Over time, more will be known about how DOGE operated and what impact DOGE has had. But it seems that even Musk would agree that DOGE has failed to expose the massive fraud that exists in the government.
DOGE is believed to serve a “higher purpose”
While Musk is focusing on the federal budget fraud, his allies in the government and Silicon Valley have begun to cast anyone criticizing DOGE as a failure to achieve promised goals, as missing DOGE’s “higher purpose,” The Guardian reported.
Five associates, granting permission to remain anonymous to discuss DOGE’s goals, told The Guardian that DOGE was intended to “fundamentally” reform government by eliminating “taboos” around hiring and firing, “expanding the use of untested technologies, and reducing resistance to boundary-pushing start-ups seeking federal contracts.” Now, Musk’s aides said, the federal government can operate like a company.
The Cato Institute, a libertarian think tank, celebrated DOGE for causing “the largest peacetime workforce reductions on record,” even while acknowledging that DOGE had little impact on federal spending.
“It is important to note that DOGE’s goal was to reduce the budget in absolute real terms without reference to a baseline projection. DOGE did not cut spending by any standard,” the Cato Institute reported.
Currently, DOGE still exists as a decentralized entity, with DOGE employees assigned to various agencies to cut down alleged waste and detect alleged fraud. While some fear the White House may choose to “reinvigorate” DOGE to make more government-wide cuts in the future, Musk has said he would never again lead a government effort like DOGE and the Cato Institute said “the evidence supports Musk’s decision.”
“DOGE had no notable impact on the trajectory of spending, but it reduced federal employment at the fastest pace since President Carter, and possibly before,” the institute reported. “The only possible analogy is demonetization after World War II and the Korean War. It is more important to reduce spending, but there is no objection to cutting the federal workforce, and Musk should consider the impact of DOGE more positively.”
Although the Cato Institute joined colleagues in praising DOGE’s dramatic contraction in the federal workforce, Ellen Kamark, director of the Center for Effective Public Management at the Brookings Institution, told Ars in November that DOGE “cut the muscle, not the fat” because “they really didn’t know what they were doing.”
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