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What Trump Really Means by Government ‘Efficiency’
In addition to hurting everyday folks, these federal budget cuts will provide cover for the huge tax cut for wealthy Americans the Republican House just passed.
Mar 01, 2025
On February 11, without providing any evidence, U.S. President Donald Trump declared that the so-called “Department of Government Efficiency,” or DOGE, was in the process of eliminating “billions and billions of dollars in waste, fraud, and abuse” in the federal government. This is an old, but politically persuasive claim Republicans and their Heritage Foundation allies have made for decades.
The problem is, as some have no doubt realized, that DOGE is not about waste and inefficiency in government. It’s the culmination of a very long-standing neoliberal strategy to get rid of a federal government that can provide help to a wide variety of people in need, limit the worst excesses of the private sector, and shore up stressed local communities, among other good causes that the private sector is notoriously unable to accomplish.
Some of you may remember former President Ronald Reagan’s quip, “Government is not the solution; government is the problem.” Well, we’ve lived 45 years under that hoariest of myths, and most Americans have paid a heavy price for it.
In brief, we have government of the rich, by the rich, and for the rich.
How does the Trump administration and its hatchet man, Elon Musk, fit into this? Most obviously through their massive layoffs of federal employees and by eliminating or slashing federal program after federal program. The effects of DOGE will be felt by a vast majority of non-wealthy Americans: veterans, workers, children, people who are sick or need healthcare, the elderly, people with low-to-modest incomes, people victimized by the rapidly increasing environmental disasters, local communities; the list goes on and on. Lumped under the “waste and inefficiency” category are the thousands of arbitrarily fired public employees who have served the public with dedication and integrity.
In reality, DOGE has two aims: The first is to make government so inept that more and more people will wonder why they’re paying taxes for a seemingly incompetent government. DOGE should really be called DOGI—the Department of Government Ineptitude. That would fit nicely with the host of misfits and incompetents Trump has appointed to head various federal departments.
But the other clear objective is that, in addition to hurting everyday folks, these federal budget cuts will provide cover for the huge tax cut for wealthy Americans the Republican House just passed. As in the past, the tax cut will likely give people in the lower 90% of income levels an extremely modest tax cut, but the real beneficiaries will be the wealthiest Americans who already enjoy wealth most people can’t even imagine. And, as in the past, the tax cuts will be “justified”by the myth that cutting taxes for the wealthy and corporations will generate economic growth—i.e., jobs.
Unfortunately, we’ve been here before. The Reagan administration slashed taxes for the wealthiest Americans and corporations, thereby creating a huge federal deficit, yet the tax cuts failed to generate significant job growth. Instead, they ushered in the era of enormous inequality that is still with us. Most Americans saw no increase in their incomes. The George W Bush pro-rich tax cuts had similar effects, as did the huge pro-rich tax cuts of the first Trump administration. One result is that wages for most Americans have been largely stagnant for 50 years. There is no economic growth magic in these kinds of tax cuts.
But “tax cuts” sound good to people who struggle to make ends meet, and therein lies their appeal. However, the real problem isn’t the level of federal taxes, it’s the inequality in who bears the burden of those taxes.
Like many things in the U.S., taxes impose the heaviest burdens on those with modest incomes. This wasn’t always the case, of course. From the 1940s to mid-1960 the richest Americans were taxed at a 91% rate on taxable income. Today, thanks to these tax cuts, their rate is 37%. Similarly, the capital gains tax, corporate taxes, and estate taxes have all been significantly reduced, benefitting you know who.
Thanks to these tax cuts, the growing inequality in wages and salaries, and an all-out attack on labor union organizing over the past 45 years, we have witnessed a massive transfer of wealth from the middle class to the wealthiest families in America—one reason we hear so much about billionaires these days. In fact, a recent study published in The New York Times, reported that, for the first time, billionaires paid a lower effective tax rate than working class Americans.
Beyond the grotesque unfairness of this system, the truly ominous outcome is what this means for “our” government. Thanks to Republican-appointed Supreme Court majorities, campaign contributions have been classified as “speech,” meaning that restricting campaign contributions violates the First Amendment, no matter what this does to democracy. And so, in 2024, 150 billionaires contributed a total of $1.9 billion to political campaigns. In brief, we have government of the rich, by the rich, and for the rich.
If you feel the government has passed you by, welcome to the majority of Americans who don’t really have much of a voice in our political system. That, rather than alleged “waste, fraud, and abuse,” is what is wrong with our government.
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Refusing to Help DOGE 'Dismantle Critical Public Services,' 21 Tech Experts Resign
"We swore to serve the American people and uphold our oath to the Constitution across presidential administrations," they wrote. "However, it has become clear that we can no longer honor those commitments."
Feb 25, 2025
Over 20 U.S. federal tech workers who were forced into President Donald Trump and billionaire Elon Musk's Department of Government Efficiency resigned in protest on Tuesday, according to a joint letter obtained by The Associated Press.
The 21 data scientists, engineers, and product managers were initially part of the United States Digital Service, established during the Obama administration. However, one of Trump's first executive orders states that it "is hereby publicly renamed as the United States DOGE Service (USDS) and shall be established in the Executive Office of the President."
As the AP detailed, "earlier this month, about 40 staffers in the office were laid off," leaving about 65 employees who "were integrated into DOGE's government-slashing effort." About a third of the spared workers—who previously worked for companies such as Amazon and Google—joined the mass resignation.
"We swore to serve the American people and uphold our oath to the Constitution across presidential administrations," wrote the 21 staffers, according to the news agency. "However, it has become clear that we can no longer honor those commitments."
"We will not use our skills as technologists to compromise core government systems, jeopardize Americans' sensitive data, or dismantle critical public services," they explained. "We will not lend our expertise to carry out or legitimize DOGE's actions."
Their resignation letter sounds the alarm about recent interviews conducted by Musk loyalists that "created significant security risks," noting that "several of these interviewers refused to identify themselves, asked questions about political loyalty, attempted to pit colleagues against each other, and demonstrated limited technical ability."
The letter also criticizes the recent USDS layoffs that "focused on people in roles like designers, product managers, human resources, and contracting staff," according to the AP, which cited interviews with current and former staff.
"These highly skilled civil servants were working to modernize Social Security, veterans' services, tax filing, healthcare, disaster relief, student aid, and other critical services," the letter states. "Their removal endangers millions of Americans who rely on these services every day. The sudden loss of their technology expertise makes critical systems and American's data less safe."
The firings at USDS are just part of Musk and Trump's sweeping effort to slash government spending and the federal workforce.
"Musk clearly loves to depict DOGE as a lean, mean efficiency machine," Intelligencer columnist Ed Kilgore wrote last week. "But it seems increasingly obvious that its efforts to reduce personnel levels and spending mostly reflect an ideology that treats whole areas of government as illegitimate and completely arbitrary reductions in force as a valuable end in themselves."
Fueling such arguments, the APrevealed Tuesday that nearly 40% of the federal contracts the Trump administration has canceled won't save any money. The Musk-led effort "published an updated list Monday of nearly 2,300 contracts that agencies terminated in recent weeks across the federal government," the news agency reported. "Data published on DOGE's 'Wall of Receipts' shows that more than one-third of the contract cancellations, 794 in all, are expected to yield no savings."
Reporting on DOGE's failures and the mass resignation came amid mixed messaging about a Saturday email from the Office of Personnel Management (OPM), the government's human resources agency, ordering federal workers to respond by the end of Monday with five bullet points listing what they did last week. Musk said on his social media platform X that "failure to respond will be taken as a resignation."
Then, Politico and The Washington Post reported Monday that the Trump administration had told federal department heads that they could direct staff to ignore the list requirement and Musk's threat, and emails from agency leaders informing workers they should not respond began circulating on social media.
Further adding to the confusion, the president told reporters Monday afternoon that anyone who doesn't reply would be "sort of semi-fired—or you're fired," and Musk later wrote on X: "Subject to the discretion of the president, they will be given another chance. Failure to respond a second time will result in termination."
Meanwhile, a Monday guidance from OPM states in part that responses to the initial Saturday email "should be directed to agency leadership," who "may exclude personnel from this expectation at their discretion and should inform OPM of the categories of the employees excluded and reasons for exclusion."
Everett Kelley, national president of the American Federation of Government Employees, a union that has pushed back on DOGE initiatives, said in a Monday statement that "Elon Musk's latest email fiasco is yet another example of the chaotic and callous treatment of federal employees that has been the hallmark of Trump's second term."
"It was nothing but a cynical attempt to demean federal workers and terrorize them into quitting," Kelley continued. "To be clear, federal employees report to the agencies who employ them through established chains of command. They do not report to OPM, 'DOGE,' and definitely not to Elon Musk."
"I'm glad reality is teaching them the lessons they refuse to teach themselves on how to run a functional civil service," the union leader added. "Make no mistake we will continue to hold Elon Musk and the entire Trump administration accountable for their illegal actions."
While DOGE has
hit some legal snags thanks to challenges from unions and other critics, the Trump administration has demonstrated a willingness to defy court orders and congressional Republicans are already targeting some federal judges with articles of impeachment for impeding the president's agenda.
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GOP Lawmakers Face Growing Backlash to Trump-Musk Agenda
The top pollster on the president's 2024 campaign issued a dire warning to Republicans in a recent poll, showing swing district voters do not approve of the massive cuts the GOP is weighing in its budget plan.
Feb 23, 2025
At the annual Conservative Political Action Conference on Saturday, U.S. President Donald Trump told his Republican supporters that, having overseen the firing of roughly 30,000 federal employees and backed proposals to slash the Medicaid and Medicare programs that millions of Americans across the political spectrum rely on, he has "not yet begun to fight."
But his promise came as Republican lawmakers across the country faced the wrath of voters over the Trump agenda and the president's own pollster warned that moving forward with GOP plans to hand out $4.5 trillion in tax cuts to corporations and the wealthy—an endeavor that would require cutting crucial public programs—will be perilous for the party.
As Common Dreamsreported on Friday, Rep. Rich McCormick (R-Ga.) was asked at a town hall this week why the firing of federal employees at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention have been so "radical and extremist," and with federal lawmakers back in their districts this weekend for their first recess of Trump's second term, McCormick wasn't alone in hearing from angry voters.
Right-wing commentator Erick Erickson claimed McCormick's experience was an anomaly and the result of Democrats mobilizing their voters, but Leah Greenberg, co-founder of the progressive advocacy group Indivisible, asked him to explain "why there have also been furious crowds" in several other states since the congressional recess began.
The New York Times reported that in his solidly Republican district in East Texas, Rep. Pete Sessions (R-Texas) heard from voters from both sides of the aisle who wanted his guarantee that the GOP will not make cuts to the social safety net.
"When are you going to wrest control back from the executive and stop hurting your constituents?" asked one woman.
Trump has pushed forward a plan to circumvent congressional power since taking office, issuing executive orders to roll back regulations that only Congress has the authority to undo and attempting to freeze federal funding that has already been appropriated.
Rep. Nick Begich (R-Alaska), who told constituents he is a member of the "DOGE caucus," referring to the Trump-created Department of Government Efficiency that's led by tech mogul Elon Musk, faced a similar question from a voter who described himself as a "lifelong Republican."
"I am in the majority, I think, with a lot of Americans, a lot of Alaskans, that are really concerned that we have an executive branch that is more than willing to push or remove the guardrails that are on the executive branch, and what we need from Congress and from the courts is to play that checks and balances role," said the voter.
In Oklahoma, a Republican voter asked Rep. Stephanie Bice (R-Okla.) in a telephone town hall Friday how DOGE, "with some college whiz kids from a computer terminal in Washington, D.C., without even getting into the field, after about a week or maybe two, have determined that it's OK to cut veterans' benefits?"
Another registered Republican told Bice that only a month into Trump's second term, "this administration has gone absolutely off the tracks long ago."
Rep. Cliff Bentz, the only Republican member of Oregon's congressional delegation, was confronted at a town hall on Wednesday by a woman who condemned the administration for firing federal workers "on the spot for performance when we all know how hard these people work"—an apparent reference to the mass firing of probationary workers who have been on the job for less than a year.
The New Republic columnist Greg Sargent mused Sunday that DOGE is starting to resemble former President George W. Bush's response to Hurricane Katrina, "with mounting public concerns about the human toll of the administration's malevolence and incompetence."
The apparent backlash comes as House Republicans prepare to vote on a budget plan including cuts to Medicaid and food assistance—a proposal GOP members who narrowly won their seats in November have expressed major concerns about voting for. With voters in swing districts as well as solidly red areas expressing discontent with the early weeks of the Trump administration, Republican lawmakers' continued support for massive cuts in public spending could wipe out the party's narrow majority in the House in the 2026 elections.
Tony Fabrizio, who was the president's top pollster on his 2024 campaign, warned in a recent memo that majorities of voters in competitive Republican districts are "worried about their personal financial situation," and Trump's approval in those districts is at 47%.
Sixty-three percent of respondents told Fabrizio that tax policy should support working families, and 80% said they support extending the Affordable Care Act health insurance subsidies that expire this year.
"Extending these subsidies will collide with the bedrock GOP ideological commitment to policies that take from poor and working people to keep taxes low on rich people and corporations," wrote Sargent at The New Republic on Saturday. "Trump and Republicans will again want to advance those broad priorities, but they've also been shown repeatedly to be a big political loser. We now have this straight from Trump's own pollster, who is effectively warning them off of doing exactly that. But as should be overwhelmingly clear by now, they are very much poised not to listen."
As Republican lawmakers faced questions from angry voters about DOGE's seizure of confidential government data and cuts to federal agencies overseeing healthcare research, education, workers' rights, and other operations impacting ordinary Americans' lives, Trump said Saturday in a post on his social media platform, Truth Social, that he would like to Musk "get even more aggressive."
Musk appeared to respond to the demand by sending an email to federal employees through the Office of Personnel Management, asking them to provide five examples of work they completed last week and warning that a failure to respond by Monday at midnight would be understood as a resignation.
That email was followed by directives from the State Department and the FBI asking employees not to respond to Musk's demand.
As outlets including the Times and The Washington Post reported that DOGE's so-called "Wall of Receipts"—purported to show $55 billion in savings as the advisory body slashes government agencies and contracts—actually shows hundreds of contracts that were already complete and didn't result in any money going back to the federal government, Sargent wrote that the department is turning into a "fiasco for Elon Musk on multiple fronts."
Musk's latest email to federal workers, said Sargent, "should be seen as a sad little stunt, a desperate effort to make DOGE appear focused and effective when one revelation after another is revealing that it's a fiasco, a comedy of errors, an absolute joke."
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