The “Manhattan Project”, the plan carried out by numerous scientists to develop the first nuclear bomb, is what President-Elect Donald Trump is calling his latest idea for his upcoming time in office. The official name of this administration will be called, DOGE, or the Department of Government Efficiency. Throughout his previous presidency and his last campaign period, Trump ran on ideas of drastic government spending cuts for any and all departments. Though his presidency hasn’t begun yet, he has announced this administration will be led by Vivek Ramaswamy, an American entrepreneur, and a Republican formerly running for office, and Elon Musk, the CEO of Tesla and SpaceX, and one of Trump’s largest supporters. Though not official yet, politicians across the federal government and citizens are asking numerous questions about the proposed administration and their goals. Many are asking what the agency will even be capable of, if it could even be created within the federal government, and where exactly they see decreases in spending occurring. The two proposed leaders of this organization have thanked Trump and stated how grateful they are for the opportunity to dispose of millions of unelected federal roles in the government. It’s unclear how exactly this administration will make these decisions, but this isn’t the first time an assignment of this type has been attempted in the federal bureaucracy.
In 1982, under Ronald Reagan, he famously created what was called the President’s Private Sector Survey on Cost Control in the Federal Government, or the Grace Commission. It got its name after the head of the Commission, J. Peter Grace. Reagan formed this commission to conduct an in-depth review of the executive branch and cut out cost and inefficiency where they saw it and each member of the commission was made up of individuals working in companies from the private sector. The task force was originally given 6 months to release their findings, but it ended up going on until 1984, and almost all of the recommendations were never used. The commission ended up with mixed reviews by people from both sides as there were some cost savings in certain areas, but overall there were 2,400 recommendations by the group with almost none coming to fruition.
Then, in 1993, Al Gore proposed the National Performance Review under Bill Clinton’s presidency. They aimed to create a government that worked more efficiently while cutting costs. The administration, however, did state they didn’t want this task force to be thought of as just cost cutting but a total rehabilitation of the federal government and measurement of how efficiently certain areas are running. Their task force was seen as a very effective venture with over 426,000 federal employees cut out of the workforce between 1993 and 2000. Additionally, they were able to save over $250 million in cost and cut out unnecessary programs and agencies the government no longer needed.
According to Trump, Musk, and Vivek, the Department of Government Efficiency will be a revolutionary initiative to drastically cut federal government spending in many areas the three deem unnecessary and wasteful. In an article in the Wall Street Journal, Elon and Vivek published an Op-Ed piece to explain further the goals of their administration. Elon and Vivek stated they aim to take advantage of recent Supreme Court cases that have restricted agency’s powers that haven’t had legislative approval. Through this, they can then use executive action to cut out unnecessary areas and bring back what they say is, power to the legislative branches on regulating agencies. They’re plan is very ambitious in nature as they plan to have over $500 billion cut out of the federal government by July 4th, 2026. They’ve chosen this monumental date because it will be America’s 250th birthday with much cause for celebration. Elon and Vivek plan to celebrate the occasion with greater oversight in the government and cutting out ‘unnecessary areas’. Before they published their article though, Elon decided to confront some of the areas he deemed unnecessary through his platform, X.
Musk, a large supporter of cutting government costs and creating efficiency, has decided to start his campaign by taking to X and outing specific government workers and asking taxpayers if they should be paying for the role, of ‘Director of Climate Diversification’ at the U.S. International Development Finance Corporation. After singling out the Director of Climate Diversification, Ashley Thomas, a woman with an engineering, business, and water science degree from MIT, she got so much backlash that she took down all forms of social media and has been silent since. It’s early to say if more cases will be brought forth on the chopping block in such a manner, but I found it excessive and very preemptive for a task force that hasn’t been officially established. It does shed some light on how they will approach this monumental task as they will surely not take into account the personal and financial lives of those they want to cut out.
Just as Oppenheimer was responsible for the first nuke dropped on the Island of Japan, so does this task force yearn to drop a similar metaphorical bomb on their own government. Elon, Trump, and Vivek have been known for their bursting personality in the past and this task force seems to give them the platform they so want. There also seem to be personal conflicts amongst this group. Elon, the owner of several large companies, may decide that certain ventures of his own are more important than others in the government. In particular, I mean his company SpaceX which receives funding from the US government and NASA.
There is still much to be decided and seen for this new administration and in time what they will actually be able to accomplish. Federal government workers will live in fear of their jobs, agencies will question their future existence, and others could see a large amount of their budgets vanishing within the next four years. All of our further questions will be answered shortly when Trump takes office in January 2025.