Moving DOGE to the Inside

A key executive order changes things, as does Ramaswamy’s exit.

The initial concept of the Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, was simply a group outside the government that would suggest how government could be pared down to size. Heavy hitters Elon Musk and onetime GOP presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy would work together as outsiders who had no dog(e) in the fight against overspending, overbearing, and obsolete government.

Now that President Donald Trump is back in office, though, there have been fairly significant changes in the plans.

First and foremost, DOGE is now a part of the government. Instead of creating an outside agency out of whole cloth, the Trump administration revamped an Obama-era entity called the United States Digital Service, stating in the executive order making the switch that DOGE will be formally the “United States DOGE Service … and shall be established in the Executive Office of the President.” In addition, “Each Agency Head shall establish within their respective Agencies a DOGE Team of at least four employees. … Agency Heads shall select the DOGE Team members in consultation with the USDS Administrator. Each DOGE Team will typically include one DOGE Team Lead, one engineer, one human resources specialist, and one attorney.”

This is important because using an agency that’s already part of the executive branch allows better access to information and personnel while limiting access for nosy people. The latter is true because Freedom of Information Act requests are usually not pertinent in the Executive Office of the President. With a termination date of July 4, 2026, by the time the lawsuits, which have already been filed by the usual left-wing suspects, make their way up the judicial system, the questions may be moot.

“Craig Holman, government affairs lobbyist for watchdog group Public Citizen, said the concern is both that Musk has incredible access to Trump and that he has managed to avoid falling under the ethics rules that most government officials who work with the president must abide by,” wrote David Drucker in The Dispatch. Not only is it too late, but it’s also hypocritical to suddenly be concerned about outside influence.

“Very good and clever lawyering on how this is set up,” Don McGahn, a Republican lawyer in Washington who served as White House counsel in the first Trump administration, told The Dispatch on Wednesday. “They clearly thought it through and did their homework.” Not only does the new DOGE agency avoid FOIA scrutiny, as its records fall under the Presidential Records Act, but its temporary nature is a workaround to the Antideficiency Act, which would otherwise prohibit the use of volunteer labor.

The smooth start for DOGE has overshadowed the decoupling of the dynamic duo at the top. Last week, Vivek Ramaswamy decided to leave DOGE in favor of a run for governor of Ohio next year. Given the size of the egos, as well as the unforced error of stepping into the H-1B visa controversy, which had Vivek railing about the “mediocrity” in American culture, it was inevitable the two would butt heads and break up. Ramaswamy also had a most convenient out thanks to a term-limited Ohio governor.

Ken Thomas and John McCormick reported in The Wall Street Journal, “The thinking had been that Ramaswamy would focus on deregulation and constitutional arguments for reducing government, both topics he had spoken about for years in his writings and on the campaign trail. Musk would focus on the technology piece of the mission and the use of artificial intelligence to reduce the federal workforce. Once the decision was made that DOGE wouldn’t be an outside entity, Ramaswamy knew it would conflict with his goal of running for governor in Ohio because of the disclosures and other requirements associated with being part of the federal government.”

Regardless of who is in charge, the agency’s idea is sound, and, as McGahn notes, a lot of thought has gone into its setup. A governmental agency with a built-in sunset date is a thing of beauty to behold! If DOGE can manage to overcome all the lawsuits, it can be part of a significant downsizing of government that’s been promised multiple times but never realized.

Time to trigger the trimming.

https://patriotpost.us/articles/114020-moving-doge-to-the-inside-2025-01-29