FAFO. Nothing encapsulates the 2024 election better than this oft-meme’d acronym for Fuck Around & Find Out.
We’ve already fucked around.
Now we are finding out.
In fact, we just found out what Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy have in store for us all, not just the 76,800,539 (as of 1pm today) voters who fucked around with electing Trump.
They just published their grand plan to dismantle the government in a Wall Street Journal OP-ED: The DOGE Plan to Reform Government
In many ways, it kinda speaks for itself. In other ways, there is a lot to read in-between the lines. So, let’s do that … let’s break it down and consider the implications of two unelected billionaires setting out like a tech bro Bill & Ted on an adventure that’s sure to deliver tangible benefits to them and their business interests while, at the same time, passing along the costs to millions of Americans whose futures now depend on the whims of financially insulated dilettantes.
We’ll take it paragraph-by-paragraph. Boldface will highlight key words and phrases.
Our nation was founded on the basic idea that the people we elect run the government. That isn’t how America functions today. Most legal edicts aren’t laws enacted by Congress but “rules and regulations” promulgated by unelected bureaucrats—tens of thousands of them each year. Most government enforcement decisions and discretionary expenditures aren’t made by the democratically elected president or even his political appointees but by millions of unelected, unappointed civil servants within government agencies who view themselves as immune from firing thanks to civil-service protections.
First, let’s address the irony … or the hypocrisy … of two unelected, unappointed billionaires who are immune from more than just firing … their money immunizes them the impact their plan will have on thousands of civil servants and millions of Americans who may see a much-needed program or a job disappear overnight.
And that’s to say nothing of the intended economic impacts that could cascade from mass firings.
Second, it is true that Congress passes laws, but it doesn’t make the rules. Laws can be vaguely written, sometimes intentionally so and sometimes inadvertently. Sometimes the law doesn’t anticipate everything required to ensure the broad directive of guaranteeing clean water, for example. Agencies are charged with implementing laws and that leads to rules … so-called “rulemaking.” And there’s no doubt, rulemaking can go wonky.
Mostly, that’s because the industries being regulated by a new law get a chance to directly lobby the rulemakers as they make the rules. Often the people lobbying the “bureaucrats” making the rules are people who once worked at the agency they are lobbying. Or they are “hopeful” that someday they might walk through a revolving door into the industry targeted by the rules they are making.
As I discovered when I looked into Dodd-Frank, it’s a process akin to “making sausage.” It’s also true that when the rulemaking goes wonky, it’s usually in industry’s favor. That’s due to the “corporate capture of agencies” that RFK Jr. complains about with some regularity.
Now back to the manifesto and “this” problem of immune bureaucrats…
This is antidemocratic and antithetical to the Founders’ vision. It imposes massive direct and indirect costs on taxpayers. Thankfully, we have a historic opportunity to solve the problem. On Nov. 5, voters decisively elected Donald Trump with a mandate for sweeping change, and they deserve to get it.
A “mandate for sweeping change”? Hmmm.
The Presidential vote tally is still coming in ... but as of noon today:
Trump: 76,800,849 votes (49.9%)
Harris: 74,243,329 votes (48.3%)
And CNN’s data guru Harry Enten noted the less-than-sweeping nature of Trump’s win:
Long story-short, Trump had a solid victory in which about 77 out of approximately 262 million voting-age Americans voted for him. That’s less than one-third. It is frankly laughable to claim a mandate for “sweeping change.”
Sweeping-up? Sure.
Sweeping change? No.
But that’s not going to stop Elon and Vivek.
President Trump has asked the two of us to lead a newly formed Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, to cut the federal government down to size. The entrenched and ever-growing bureaucracy represents an existential threat to our republic, and politicians have abetted it for too long. That’s why we’re doing things differently. We are entrepreneurs, not politicians. We will serve as outside volunteers, not federal officials or employees. Unlike government commissions or advisory committees, we won’t just write reports or cut ribbons. We’ll cut costs.
They are “not politicians,” or “federal official or employees.” They are completely unaccountable and, should anything go wrong or generate unintended consequences, what recourse will there be for the American people who’ll no doubt bear the full brunt of every “cut” they make?
We are assisting the Trump transition team to identify and hire a lean team of small-government crusaders, including some of the sharpest technical and legal minds in America. This team will work in the new administration closely with the White House Office of Management and Budget. The two of us will advise DOGE at every step to pursue three major kinds of reform: regulatory rescissions, administrative reductions and cost savings. We will focus particularly on driving change through executive action based on existing legislation rather than by passing new laws. Our North Star for reform will be the U.S. Constitution, with a focus on two critical Supreme Court rulings issued during President Biden’s tenure.
Note that the rescissions, reductions and savings will be based on “executive action based on existing legislation rather than by passing new laws.”
The irony (or the hypocrisy) is that they plainly admit they’ll been interpreting existing legislation to find justifications for executive action “rather than by passing laws.”
That differs little from unelected bureaucrats they criticize for generating rules based on their interpretation of new and existing laws. In fact, it’s worse. They are basically looking for loopholes in laws that they can use to turn themselves into extra-constitutional arbiters who, in turn, will commandeer the “executive action” of the Presidency to execute their agenda.
But wait, there’s more …
In West Virginia v. Environmental Protection Agency (2022), the justices held that agencies can’t impose regulations dealing with major economic or policy questions unless Congress specifically authorizes them to do so. In Loper Bright v. Raimondo (2024), the court overturned the Chevron doctrine and held that federal courts should no longer defer to federal agencies’ interpretations of the law or their own rulemaking authority. Together, these cases suggest that a plethora of current federal regulations exceed the authority Congress has granted under the law.
Here is where the rubber will meet the road. The Federalist Society has spent the better part of three decades engineering the court for this exact outcome. Those two decisions do exactly what they claim … but until today, it was widely expected that regulations would be picked off through due process in the courts. Polluter Inc. would take the EPA to court to overturn a regulation affecting their Poison Plume-maker plant and the courts would overturn the rule. But now, Elon and Vivek intend on cutting the due process out the system. I guess no one told them that due process is the cornerstone of the system. They prefer to “move fast and break things.”
DOGE will work with legal experts embedded in government agencies, aided by advanced technology, to apply these rulings to federal regulations enacted by such agencies. DOGE will present this list of regulations to President Trump, who can, by executive action, immediately pause the enforcement of those regulations and initiate the process for review and rescission. This would liberate individuals and businesses from illicit regulations never passed by Congress and stimulate the U.S. economy.
It does seem apropos that a tech bro who wants to put his Neuralink data port directly into your brain is also planning on turning the President into his personal Terminator. And don’t sleep on the “aided by advanced technology” part of the plan. We don’t know who is providing that tech, but they will have access to a great deal of valuable data as they pore over various agencies in search of whatever is deemed to be “waste, fraud or abuse.”
Will we ever get a definition of “waste, fraud or abuse”? Or will it be arbitrary? Will it just be Elon’s judgment? Or Vivek’s whim?
It’s important to know the metrics by which everything will be judged. That’s because Elon in particular will benefit from the economic “stimulation” of cutting rules and regs … since his deadly cars and robotaxis, and incredibly destructive, polluting satellite launches all face regulatory scrutiny.
Who will scrutinize DOGE? Or its conflicts of interest?
Elon’s companies have massive government contracts. What about waste, fraud and abuse in those programs?
Unfortunately, as an unelected, unappointed “volunteer” there is no real way to hold him accountable … which, ironically or hypocritically, is the argument he’s using to attack rulemaking bureaucrats.
When the president nullifies thousands of such regulations, critics will allege executive overreach. In fact, it will be correcting the executive overreach of thousands of regulations promulgated by administrative fiat that were never authorized by Congress. The president owes lawmaking deference to Congress, not to bureaucrats deep within federal agencies. The use of executive orders to substitute for lawmaking by adding burdensome new rules is a constitutional affront, but the use of executive orders to roll back regulations that wrongly bypassed Congress is legitimate and necessary to comply with the Supreme Court’s recent mandates. And after those regulations are fully rescinded, a future president couldn’t simply flip the switch and revive them but would instead have to ask Congress to do so.
It will, of course, be executive overreach. But that’s the overreaching executive the Supreme Court was designed to protect. And it’s also true that Congress has failed repeatedly over the years to assert itself and its Constitutional primacy. That, in turn, could turn into a long digression on the Imperial Presidency … but, let’s not. Instead, let’s ponder the real “constitutional affront” of two unelected oligarchs hijacking an electoral victory that looks nothing like a mandate and then turning it into a kamikaze mission to blow-up one branch of government.
None of this is to say there isn’t “waste, fraud and abuse.”
Of course there is … the size of the government and the law of averages alone tells us there is plenty of waste, fraud and abuse throughout the federal agencies. But we’re talking about two people with no accountability, nothing to lose and much to gain financially by insinuating themselves into positions of real power. The power to uproot and change the lives of thousands of people and, perhaps, impact the lives and work of millions more … without a single vote being cast for either of them.
A drastic reduction in federal regulations provides sound industrial logic for mass head-count reductions across the federal bureaucracy. DOGE intends to work with embedded appointees in agencies to identify the minimum number of employees required at an agency for it to perform its constitutionally permissible and statutorily mandated functions. The number of federal employees to cut should be at least proportionate to the number of federal regulations that are nullified: Not only are fewer employees required to enforce fewer regulations, but the agency would produce fewer regulations once its scope of authority is properly limited. Employees whose positions are eliminated deserve to be treated with respect, and DOGE’s goal is to help support their transition into the private sector. The president can use existing laws to give them incentives for early retirement and to make voluntary severance payments to facilitate a graceful exit.
This program was piloted during the first Trump Administration when it moved the headquarters for the Bureau of Land Management to Grand Junction, Colorado. A fraction of the staff relocated, hundreds left their jobs and the agency … and Biden’s Interior Secretary Deb Haaland eventually moved it back to Washington, D.C.
This time, they are going big. I will be curious to see if they actually go near the Pentagon and the Department of Defense. Of the nearly 3 million employees of the Federal Government, 770,000 of them work for the Department of Defense.
The Defense Budget is a huge jobs program in key Congressional districts around the country. Good luck trying to cut the F-35 or any of the boondoggles and vote-getters secured by the people’s duly elected officials.
And that’s not all … because each of these jobs they want to cut is a person and a family and a household that spends in the economy. The DC region could suffer mightily from these cuts and from the Trump team’s plan to replicate the BLM-to-Colorado Springs model.
Attrition could become an exodus that actually opens the door to Trump-vetted appointees basically superimposing the MAGA party onto what’s left of the state. MAGA-vetted candidates can file into positions that suddenly need to be filled when civil servants refuse to uproot their teenage kids or leave an ailing parent to relocate to the FDA’s new headquarters in Alabama.
A lot of institutional knowledge will be lost and likely replaced with ideologues and sycophants. That’s the Heritage Foundation/Project 2025 plan. Elon and Vivek just want to make Vivek’s dream of cutting approximately 1 million employees a reality.
Their perfect storm could turn into a bloodbath…
Conventional wisdom holds that statutory civil-service protections stop the president or even his political appointees from firing federal workers. The purpose of these protections is to protect employees from political retaliation. But the statute allows for “reductions in force” that don’t target specific employees. The statute further empowers the president to “prescribe rules governing the competitive service.” That power is broad. Previous presidents have used it to amend the civil service rules by executive order, and the Supreme Court has held—in Franklin v. Massachusetts (1992) and Collins v. Yellen (2021) that they weren’t constrained by the Administrative Procedures Act when they did so. With this authority, Mr. Trump can implement any number of “rules governing the competitive service” that would curtail administrative overgrowth, from large-scale firings to relocation of federal agencies out of the Washington area. Requiring federal employees to come to the office five days a week would result in a wave of voluntary terminations that we welcome: If federal employees don’t want to show up, American taxpayers shouldn’t pay them for the Covid-era privilege of staying home.
Few will argue with ending Covid Era work-from-home allowances. But there will be a lot of resistance to large-scale firings designed to be both wholesale and faceless to avoid “statutory civil-service protections.”
Finally, we are focused on delivering cost savings for taxpayers. Skeptics question how much federal spending DOGE can tame through executive action alone. They point to the 1974 Impoundment Control Act, which stops the president from ceasing expenditures authorized by Congress. Mr. Trump has previously suggested this statute is unconstitutional, and we believe the current Supreme Court would likely side with him on this question. But even without relying on that view, DOGE will help end federal overspending by taking aim at the $500 billion plus in annual federal expenditures that are unauthorized by Congress or being used in ways that Congress never intended, from $535 million a year to the Corporation for Public Broadcasting and $1.5 billion for grants to international organizations to nearly $300 million to progressive groups like Planned Parenthood.
Once again, this is the Federalist Society’s plan coming to fruition. DOGE will set the predicate for a case that challenges the 1974 Impoundment Control Act and, of course, the Trump-stamped court will rubberstamp it. That will complete the transformation of the President into a King who is above the law and able to nullify the Separation of Powers by blowing up the Power of the Purse. Before that, though, expect the plug to be pulled on public broadcasting and on any group DOGE deems to be “progressive” … which will simply mean Elon disagrees with them.
The federal government’s procurement process is also badly broken. Many federal contracts have gone unexamined for years. Large-scale audits conducted during a temporary suspension of payments would yield significant savings. The Pentagon recently failed its seventh consecutive audit, suggesting that the agency’s leadership has little idea how its annual budget of more than $800 billion is spent. Critics claim that we can’t meaningfully close the federal deficit without taking aim at entitlement programs like Medicare and Medicaid, which require Congress to shrink. But this deflects attention from the sheer magnitude of waste, fraud and abuse that nearly all taxpayers wish to end—and that DOGE aims to address by identifying pinpoint executive actions that would result in immediate savings for taxpayers.
Here’s the one smart thing they did … they essentially promised to keep their hands off “entitlement programs like Medicare and Medicaid, which require Congress to shrink.”
But they did bring up the Pentagon and this is where they will have to contend with more than just Military Keynesianism … they’ve got Trump’s promise to “rebuild" a military that spends more now than the last time he allegedly rebuilt it.
On the other hand, I don’t doubt that they will identify waste, fraud and abuse that results in “immediate savings for taxpayers.” It won’t be hard to find a few million here and there. And they’ll need the good PR … which, of course, Elon “Big Brother” Musk can shove down people’s throats on Twitter (a.k.a. “X”).
With a decisive electoral mandate and a 6-3 conservative majority on the Supreme Court, DOGE has a historic opportunity for structural reductions in the federal government. We are prepared for the onslaught from entrenched interests in Washington. We expect to prevail. Now is the moment for decisive action. Our top goal for DOGE is to eliminate the need for its existence by July 4, 2026—the expiration date we have set for our project. There is no better birthday gift to our nation on its 250th anniversary than to deliver a federal government that would make our Founders proud.
And there you have it.
Elon and Vivek are peddling a phony, Trumped-up mandate to radically reshape the Federal Government. Because it isn’t a mandate nor does it resemble the government of checks and balances the Founders bequeathed us, they’ll have to depend upon an ideologically engineered Supreme Court to manufacture justifications for DOGE’s extra-constitutional agenda. No problem there, because their immunity ruling already jettisoned the primacy of the rule of law. The President is basically a king already … and now we have to endure two years of the DOGE joke from these two insufferable jesters.