DOGE – Long Live Accountability

The “Scream and Fuss” crowd is sure the world is ending, with Elon Musk a shadow president. They are sure he has already fired more federal employees than we have, is violating something, and if not ought to held to account anyhow. When they get tired, they still huff and wonder how Trump won.

Here is the truth about DOGE, that high-energy advisory group Elon Musk manages for OMB as a private citizen, no pay. Note: The head of OMB is Senate confirmed. He runs the show – for Trump.

A few facts … should calm the heart. They should also help assure neighbors life does go on, the Constitution is fine, President Trump – our elected president – is in charge, respecting The People.

History is the best guide to “now,” and “now” is the best guide to what follows. In 1982, Reagan felt the federal government was too big. He had thought so for a while, campaigned on cuts – spending and tax cuts – and delivered. Just like Trump.

To get at excess spending – what Reagan called “waste, fraud, and abuse,” because that summed it up – he set up “The Private Sector Survey or Cost Control,” or a “DOGE” by any other name.

Reagan signed an executive order early in his first administration, EO 12369, a lot like Trump’s order establishing DOGE – the “Department of Government Efficiency” – EO 14158.

Like Trump, Reagan appointed a private sector wizard, a thoughtful, experienced, principled manager of people and man of big ideas, Peter Grace, to make the federal government smaller.

Peter Grace had run W.R. Grace for 48 years and knew efficiency better than any federal bureaucrat ever could, and Reagan released him on the beast.

Reagan coined the phrase “Drain the swamp!” telling the assembled Grace Commission, “I’ll repeat to you today what I said a week ago when I announced Peter’s appointment: Be bold. We want your team to work like tireless bloodhounds. Don’t leave any stone unturned in your search to root out inefficiency.”   

Where President Trump picked Elon Musk, who has built great companies, is a powerhouse of ideas, and still manages 145,000 people, Reagan picked Peter Grace, who was also straight to the point, clear and real.

In 1984, when Walter Mondale ran against Reagan and said we needed to spend more and raise taxes again, someone asked Peter Grace what he would tell Mondale. He looked at the questioner, said: “I’d tell him he’s nuts. He’s wrong. He’s wrong.”

The Grace Commission did recommend deep cuts, 2000 of them, ending useless overlap, excess, and waste, not to mention referring to then-Attorney General Ed Meese the “fraud and abuse.”

Like those Reagan days, only more aggressively, these warming days of Trump involve a return – hard as it is to accountability, no more vague, useless, misdirected, counterproductive spending.

So, what has Musk advised? What has the Othe MB and the Trump Cabinet been directed by the President to undertake? Yes, some high-level program and eventual agency closures, and job cuts.

How many job cuts? Well, so we do not get too excited, in a government of more than 3 million full-time employees, possibly the same number of contractors, the President, with the help of DOGE, has so far managed to trim 200,000 jobs. So, we have cut one-fifteenth of the total.

Where have they come from? In a government that spends 3.4 trillion dollars, or will in FY25, Trump, Musk, and DOGE have managed to trim 2050 jobs from the federal Department of Education – which did not exist in 1978, when I got loans to go to college. That leaves 2,183 jobs in place.

At NASA, they cut 20 jobs. At Defense, 4000 cuts are planned. At the IRS – which Democrats grew by magnitudes, arming agents in the process – Trump has cut 7000 and plans to cut half of the 90,000 remaining. My sense is that most Americans will not shed much for new employees cut.

At Interior, they downsized by 1000; EPA by 300; Veterans Administration (VA) – which has been a sprawling, often unaccountable agency, hundreds of Inspecter General reports – they cut 1,300. At the Housing and Urban Development, they managed to sift by 780 jobs, Agriculture by 2000, Energy 700, FAA 400, and the newly invented Consumer Financial Protection Bureau some 200, with a large number pending still at the US Post Office, which has not been thinned in decades.

Some will say cuts are hard to fathom, but they miss the point. Many bureaucrats have, for many years, stayed home, collected a check, counted on no oversight, and seen themselves as beyond review.  That era is over. Trump – like Reagan – is reminding us that tax dollars come from hard-working families, many pressed to take two or three jobs to make ends meet.

The time is now for accountability, and the “Scream and Fuss” crowd should take stock of how America got here by limiting government, balancing the books, empowering those who work, and making no apologies for accountability. 

Or… as Thomas Paine, Revolutionary author of Common Sense, wrote: “A body of men holding themselves accountable to nobody, ought not to be trusted by anybody.” Long live accountability. 

Robert Charles is a former Assistant Secretary of State under Colin Powell, former Reagan and Bush 41 White House staffer, attorney, and naval intelligence officer (USNR). He wrote “Narcotics and Terrorism” (2003), “Eagles and Evergreens” (2018), and is National Spokesman for AMAC. Robert Charles has also just released an uplifting new book, “Cherish America: Stories of Courage, Character, and Kindness” (Tower Publishing, 2024).