White House implored to institutionalize DOGE after reports of premature demise

The Department of Government Efficiency‘s supporters are imploring the White House and Congress to make permanent its mission of reducing fraud, waste, and abuse, a call that has gained momentum amid reports of its early dismantlement.

Reports that DOGE had prematurely been shuttered grabbed Washington, D.C.’s attention, considering the temporary federal agency had eight months left on its charter. Administration officials promptly dismissed the reports, but with the agency’s profile diminished since the departure of its de facto leader, tech billionaire Elon Musk, last May, conservatives are relitigating its perceived failures and proposing how Republicans might have been more effective in shrinking the size of the federal government.

Republican strategist John Feehery described DOGE as a “great effort,” but contended it could have been “more successful had they worked with Congress.” 

“And come up with some better processes that could have really transformed government,” Feehery told the Washington Examiner.

Dan Lips, a senior fellow at the Foundation for American Innovation, said that the agency “has played an essential role by shining a spotlight on widespread waste and inefficiency across the federal government.” 

“What’s important now is that the Trump administration and Congress enact needed reforms to achieve substantial cost savings,” added Lips, who appeared before the House Oversight Subcommittee on Delivering on Government Efficiency last June.

Trump has signed executive orders designed to prevent fraud and misspending, which cost the federal government “hundreds of billions of dollars” a year, according to Lips, “but Congress needs to act to give the Treasury Department and federal agencies the authorities they need.”

“Addressing these problems has had bipartisan support in the past and should now be a priority on Capitol Hill,” he said.

Under Musk, DOGE made its presence felt in Washington after it was formed from the U.S. Digital Service on the first day of Trump’s second administration. It upended traditional government reform practices by moving to shutter the U.S. Agency for International Development.

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and the U.S. Institute of Peace were also targeted for dismantlement as newly confirmed Trump Cabinet members were directed to drastically reduce their respective workforces. 

But Musk’s “move fast and break things” approach to reform, though popular among Silicon Valley tech start-ups, resulted in chaos as federal employees were fired and then reinstated amid public protest. The same pattern emerged for critical federal programs and contracts.

Aside from the mass layoffs, DOGE representatives were also criticized for the amount of access they had to sensitive, even classified, information, with reported incidents of mishandled data, including the doxxing of CIA operatives and black sites. The agency, too, was scrutinized for clashing with Congress and its power of the purse, with critics calling it a constitutional crisis.

DOGE announced this month that it had saved the federal government more than $215 billion, not only through contract cancellations and workforce reductions, but also through the sale of assets. However, that figure has been disputed as substantially inflated. It is also well short of Musk’s desire to find $2 trillion in savings, excluding the cost of legal challenges, loss of productivity from rehiring and retraining, and loss of IRS revenue.

Similarly, DOGE announced in August that it had reduced the federal workforce by approximately 300,000 employees. The Partnership for Public Service, however, estimated that the same month the number was closer to 199,000 workers, 135,000 of whom were through DOGE’s deferred resignation program.

“While there are lessons to be learned about DOGE’s strategy for leading government reform, the Trump administration and DOGE have brought overdue attention to significant problems in government and opportunities to save hundreds of billions of American tax dollars,” Lips concluded. 

In response to reports of its premature demise, a DOGE spokesperson wrote on social media this week that “just last week, DOGE terminated 78 wasteful contracts and saved taxpayers $335M.”

“President Trump was given a mandate by the American people to modernize the federal government and reduce waste, fraud, and abuse,” the spokesperson added. 

To that end, the White House has underscored its endeavors to institutionalize DOGE, with an administration official telling the Washington Examiner that the agency “remains deeply engaged across government, modernizing critical systems, improving public services, and delivering fast, practical solutions where the country needs them most.”

Scott Kupor, director of the Office of Personnel Management, also said “the truth is: DOGE may not have centralized leadership under the [U.S. DOGE Service],” but “the principles of DOGE remain alive and well.”

His comment came after Reuters published an interview with him on Sunday in which he said that the agency “doesn’t exist.”

“De-regulation; eliminating fraud, waste and abuse; re-shaping the federal workforce; making efficiency a first-class citizen,” Kupor wrote. “DOGE catalyzed these changes; the agencies along with @USOPM and @WHOMB will institutionalize them!”

Despite the criticism, DOGE has had political repercussions in addition to policy ones, such as the White House putting Democrats in the position of risking the impression that they are defending the size and scope of government by attacking DOGE. Democrats countered by emphasizing the chaos and its haphazardness.

“Fraud and waste are real, and Democrats are overwhelmingly against both,” former White House spokesman Andrew Bates told the Washington Examiner. “If a Democratic candidate gets asked about DOGE, they could say, ‘I’m 100% for attacking waste and fraud, but I don’t know a single American who thinks veterans’ healthcare is ‘waste’ or less important than Elon Musk’s government contracts. Nor do I know anyone who’s comfortable with Musk’s people rifling through our personal IRS or Social Security data.’”

John Pitney, a politics professor at Claremont McKenna College, and Jeremy Mayer, a George Mason University political science professor, both declared DOGE a failure, at least on paper.

“If the goal was to reduce federal spending, it should have focused on entitlement reform,” Pitney told the Washington Examiner. “Instead, it focused on bureaucratic headcount. In fact, when all the costly lawsuits are over, it probably will have made the spending problem worse. Fighting the deficit with DOGE was like fighting a wildfire with a squirt gun full of gasoline.”

Mayer added: “Politically, it grabbed attention and sent a message to the federal workforce that Trump wasn’t afraid to make unprecedented and possibly illegal changes. It also demonstrates how Trump is relatively immune to failure. If [former President Barack] Obama had promised to save $1-2 trillion, and ended up costing perhaps $100 billion, the media would have feasted on his bones. But Trump’s supporters don’t believe the media. They trust Trump.”

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Republican strategist Cesar Conda disagreed, arguing instead that DOGE was “absolutely worth it” because it “canceled dozens to hundreds of DEI-related federal contracts and grants across many agencies,” as well as “foreign-aid administered through USAID.” 

“It downsized the bloated federal workforce,” Conda told the Washington Examiner. “Most important of all, DOGE brought to the attention of the American people the most pressing economic issue of our time — the burgeoning federal debt.”