DOGE’s Chances Are Slim, but It Might Be Our Only Hope
President-elect Donald Trump’s new Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) is getting a lot of buzz, much of it tentatively hopeful. There’s a good reason for that: Untested though it is, the idea of handing responsibility for dismantling government bureaucracy, slashing excess regulations, and cutting wasteful expenditures to a couple of wealthy tech bros might work where nothing else has. Given that the federal government hasn’t balanced its books in decades and the budget deficit just keeps growing and adding to the national debt, it might be our only hope of avoiding catastrophe.
A $1.8 Trillion Deficit, and Growing
“In fiscal year 2024, which ended on September 30, the federal budget deficit totaled $1.8 trillion—an increase of $138 billion (or 8 percent) from the shortfall recorded in the previous year,” reports the Congressional Budget Office.
If that sounds familiar, it should. You’ve heard something similar before, year after year, though the numbers tend to become increasingly dire as time goes on. It’s been a very long time since the federal government managed to confine its spending to what it takes in.
“In the last 50 years, the federal government budget has run a surplus four times, most recently in 2001,” the U.S. Treasury cheerfully concedes on its national deficit explainer page. In fact, since the start of fiscal year 2025—which began, let’s remember, last month—”the federal government has spent $257 billion more than it has collected.” That’s $191 billion more than the roughly $67 billion deficit our federal government had run up by this time last year.
The Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis puts annual deficits in graph form for easy viewing. Even if you ignore the insanity of pandemic year 2020’s spending and deficit, there’s a steady widening of the gap between revenues and expenditures over the last decade.
A Spending Problem Crying for an Intervention
What’s especially impressive, for a certain value of “impressive,” is that federal revenues were up by 11 percent, or $479 billion, from 2023. That $1.8 trillion deficit was accomplished by increasing spending by dramatically more than the rise in revenues: $617 billion. It seems that no matter how much money the U.S. government collects, it spends more.
If the federal government were a shopaholic family member, we’d have held an intervention years ago. Maybe—and here’s where tentative hopefulness comes in—a pair of wealthy tech entrepreneurs can stage the intervention that the federal government so obviously needs.
“I am pleased to announce that the Great Elon Musk, working in conjunction with American Patriot
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