Kabosu was a shiba inu known best for an image of her sitting on a couch. That image, modified by internet travelers with misspelled Comic Sans text, became the foundation upon which a legendary meme was born: Doge. Images of both Kabosu and other Shiba’s spawned countless variations of the doge format. So alluring was the popularity of the dog that it spawned a cryptocurrency with a whopping current valuation of $0.43 per coin.
In 2024, some fourteen years after the first images of Kabosu graced the internet, she passed away at the age of 18. However, her legacy is now being tarnished by the most recent iteration of the word, as proposed by Elon Musk, the owner of SpaceX, Tesla, and X (formerly Twitter).
Regrettably, the man seems to have no intentions of respecting the memory of the late internet star. If he did, then he never would have proposed the newest planned presidential advisory agency, the Department of Government Efficiency. Best known as DOGE.
Via DOGE, Musk and failed presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy intend to bring a more “entrepreneurial approach” to the federal government. This includes cutting up to 75% of current federal jobs, ending electric vehicle incentives, and potentially attacking political third rails like social security and Medicare. Of course, the disconnect here is blatantly obvious. Two billionaires pushed into unelected positions by yet another billionaire.
Ramaswamy’s recent statements on unelected bureaucrats only highlight the utter incompetence of DOGE’s two planned leaders. On his Twitter account, Ramaswamy stated that beyond President-elect Trump’s planned mass deportations, “we also require a second mass ‘deportation” of millions of unelected federal bureaucrats out of the D.C. bureaucracy.” Of course, this somehow lacks any self-awareness of himself being one of those people.
Even better, when the people did have the chance to vote for him, they overwhelmingly rejected him. Musk, meanwhile, has given credence to how redundant the DOGE is. On his Twitter page, amongst mountains of AI-generated memes and random shower thoughts, Musk commented on the growing age of several IT systems within the government. That on its lonesome isn’t really ruinous; instead, it’s his sourcing that proves that he and Ramaswamy are just rewriting an old script. That source? The Government Accountability Office (GAO). Created in 1921 by the Harding Administration, the GAO mostly served to check that the government was making correct use of its funds and that the projects it was directing them into were within their legal purview. By 1986, this role had grown exponentially, with GAO also becoming responsible for investigating criminal and civil misconduct with federal funds.
Another bump came in 2004, when they were permitted to conduct performance audits alongside their usual financial audits, telling government programs how they were doing while also checking if they were meeting their goals. If any of this sounds familiar, it’s because it’s just DOGE without an unfunny backronym for a name. When initially presenting DOGE to the public, President-elect Trump described it as a newly planned “government efficiency commission.” Musk’s ambition to cut $2 trillion in spending runs directly parallel with the watchdog role already handled via the GAO.
The difference? While GAO says how an agency is doing and what they need to improve on, the DOGE duo instead has a more “wildly swing an axe around in a forest” approach. Just to put into context how much $2 trillion out of the federal budget is, the entirety of 2023’s discretionary spending only totaled $1.7 trillion. This loops back to the original problem: Where’s that extra $300 billion going to come out of? Ramaswamy’s solution is rather straightforward: fire 50% of all federal bureaucrats. Something that’s already beginning to be pushed into the foundational stages in Congress. Some agencies, however, could see even larger cuts, with Ramaswamy calling for 90% of those employed at the Federal Reserve to be fired. That’s 22,000 people. Moves like this, he believes, will “put people back to work” and “unleash American energy.” This, of course, is ignoring that the unemployment rate is the lowest it’s been in years and all three of the major economic indexes are at record highs. Musk has been largely ambiguous on the matter, agreeing on the staffing trims but not giving much else in the form of concrete plans. He has, however, claimed that he’ll “balance the budget immediately,” while also acknowledging that the way he intends to go about it, in combination with Trump’s planned economic policies, will likely lead to an economic depression.
In an opinion piece for The Hill, New Hampshire’s Republican governor Chris Sununu praised Musk’s ambitions, noting that legislators should offer Musk aid in his efforts and, in doing so, “help preserve the American Dream.” He also noted that this may include making “tough decisions.” Of course, none of this acknowledges that the last time the federal budget was balanced was under the Clinton-Gore administration in 1998. Something that since then has only become increasingly unlikely, even with DOGE’s less than surgical approach. Additionally, the governor’s article focuses less on the actual operations of DOGE and more on the Balanced Budget Amendment, which has failed every time it’s been brought to the floor. The only exception to this being the Balanced Budget Act of 1997, which was a bipartisan effort that permitted the success of Clinton’s administration in actually achieving that goal. It notably did so without having to rewrite the U.S. Constitution.
DOGE lacks that same bipartisan vigor, being nothing more than a product of America’s upcoming “First Buddy” and his failed candidate sidekick. It’s just GAO with a Republican paint job led by two billionaires who have minimal clue as to what they’re doing. The kicker to all of this? It’ll only exist until July 4th, 2026. That’s 18 months to cut $2 trillion in spending, reduce federal employment by 50%, and reshape the U.S. budget until it’s actually balanced again. If it weren’t for a firm bipartisan handshake and the effort of an entire administration last time, it never would’ve happened in ‘98. So if an agency as partisan as DOGE manages to pull it off, it’ll be nothing short of a miracle.
All of this to say that, if an average American worker copied someone else’s efforts and wrote them off as their own, they’d either be fired or promoted to an executive position. Unfortunately for America, Musk and Ramaswamy already have a friend in upper management. Here’s to hoping DOGE’s bark is worse than its bite.
