DOGE Is Failing

Last November, I wrote that Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency ran the risk of following in the Clinton administration’s Reinventing Government footsteps. That program evaluated all sorts of ways to make government work better, but ended up doing almost nothing but laying off employees. The layoffs lasted only a few years, after which Congress restored the number of employees and agency budgets.

Gallatin National Forest; Forest Service photo.

Instead of simply cutting employees, I wrote, Musk should focus on creating new incentives for agencies to operate more efficiently and more effectively. “Such new incentives would focus agencies on the people they are supposed to serve rather than on simply increasing their budgets,” I added. “More important, if properly designed these would be lasting changes, not ones that would disappear as soon as the next administration takes office.”

Musk obviously didn’t read my article, as he is doing exactly the same thing as the Clinton administration did. The Forest Service recently laid off about 10 percent of its employees, and the Park Service made similar cuts. Rather than make these agencies more efficient or more effective, such indiscriminate layoffs leave the administration open to the charge that it is leaving public lands more vulnerable to wildfire and other problems.

Management of the nation’s federal lands costs taxpayers more than $10 billion a year. These lands are often described as “priceless,” and effectively they are because Congress won’t allow the agencies that manage them to charge fair market value prices for most of the uses of those lands. Only coal miners and oil and gas companies pay true market value; all other users get cushy deals in the form of free or below-market prices. Moreover, the agencies don’t get to keep most of the revenues that do come in, as Congress often earmarks them to some special interest group such as local schools and county road departments.

Musk could have proposed to reform these policies, allowing the agencies to charge market prices for recreation, hunting, fishing, and other resources, and further allowing the agencies to keep a fixed percentage of all the revenues they collect. IF the rest of the revenues went to the Treasury, this would likely turn the agencies from $10 billion losers to $10 billion profit centers for the government.

It would also lead to better management as the agencies would be responsive to users, not to the whims of politicians. On all but 1 or 2 percent of federal lands, revenues from recreationists would outweigh revenues from all other sources, so the agencies would have incentives to promote clean water, diverse wildlife habitat, and other things that recreationists like.

All of these ideas were suggested when the Clinton Administration tried to reinvent government but were rejected because they were too complicated. It looks like Musk is making the same mistake. That means government agencies will continue to perform poorly and any savings from cutting agency budgets will be dissipated in a few years as the agencies and the special interest groups they benefit inevitably seek more money and Congress inevitably gives in.