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Godspeed Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy. “The Department of Government Efficiency” (“DOGE”) has no statutory authority — yet. But it will have the ear of the president-elect and President Donald Trump will have the ears of Speaker of the House Mike Johnson and Senate Majority Leader-elect John Thune.
Every year that the House and Senate can agree on a budget, they can then deploy the statutory “reconciliation” process to pass laws that impact the implementation of that agreed-upon budget with a simple majority of the Senate. Such bills are not subject to the Senate’s filibuster rules.
It is widely expected that the first budget-reconciliation cycle will be used to extend and revise (and I hope make permanent) the Trump tax cuts from 47’s term as 45. Those tax cuts expire at the end of next year and the engine of economic growth for the decades ahead in the United States lies in that extension. There will be revisions to the tax code as well — to exempt tips from taxable income and perhaps to raise the state and local tax deduction from its very low limits. But the tax package has got to move through the first of the two budget-reconciliation cycles.
ELON MUSK SAYS ‘ALL ACTIONS’ TAKEN BY DEPARTMENT OF GOVERNMENT EFFICIENCY WILL BE ONLINE: ‘TRANSPARENCY’
Other measures can be added to this “51-votes-in-the-Senate-is-enough” bucket of bills. I think the budget could, for example, authorize rapid permitting and construction of “Small Modular Reactors” (advanced nuclear reactors) across the U.S. provided that a very small tax was put on their very large, indeed vast combined output of kilowatt-hours of energy that our AI, national security and high-tech sector generally need in the years ahead.
Trump announced Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy would be leading the Department of Government Efficiency (“DOGE”) on Tuesday, November 12, 2024. (Getty Images)
I think the federal spending on education that goes to the states can be conditioned on the states that want the aid to provide robust school choice programs and keep boys out of girls sports. (Some deep blue states simply will refuse, and money will be saved for the budget as a result.)
Certainly spending on National Public Radio and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting can be zeroed out, and federal government-wide “reductions in force” can be authorized “notwithstanding any law,” as can “regularization” of the Dreamers and any other group of migrants already in the country that president-elect wants to regularize upon registration and payment of a fee.
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The process could authorize the completion of “the Wall” and expansion of the Border Patrol as well. The budget can also authorize the immediate and necessary turbocharging of our shipyard capacity and Navy shipbuilding plan. That’s the best-term package for the first quarter of 2025.
But the DOGE doesn’t have a plan yet and won’t for some months. Whatever plan Musk and Ramaswamy and their colleagues come up with will rely on statutory changes to make deep and lasting impacts to the behemoth of the federal government. If their proposals don’t make it into statute, there’s a limit to what they can do. If they are in law, only the Constitution constrains them (as it should and surely will.)
If, for example, the Environmental Protection Agency is merged with the Department of the Interior and, at the same time, the EPA is stripped of its authority to “elevate” Section 404 permits and Section 7 consultations conducted by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and the United States Fish & Wildlife Service respectively, those changes would be put into 2026’s budget and reconciliation package. (There’s a lot of jargon there but believe me this sentence contains worlds of reform and a massive amount of productivity would be unleashed thereby.)
Want to dis-establish the Department of Education and re-house its remnants in Health and Human Services where it resided until President Jimmy Carter unleashed it on American education in 1979? Use the 2026 budget and reconciliation cycle. It is the “magic bullet” legislative vehicle for DOGE.
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Whatever cutting and merging DOGE comes up with, along with changes to the tenure-like federal civil service system that embeds the “resistance” into so many agencies — all of it should be manicured for the budget and reconciliation package and the GOP House and Senate majorities next year. DOGE could result in the most significant reorganization and streamlining of the federal government since the aftermath of 9/11 where the crisis of those days led to a rushed re-organization and the necessary expansion of our domestic security apparatus.
Musk and Ramaswamy could change more than reporting lines on paper. They could actually reshape the federal government for the Information Age. But unless the proposals of the DOGE are codified in federal law, those changes may not last. The GOP is likely to get whacked in the 2026 elections, so President-elect Trump gets two big legislative swings and maybe only two. The first in 2025 is for the taxes/spending/cutting laws outlined above. The second, in 2026, should be for the DOGE. But the co-chairs had better enlist some excellent draftsmen and perhaps a retired Senate parliamentarian or two as they go about their work.
Hugh Hewitt is host of “The Hugh Hewitt Show,” heard weekday mornings 6am to 9am ET on the Salem Radio Network, and simulcast on Salem News Channel. Hugh wakes up America on over 400 affiliates nationwide, and on all the streaming platforms where SNC can be seen. He is a frequent guest on the Fox News Channel’s news roundtable hosted by Bret Baier weekdays at 6pm ET. A son of Ohio and a graduate of Harvard College and the University of Michigan Law School, Hewitt has been a Professor of Law at Chapman University’s Fowler School of Law since 1996 where he teaches Constitutional Law. Hewitt launched his eponymous radio show from Los Angeles in 1990. Hewitt has frequently appeared on every major national news television network, hosted television shows for PBS and MSNBC, written for every major American paper, has authored a dozen books and moderated a score of Republican candidate debates, most recently the November 2023 Republican presidential debate in Miami and four Republican presidential debates in the 2015-16 cycle. Hewitt focuses his radio show and his column on the Constitution, national security, American politics and the Cleveland Browns and Guardians. Hewitt has interviewed tens of thousands of guests from Democrats Hillary Clinton and John Kerry to Republican Presidents George W. Bush and Donald Trump over his 40 years in broadcast, and this column previews the lead story that will drive his radio/ TV show today.
