
Efforts on the part of President-Elect Trump to establish what he has called a Department of Government Efficiency are inspiring a duplicative Congressional response.
During the recent presidential campaign, Trump said he wanted to create such an agency in a move to reduce the size and cost of the federal government.
As proposed, what has become known by its initials, DOGE, would not be an actual government agency, but would instead serve as an advisory body to be led by multibillionaire Elon Musk and entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy.
Trump said the animating idea behind DOGE would be to “dismantle government bureaucracy, slash excess regulations, cut wasteful expenditures, and restructure federal agencies.”
According to the publication Politico, Ramaswamy has additionally said that he wants to focus on putting an end to “a lot of the money that hasn’t been authorized by Congress but is still being spent.”
Tennessee Republican Senator Marsha Blackburn is about to introduce legislation that would establish as its mission many of the same DOGE goals.
Blackburn’s proposal, according to a statement from her office, “would cut discretionary spending, move federal agencies out of the swamp, freeze federal hiring and salaries for one year, begin the process of a merit-based compensation structure for federal employes, and require agencies to get employees back in the office.”
According to various sources, Blackburn’s proposals, if passed, would make official what Trump’s DOGE can only recommend.
Blackburn has said that her legislation will be designed to work together with Trump’s DOGE, and that both federal salaries and federal hiring would be frozen in place until the recommendations of the DOGE committee are fully rolled out.
Black has additionally announced that one of her proposed bills will look at the status of federal employees, moving them from a “tenure giving you a promotion, to merit giving you a promotion.”
Reports indicate that a House Oversight and Accountability DOGE Subcommittee may be established when the new Congress meets in January.
December 6, 2024
By Garry Boulard