As the era of Elon running DOGE wanes, there are little baby DOGEs popping up faster than Elon can have IVF more kids. Funny, sure– until you realize that these efforts are more likely to cost taxpayers millions while pretending to “save” them money. To be clear, everyone thinks the concept of DOGE is a pretty good one. The government is big, and just like any big house, it constantly needs cleaning and tweaking. But how that gets done matters, and no one likes living in a house mid-reno. Elon’s stank may have revved up folks at the start, but as time marches, the effects are going down some interesting paths.
Many of these DOGE-ish state entities are trying the same playbook:
While many aren’t going full Elon, they are testing the waters.
Musk and Trump
Many states are reshuffling or obfuscating authority to sidestep oversight. In Florida, they attempted to pass a Joint House Resolution to repeal the position of Lt Governor, convenient, since they don’t have one right now, and make the Commissioner of Government Efficiency a Cabinet office, reporting directly to the Governor. What happens if the governor is impeached, they just appoint their own replacement during the Senate trial. Fortunately, this resolution was declined.
Missouri wanted to add a law that would require courts to interpret disputes in ways that would limit the state agency’s power. REINS Act-type laws have been popular too. These laws look to remove power from regulators and require rules to be decided by a legislative body, which in these states are conservative bodies.
When actual reform is thin, they claim credit for things they didn’t do. The Oklahoma DOGE (called DOGE-OK) credited a savings of $42,000 for changing to LED light bulbs– a switch made before DOGE-OK was a thing. Florida DOGE claimed it saved taxpayers $900 million, but it was money from federal funds for refugee resettlement that was rejected long before Florida had their DOGE.
Many “DOGE” departments are just duplicating work already being done–badly. Most states already have agencies to monitor waste– they're just underfunded and politically inconvenient. Oklahoma already has a constitutionally assigned State Auditor and Inspector to examine how the government spent its money. South Carolina’s DOGE will be a group of business owners that advise the legislature and governor, but there is already a Reorganization Commission and a Governor’s Commission on Management, Accountability, and Performance.
Instead of giving these existing agencies resources, they are sidelining them in hopes of claiming any savings as a DOGE initiative. The NC DOGE (called NC GEAR) is looking to dissolve thousands of vacant positions because many have been vacant for months, but the Director of the State Employee Association says they are vacant because of low pay.
Classic Republican playbook: starve the system until it fails, then point at the wreckage and say, "See? Told you it was broken."
They are dreaming of replacing workers with AI ...the wrong way. These DOGE-wannabes keep talking about the wonders of AI like it’s plug-and-play. Good data is needed to train the AI model. Just like anything, if it's trained poorly, it will do bad work.This isn’t an AI problem, it's just a problem for any onboarding, but AI works much faster, with less oversight, and impacts many more people. Letting a poorly trained model loose will have an exponential impact, and the data before say, 2015, is basically trash. Significant parts are still paper based and if not, there likely wasn't a consistent data structure to make this a smooth transition. Moving to this will be expensive and time consuming up front. Mucking it up, even more so.
When was the last time you had to call customer service for a decent size company, only to have an AI chatbot answer and struggle to understand what you are calling for? How did that go? So no, you don’t replace human judgement on complex government tasks and you can’t fire trained employees, slap on some ChatGPT on a janky server and magically expect it to know how to process birth certificates, water permits, or housing applications. It’s not cost cutting. It’s institutional sabotage wearing a tech-bro Halloween costume.
These efforts are focused on punching down at the poorest and most vulnerable. An Arizona bill is looking to require SNAP receipts eligibility for the program every month. Arizona and Kansas (COGE) are looking to pass laws that will require any regulation approval to go through them first if it increases the cost of the program. Nothing says government efficiency like a thousand tine bottlenecks. In Wisconsin, where their state DOGE is called GOAT (Government Operations, Accountability, and Transparency) chose to zero in on the state’s remote workers in their first committee meeting. This group has gotten an impressive amount of ire since covid. It's like they think employees can’t watch YouTube or pursue the internet from their work computer. God forbid they actually find ways to measure performance by outcomes. It's weird how none of these DOGE groups have thought to investigate how managers manage outside of those stupid weekly emails that no one is reading since they are getting kicked back because the inbox is full. It’s all about optics; punish visible differences, ignore systemic rot.
This is when “efficiency” costs more than dysfunction. Like the national effort, these groups are duplicating processes and costing the taxpayers more money. The US government has spent more since Trump took office despite all this supposed cost cutting. Elon’s firing spree is crazy expensive, not a budget cut. Remember, over 75,000 federal workers took the government up on their “fork in the road” email and a part of that agreement is they get paid until September, for no work. Many of the employees fired were reinstated by the courts, only to be put back on paid administrative leave. At least use them since we are paying for them. Oh, and all these lawsuits flying around because of Elon’s chainsaw have to be added to the bill too.
DOGE’s fatal flaw has been its own speed and recklessness. People hate DOGE. Elon leaving may be helpful, because attention may move away, but there is already a bad taste in people’s mouths that state agencies are noticing. Noticed that none of the state versions– DOGE, COGE, GOAT, GEAR–have the ability to run ramshod through the government like Elon has. Politicians talk tough, but when it’s time to give up power, they hold it tighter than a toddler with a toy. For what it’s worth, the Wisconsin GOAT made sure to include Democrats on their committee for some bipartisan flare, but this is rare.
DOGE poll
While this is a cold comfort, it may just be that the benefit of running white and hot, is people see how quickly you get burned. Sometimes a thing’s purpose in life is to be a lesson learned for everyone else.