Will Rinehart assesses the potential for one of Donald Trump’s new ideas to yield positive changes.

I felt hopeful when President-elect Donald Trump announced that entrepreneurs Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy would lead what Trump calls the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) with the aim of tackling government waste.

While the “department” is not a government agency and details are lacking, Trump has said that DOGE will “provide advice and guidance from outside of Government, and will partner with the White House and Office of Management & Budget to drive large scale structural reform, and create an entrepreneurial approach to Government.” And all of this is to be done “no later than July 4, 2026,” the 250th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence.

Musk has been more explicit in his goals, however unrealistic. He wants to cut $2 trillion from the budget, do away with what he calls the “Kafkaeque” rules of government, and make it easier to fire bad employees. …

… Given these constraints, DOGE could be effective by focusing on more mundane problems in government rather than radical changes. It should work to clear the backlog of already proposed reforms, make processes more rational, and solicit reforms from people working in government. They wouldn’t be flashy changes, but they could actually make things better. …

… What DOGE should tackle is fraud, which is a known problem. According to the Government Accountability Office’s first ever study of the problem, released late last year, the federal government likely loses between $233 billion and $521 billion annually to fraud. During the pandemic alone, the Small Business Administration’s Office of Inspector General estimated the agency disbursed $200 billion in potentially fraudulent payments, between 11 and 15 percent of its total spending. …

… There is also a similar sort of tension in undoing the regulatory state. While Musk seems more focused on cutting the size of government, Ramaswamy has been talking about curbing bureaucratic regulations, which he characterizes as a legal mandate from the Supreme Court.