Opinion: Trump’s second-term “efficiency” offering: microwaved leftovers

By Thomas L. Knapp

On Nov. 12, president-elect Donald Trump announced his second-term plans for a “Department of Government Efficiency” which will, in his words, “dismantle government bureaucracy, slash excess regulations, cut wasteful expenditures and restructure federal agencies.”

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

Such DOGE! Much wow! Working up a backronym from Elon Musk’s favorite memecoin wasn’t hard, but it’s probably the heaviest lifting involved we’ll see from the idea.

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

A “department” is a cabinet-level, executive-branch organization with broad powers to administer government operations using taxpayer money appropriated for its use by Congress. At present, 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 either a Presidential Commission or a Federal Advisory Committee. Several of the former and a thousand or so of the latter can be identified as operational at any given time, but few of them ever get much, or continuing, attention.

Why? Because Presidential Commissions and Federal Advisory Committees only get to do one thing: Make recommendations.

When it comes to recommendations on how to “dismantle government bureaucracy, slash excess regulations, cut wasteful expenditures and restructure federal agencies,” the difference between your conversation with a neighbor and DOGE’s recommendations comes down, mostly, to who’s buying the coffee donuts consumed during the talking.

DOGE may get some office space, a small staff, and a tiny budget to cover the coffee and donuts, but authority to make anything happen? Nope.

We’ve been here before, many times. History is littered with commissions and advisory committees. They’re among politicians’ favorite tools for convincing you they’re going to do things they have no intention of actually doing.

Even escalating from the commission/committee scam to requiring “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 each new one. Then he ordered government departments to do just that.

Oh, wait, no ... he ordered government departments to “identify” two regulations “to be eliminated” for each new one. No requirement that they actually BE eliminated, just that they be “identified.” Results:

As of three days before Trump’s inauguration, according to QuantGov’s Regulation Tracker, the Federal Register included 1,079,651 regulations. That number then increased, never dropping below the original number again for nearly two years, after which it began increasing again, totaling 1,089,742 on the day he left office.

This time, he’s not even letting such recommendation-making infiltrate the functional areas of government. He’s just microwaving his old guff and serving it to Musk, Ramaswamy, and you.

Business as usual, as usual.

Thomas L. Knapp is director and senior news analyst at the William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism