Dumb Ideas about the Process

DOGE relies heavily on technologists to reduce the size of government (Bickerton, 2025). Technological expertise is a valuable skill; however, technologists lack expertise in key areas. If you have ever worked at a large organization, imagine your IT support personnel exchanging job duties with other professional staff, e.g., accountants, lawyers, CFOs, CEOs. What would happen to your organization? How long would it last? Technologists lack expertise in auditing, accounting, governmental accounting, budgeting, compliance and internal control requirements, financial management, and the law. In addition, technologists do not have the subject matter expertise necessary to evaluate agencies and programs intelligently. Technology experts should be one component of an evaluation team, not the entire team. 

A Smart Idea:  To more effectively evaluate an agency and its programs, establish an expert team including certified fraud examiners, accountants, auditors, lawyers, technology experts, research-based subject matter experts, and agency staff with institutional knowledge and task the team with reducing expenditures by a set percentage.

DOGE applies a wrecking ball approach to reducing the size of government (Ingram, 2025). Moving fast increases the likelihood of jumping to conclusions, especially when expertise is lacking (see above). Breaking the government will harm the citizens it serves, and building back a broken government is not as easy as building back a business.  For example, John Dickerson nicely summed up this concern during a recent Slate Political Gabfast episode: “We can all agree that losing 10 pounds might be your goal, and you would eat in a way that would affect that change. But losing 10 pounds by chopping off your leg gets the same result but is not the right way to go about it.” (Dickerson, 2025).

A Smart Idea:  Use a surgical approach to downsizing the government. Cut carefully, with a complete understanding of the consequences of each cut.

Elon Musk surveys his X followers to guide DOGE efforts (Heavey, 2025). Focusing on Elon’s followers, and on a single social media platform X, offers a highly skewed view of US voters. Young adults are disproportionately represented on X, but according to a 2023 Statista report, only 42% of adults age 18-29 are active X users. Use among older adults is significantly lower: 27% of adults 30-49, 17% of adults 50-64, and 6% of adults 65 and older.

A Smart Idea:  Use a credible polling agency, such as Gallop, Harris, or the Pew Research Center, to survey a representative sample of U.S. adults.

“Are you not entertained?  Is that not why you’re here?” –Elon Musk (Isaacson, 2023). DOGE is a diversion to keep us entertained, instead of focused on the main issues impacting our daily lives, i.e., rising home prices, rising grocery prices, rising gas prices. Focusing on entertainment trivializes the very real struggles of the American people and the good work done by civil servants throughout the government.

A Smart Idea:  Focus on inflation first and foremost.