Donald Trump’s so-called “Department of Government Efficiency” (DOGE) is a classic Orwellian institution. It isn’t a governmental department, nor is it designed to promote efficiency. A genuine executive department would require an act of Congress, including the ability to overcome the Senate filibuster.
Its leadership would also require senatorial approval, and — as in some cases — assurances that it can operate in a bipartisan manner.
These are all things that Trump obviously does not want.
Instead, the DOGE is nothing but a glorified advisory committee. Considering its leadership, none of its recommendations are likely to promote governmental efficiency.
What is expected to come out of the DOGE is a plan to weaken the federal government’s regulatory capacities, especially as it relates to the financial sector.
It is important to note that there is already a government agency — a real one! — that audits the federal government and recommends ways to cut waste: the Government Accountability Office (GAO). Originally titled the Government Accounting Office, the GAO was founded in 1921 as part of the Budget and Accounting Act, which also created the critically important Office of Management and Budget.
For the last century these agencies have coordinated the process of budget management and evaluated the effectiveness of government programs and agencies.
Recently, several of the GAO’s reports have concluded that many governmental agencies are not meeting their mission, but the main culprit behind these substandard results is not excessive regulations, but inadequate funding.
As an example, on February 12, 2024, the GAO released its report on the Internal Revenue Source’s (IRS) audit rates. It found that between 2012 and 2022, the agency closed 16,812 audits of taxpayers who made between $500,000 and $1 million, but only closed 2,933 audits of taxpayers who made over $10 million. Essentially, the wealthier a taxpayer was, the less likely that person would be audited.
The main reason for this discrepancy was that the IRS lacked the resources to challenge the potentially fraudulent tax filings of multimillionaires and above.
Biden attempted to address this issue by including new IRS funding in the bipartisan Inflation Reduction Act. Meanwhile, Trump has promised to repeal the law.
Such fair analysis is not part of the purview of the DOGE.
Rather, it is there to create an ideological patina for eliminating agencies that have been a target of conservatives, especially those agencies that could a hinder the ability of DOGE’s leadership to make money.
Recently, Elon Musk, one of two chairs of the DOGE, has called for the elimination of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB).
The CFPB was formed in the aftermath of the Great Recession to ensure that banks could no longer engage in the type of widespread fraud — including flagrantly misleading consumers as to the terms of their mortgages — that led to the housing market crashing.
Musk’s animosity toward the CFPB is shared by his co-chair, Vivek Ramaswamy.
Ramaswamy, who describes himself as a “small-government crusader,” retweeted an article on Musk’s statement, writing “CFPB started under Elizabeth Warren less than twenty years ago, and consumers are no better off for its existence. Quite the contrary, actually.” Two days prior to his retweet, Ramaswamy posted a clip from billionaire and venture capitalist Marc Andreeesen, claiming that the CFPB was under the “personal control” of Senator Elizabeth Warren (D‑MA), that it got “to do whatever it wants,” and that it was responsible for major financial institutions “debanking” Trump supporters.
None of which is true.
In reality, the CFPB has been a critical agency defending everyday consumers against the abuses of the financial industry. Since its creation, the CFPB has saved Americans $17.5 billion, and imposed another $4 billion in civil penalties. The money from the civil penalties goes into a Victims Relief Fund, which provides compensation for consumers who were scammed by financial companies. This past year, the CFPB finalized rules that forced credit card companies to reduce their late fees from an average of $32 to $8.
The new regulations are expected to save Americans billions.
Most recently, the CFPB released a new rule that would regulate data brokers.
Under the new regulations, data brokers would be classified as “consumer reporting agencies.” This means that they would be obligated to ensure the accuracy of their data, had to guarantee that users had access to their own data, and were prevented from selling personal data to unsavory clients. The move is likely to have immense downstream impacts in protecting average Americans. Indeed, organized criminals regularly buy or steal personal information from data brokers to target victims.
In one example, hackers were able to steal three billion records — including social security numbers — from an insecure data broker.
In another, a federal judge’s son was murdered by a man who tracked down his victim after freely purchasing his private information from a data broker.
Noteworthy, Musk’s statement against the agency comes less than a week after the CFPB finalized its regulatory rules regarding digital wallet apps.
The new rules grant the CFPB regulatory oversight over these apps in the areas of privacy, surveillance, errors, fraud, and termination of services. Musk has been vocal about the fact that part of the reason he purchased Twitter was to transform the social media platform into an “everything app,” which would allow digital wallet services.
Furthermore, only a month after Musk purchased Twitter, which he calls X, the social media platform had to pay a $150 million fine to the Federal Trade Commission for asking users for personal information with the stated purpose of securing their accounts, only to then use that information for targeted ads.
What Twitter did was illegal, but perhaps the more damaging aspect is the relationship that the platform has with its “service providers.”
It is likely that few Twitter users realize that by signing onto the platform, they forfeit their information to several data brokers, who — until recently, when the CFPB decided to regulate them — paid Twitter for that information with very little oversight.
Trump might adopt populist rhetoric, and holler against the “deep state,” but his policy objectives are clearly directed at benefiting America’s most wealthy.
The DOGE, headed by fellow billionaires Musk and Ramaswamy, isn’t designed to make the federal government work better for average Americans, who are right to expect that their hard-earned tax dollars are being used wisely. It’s the opposite. It is designed to de-legitimize any federal regulatory agency that interferes with the ability of companies to scam, swindle, and scrounge Americans out of their money.
