On November 12, President-elect Donald Trump announced his plan for a second term to create a “Department of Government Efficiency” which, in his words, would “dismantle government bureaucracy, reduce excessive regulations, cut wasteful spending and would restructure federal agencies.”

He puts leadership of the “department” in the hands of Elon Musk, the world’s most successful corporate welfare queen, and Vivek Ramaswamy, whose claim to fame consists of trying, without much success or success, to sell himself to the public like a sort of Trump/Musk hybrid.

What a DOGE! Wow! Creating a backronym from Elon Musk’s favorite memecoin wasn’t difficult, but it’s probably the heaviest task we’ll see from the idea.

After noticing the prank and the pranksters involved, the first and most important feature to understand about this new department is that it will not be a “department.”

A “department” is a cabinet-level executive organization with broad powers to administer government operations using taxpayer dollars appropriated for use by Congress. There are currently 15 “departments” within the federal government, ranging from State (diplomacy), Defense (the military), to Justice (law enforcement).

DOGE, on the other hand, will operate as either a presidential commission or a federal advisory committee. Many of the former and about a thousand of the latter can be identified as operational at any given time, but few receive any specific or ongoing attention.

For what? Because presidential commissions and federal advisory committees can only do one thing: make recommendations.

When it comes to recommendations on how to “dismantle government bureaucracy, reduce excessive regulations, cut wasteful spending, and restructure federal agencies,” the difference between your conversation with a neighbor and DOGE’s recommendations mostly comes down to who buys the coffee donuts consumed during this time. the conversation.

DOGE may have office space, a small staff, and a small budget to cover coffee and donuts, but the authority to make things happen? No.

We have been here several times already. History is littered with commissions and advisory committees. They are one of politicians’ favorite tools to convince you that they are going to do things they don’t actually intend to do.

Even going from ripping off commissions/committees to requiring “recommendations” from actual departments usually doesn’t achieve much. For a recent example, look at Trump’s first term.

In 2016, Trump campaigned to eliminate two federal regulations for every new one. Then he ordered ministries to do just that.

Oh, wait, no… he ordered departments to “identify” two regulations “to eliminate” for each new one. No requirement that they actually ARE eliminated, just that they be “identified”. Results:

Three days before Trump’s inauguration, according to QuantGov Regulatory Trackingthe Federal Register included 1,079,651 regulations. This number then increased, never falling below the initial figure for almost two years, after which it began to increase again, totaling 1,089,742 on the day he left office.

This time he is not even letting such recommendations seep into the functional areas of government. He just microwaves his old gaff and serves it to Musk, Ramaswamy and you.

As usual, as usual.