOGE may get some office space, a small staff and a small budget to pay for the coffee and donuts, but the power to make anything happen? No.

We’ve been here before. History is littered with committees and advisory committees. They are among politicians’ favorite tools to convince you that they are going to do things that they have no intention of actually doing.

Even escalating the committee/committee scam to demanding “recommendations” from actual departments usually doesn’t accomplish much. For a recent example, look at Trump’s first term.

In 2016, Trump campaigned on eliminating two federal regulations for every new one. He then ordered government agencies to do just that.

Oh, wait, no…he instructed government agencies to “identify” two rules that “should be abolished” for each new one. No requirement that they actually BE eliminated, just that they be “identified.” Results:

According to three days before Trump’s inauguration QuantGov’s Regulation Trackerthe Federal Register included 1,079,651 regulations. That number then increased and never fell below the original number again for almost two years, after which it began to rise again, reaching a total of 1,089,742 on the day he left office.

This time, he is not even allowing such recommendations to infiltrate the functional areas of the government. He just microwaves his old guff and serves it to Musk, Ramaswamy and you.

Business as usual, as usual.