Former U.S. President Donald Trump has announced a plan to create a government efficiency commission led by Tesla CEO Elon Musk if re-elected president. This commission would conduct a financial and performance audit of the entire federal government. Musk is pushing the idea of the Department of Government Efficiency (D.O.G.E.), emphasizing concerns about government overspending.
Subsequent comments set a $2 trillion reduction out of a total federal spending of something approaching $7 trillion.
Some History
A few data points to begin. When the United States closed the gold window in 1971, unleashing all hell on the idea of money and, therefore, fiscal discipline, federal spending was $210 billion. In 2007, the year before the great financial crisis, spending was $2.7 trillion. Then came TARP, and all types of supposedly one-time programs, raising spending to $3.5 trillion in 2009. I say “supposedly one-time,” because the feds never looked back.
By 2019, the years before the planned-demic, spending grew to $4.4 trillion, almost all of the growth coming under Trump’s watch (with Republican support or a split congress). Then, the gusher: in 2020, $6.5 trillion – all the various programs to help those poor covidians (in reality, it was all a financial system bailout – the fake illness was just the pretext; once the scam began, every department found a way to not let the crisis go to waste). Did the number shrink post-covid? No, current estimates are $6.75 trillion.
To cut $2 trillion from this amount shouldn’t be so tough – just take government back to 2019 levels. Before the fake illness, before the fake president. Does anyone feel like the government was somehow starved then, like we didn’t have enough state?
Let’s start with “Department”
I know DOGE is just a cute name, but names come with a mentality, forming a purpose. How many government departments, once created, have ever been shut down or shrunk?
In other words, please don’t form a department. It will be staffed, and soon enough those on the staff will have a reason to perpetuate the existence of another department.
And this might be the worst department ever to perpetuate…
“Government Efficiency”?
First of all, this is an oxymoron. In order for any institution to be motivated toward efficiency, a few things are required: revenue from willing customers, and the idea of profit and loss. The government has neither of these.
The government need not satisfy its customers in order to collect revenue; it doesn’t even collect revenue from its customers in any case. Those who pay into the federal government do so because prison is the other option.
Further, profit and loss are irrelevant to the federal government. It can tax, print, or borrow to offset any deficits, and can do this almost indefinitely (with the sole form of discipline being an eventual destruction of the currency, the timing of which is unknown and unknowable).
But there is a bigger problem: do I want the government to more efficiently kill innocents overseas; more efficiently spy on me; more efficiently incarcerate perpetrators of victimless crimes; more efficiently process illegal aliens? Oh, the list can go on.
Almost all that the government does are things that I do not want the government to do. So why would I want the government to be more efficient at any of these?
So, Now What?