DOGE's actions suggest Congress may appropriate funds for agencies and programs, but the President can do as he pleases with those funds. Multiple Executive Orders reflect this underlying belief: https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/. However, the Constitution of the United States divides the federal government into three branches: legislative, executive, and judicial to ensure no individual or group will have too much power (USA.GOV, 2024). DOGE has too much power.
A Smart Idea: Respect the role of Congress as a co-equal, independent branch of government. Congress should also embrace this role.
DOGE focuses on eliminating programs counter to their personal beliefs, or the beliefs of the President, e.g., Department of Education, USAID, NIH (Crowley, 2025). Yet many of these programs represent a small portion of the federal budget and/or perform critical health-related functions.
A Smart Idea: Focus on "big ticket" programs with real fiscal challenges, such as the Department of Defense which has a 33 year track record of failed audits (Rose, 2024).
DOGE characterizes government regulations as unconstitutional, displaying a rather shocking ignorance of the legislative process (DOGE, 2025). Regulations translate law into action. Specifically, "regulations are standards and rules adopted by administrative agencies that govern how laws will be enforced.” (Cable, 2019). In addition, regulations are subject to public comment periods and are often modified based on the comments received. Regulations are in no way unconstitutional.
A Smart Idea: Review and comment upon new federal regulations, and advocate for regulatory changes when existing regulations are found to be problematic.
If DOGE doesn't like a program, they mislabel it as fraudulent (Murray, 2025). DOGE tosses around terms like waste, fraud, abuse, and mismanagement. These are all very different concepts and none of these concepts relate to an individual’s personal views as to how government funds should be spent. The Government Accountability Office (GAO) (n.d.) provides clear and concise definitions of these terms: Waste is “squandering money or resources, even if not explicitly illegal.” Fraud is “attempting to obtain something of value through willful misrepresentation.” Abuse is “behaving improperly or unreasonably or misusing one’s position or authority.” Mismanagement is “creating a substantial risk to an agency’s ability to accomplish its mission.” Very few, if any, of the programs highlighted by DOGE can be characterized as waste, fraud, abuse, or mismanagement.
A Smart Idea: Do not use labels you do not understand. Rely on definitions provided by government agencies specializing in the detection of waste, fraud, abuse, and mismanagement.
DOGE's lack of auditing and accounting expertise is particularly problematic in this regard (Murray, 2025). DOGE quickly jumps to conclusions when reviewing raw financial data, with an incomplete understanding of the underlying data system. DOGE's rush to judgment leads them to falsely report financial irregularities and mislead the general public about the integrity of the government. In contrast, all auditors and accountants reconcile their work to other financial documentation (Hussain, 2025). This reconciliation process ensures their conclusions actually reflect financial activities within an organization. Auditors and accountants recognize the impact of human error, e.g., keying errors, empty data fields, obsolete data; DOGE does not.
A Smart Idea: Rely on experienced auditors and accountants to reconcile financial data before jumping to conclusions about the data.
Most grants include significant payments for indirect costs. These are usually defined as facilities and administration costs. Facilities costs include depreciation on buildings, equipment and capital improvements, interest on relevant debt, and operations and maintenance expenses. Administration costs includes general expenses such as director's office, accounting, personnel, and other types of administrative expenses. In a naive attempt to simplify this process and reduce costs, DOGE has ignored the unique resource demands of each grant and the burden placed on the research facility, university, or non-profit (Salem, 2025). Some grants will use more resources, creating a higher indirect cost. In most cases, capping the indirect costs at 15% does not fully reimburse the organization for space and services provided. As a result, research and programs will be curtailed because organizations will not be able to cover their costs.
A Smart Idea: Recognizing the indirect cost proposal process is convoluted, implement a more standardized, simplified, and transparent approach.
In attacking USAID, DOGE demonstrated a clear distain for foreign aid and the employees who work to provide it (Knickmeyer, 2025). Again, DOGE is focusing on very small components of the federal government. Foreign aid represents 1.2% of the federal budget (Desilver, 2025).
A Smart Idea: Focus on bigger ticket items to significantly reduce the size of government.
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