The acronym DOGE is a purposeful nod to Musk’s vocal love of memes.

Where did the idea come from?

According to Trump’s transition team co-chairman Howard Lutnick, he was the first to propose the Department of Government Efficiency to Musk, purposefully catering to the acronym for Musk’s amusement. The prospect amused the South African billionaire, leading to Trump quickly adopting it.

Doge is one of the internet’s most popular memes, based on the real-life Shiba Inu dog Kabosu. The meme has garnered a real-life impact, with software designers creating the Dogecoin cryptocurrency. According to Coin Gecko, the cryptocurrency is valued at a market cap of over $60.5 billion. Its value shot up after Trump’s election.

How will DOGE work?

Trump laid out the purpose and function of DOGE in a Tuesday statement.

Trump tasked Musk and Ramaswamy to “dismantle Government Bureaucracy, slash excess regulations, cut wasteful expenditures, and restructure Federal Agencies — Essential to the ‘Save America’ Movement.”

“This will send shockwaves through the system and anyone involved in Government waste, which is a lot of people!” Musk was quoted as saying.

Trump went so far as to call DOGE the “‘Manhattan Project’ of our time.”

According to the president-elect, the department will work outside of government, but working in close coordination with the White House and the Office of Management and Budget. He said it would institute large-scale structural reform with its entrepreneurial approach to government.

Finally, Trump gave a cut-off date of July 4, 2026, for the agency to accomplish its goals, “the perfect gift to America on the 250th Anniversary of the Declaration of Independence.”

Musk promised “maximum transparency in his new role.”

“Anytime the public thinks we are cutting something important or not cutting something wasteful, just let us know!” he said.

Musk added that the department would have a “leaderboard for most insanely dumb spending of your tax dollars. This will be both extremely tragic and extremely entertaining.”

Despite the name, the department will most likely not be a federal department due to the difficulties of creating such a body out of thin air. It is likely to take the form of the 1982 Grace Commission, which worked closely with the government but took on a solely advisory role.

Trump would be able to create the advisory board through an executive order, as approved through the 1972 Federal Advisory Committee Act. Reagan created the Grace Commission through Executive Order 12369.

Is there a precedent for DOGE?

DOGE has a ready precedent in former President Ronald Reagan’s 1982 Private Sector Survey on Cost Control, otherwise known as the Grace Commission. Reagan was credited with debuting the term “drain the swamp” in assigning the commission to root out government waste.

Reagan tasked the “outstanding experts from the private sector” with an in-depth examination of the Executive Branch, tasking industrialist J. Peter Grace with leading it.

While the scope of DOGE hasn’t yet been revealed, the Grace Commission featured over 150 prominent business leaders working as part of 36 different task forces.

The work of the commission, originally planned to be six months, ballooned to one year and a half. The final report presented to Congress in January 1984 contained over 2,500 recommendations, which it estimated would save trillions of dollars over decades.

The overwhelming majority of recommendations were not implemented, however, and government debt quickly ballooned.

What are the criticisms of DOGE?

The main targets of criticism around DOGE have been potential conflicts of interest, given Musk’s contracts with the government through Starlink and SpaceX, and the possible inefficiency of having two leaders for a single job.

“Well, there it is. The man who received more than $15 billion in government contracts over the past decade has been selected to lead the new Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE),” Cambridge professor Jostein Hauge said. “I can’t think of a larger conflict of interest.”

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“The Office of Government Efficiency is off to a great start with split leadership: two people to do the work of one person,” Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) said. “Yeah, this seems REALLY efficient.”