Government efficiency project has campaign ties

After the Nov. 5 election, President-elect Donald Trump said Elon Musk and former GOP presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy will lead a new “Department of Government Efficiency” (DOGE), which will not be a new government agency.

The goal of the two’s work is to see what federal government operations may not be needed or restructured for efficiency.

The acronym “DOGE” is a nod to Musk’s favorite cryptocurrency, dogecoin. Trump said in a statement that Musk and Ramaswamy will work from outside the government to offer the White House “advice and guidance” and will partner with the Office of Management and Budget to “drive large scale structural reform, and create an entrepreneurial approach to government never seen before.” He added that the move would shock government systems.

It’s not clear how the organization will operate. It could come under the Federal Advisory Committee Act, which dictates how external groups that advise the government must operate and be accountable to the public. As a Republican candidate for president, Ramaswamy explained how he thought the government could be restructured during his campaign stops in late 2023 in Creston and southern Iowa.

Trump said in his statement the two will “pave the way for my Administration to dismantle Government Bureaucracy, slash excess regulations, cut wasteful expenditures, and restructure federal agencies.”

Ramaswamy said then he wanted eight-year term limits for the bureaucracy.

“That is how you actually drain the swamp. We are not going to tinker around the edge and attempt to reform them,” he said.

He is in favor of a 75 % reduction in the number of federal bureaucrats and to reduce regulations that constrict the oil and gas industry plus further pursue nuclear energy.

“These are not black ideas or white ideas. These are not even Democrat ideas or Republican ideas. They are fundamentally American ideas we fought a revolution to secure in this country. I believe those ideals still exist. I’m running for president to revive them,” he said during his campaign.

Ramaswamy suspended his campaign in January and supported Trump.

Federal employees are generally required to disclose their assets and entanglements to ward off any potential conflicts of interest, and to divest significant holdings relating to their work. Because Musk and Ramaswamy would not be formal federal workers, they would not face those requirements or ethical limitations.

Ramaswamy said he also wanted to monitor and end, “the shadow government of the three-letter agencies that are really pulling the strings today.”

The president-elect has often said he would give Musk a formal role overseeing a group akin to a blue-ribbon commission that would recommend ways to slash spending and make the federal government more efficient. Musk at one point suggested he could find more than $2 trillion in savings — nearly a third of total annual government spending.

Trump had made clear that Musk would likely not hold any kind of full-time position, given his other commitments.

Ramaswamy said during his campaign he is in favor of term limits, but knows it will never pass. He prefers a maximum of two terms in the Senate and three in the House.

“It’s not going to happen because those in power won’t vote to limit themselves.”

He did have a plan to circumvent that.

“The real cancer is the three-letter agencies, millions of bureaucrats crawling around Washington D.C. If I can’t work more than eight years for you, neither should most of the federal bureaucrats,” he said.

During his campaign, he proposed a human resources policy that permits layoffs of said employees, not traditional job terminations.

“Every politician dances to the tune of their biggest donor. In that case, my biggest donor is me. I don’t want to be someone else’s circus monkey,” he said.

Associated Press contributed to this story.