Virendra Pandit
New Delhi: After a stunning loss to their bitter foe Doland Trump in last week’s elections, the Democrats seem worried that the upcoming 47th President-elect is readying to ‘dismantle’ their erstwhile bastions in government bureaucracy through a new entity, the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), to be co-chaired by technology tycoons Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy, the Make America Great Again (MAGA) brothers.
The US President-elect has likened his plans to the Manhattan Project which led to the development of the atomic bombs, dropped in August 1945 on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in Japan to end the Second World War, launched the nuclear era, and made America replace Britain as the superpower.
“It will become, potentially, the Manhattan Project of our time,” Trump said about the DOGE, referring to the speedy operation during the Second World War to design the first atomic bomb at breakneck speed.
Trump said: “These two wonderful Americans (Vivek and Musk) will pave the way for my Administration to dismantle Government Bureaucracy, slash excess regulations, cut wasteful expenditures, and restructure Federal Agencies – Essential to the Save America Movement.”
Musk added his own bit to the official announcement. “(DOGE) will send shockwaves through the system, and anyone involved in government waste, which is a lot of people,” he said.
Hours after Trump named billionaire Musk and Ramaswami, a former Republican presidential candidate who withdrew candidacy to support Trump, to lead the DOGE to clean up federal bureaucracy, top US Democrat Senator Elizabeth Warren took a potshot at the decision: “The Office of Government Efficiency is off to a great start with split leadership: two people to do the work of one person. Yeah, this seems REALLY efficient,” she wrote in a post on X (formerly Twitter, now owned by Musk).
In a separate tweet, Warren criticized Trump’s choice of Fox News host Pete Hegseth as Secretary of Defence, stating that Hegseth lacks the qualifications for the role.
“A Fox and Friends weekend co-host is not qualified to be the Secretary of Defence. I lead the Senate military personnel panel. All three of my brothers served in uniform. I respect every one of our service members.” She also remarked.
“Donald Trump’s picks will make us less safe and must be rejected,” she added.
According to Trump, the newly established entity will operate independently of the formal government structure.
Trump proposed the establishment of a government efficiency commission as part of a series of economic plans he introduced in early September.
This is not the first time such a position has been created; previous politicians have also called for efficiency commissions. For instance, Republican President Ronald Reagan formed a similar entity, the Grace Commission, during his 1981-1989 term.
Trump said that Musk and Ramaswamy would work outside of traditional government structures to provide ‘advice and guidance’ to the White House and collaborate with the Office of Management and Budget to spearhead ‘large-scale structural reform. signaling the duo’s roles would be informal and not require Senate approval.
DOGE will be a wing in the next Trump government, which will take office with the new President’s inauguration on January 20, 2025.
Although clarity on the new entity’s structure is awaited, Trump said the Musk-Ramaswamy mission will aim at dismantling government bureaucracy, slashing excess regulations, cutting wasteful expenditures, and restructuring federal agencies.
It is being seen as a ‘biting dog’ of Elon Musk, the single-biggest person behind the MAGA machine that made Trump win. Musk may do to the US government what he did to Twitter aka X when he bought it: fire some 70 percent of employees.
The DOGE as a government agency is not exactly a new idea. Months ago, even when there was no guarantee that Trump would win, Elon Musk started talking about the Department of Government Efficiency. The name, like he so often does, was picked because it flies in the face of norms and normal sensibilities.