Elon Musk and his DOGE: Fixing government or dismantling the Constitution?
As an investor, Elon Musk embraced the idea that business turnarounds require fast, drastic, and disruptive measures. Now he’s applying the same playbook to the country’s largest employer, the federal government, by seizing control of its payments system and its overseas aid department – and pushing aside civil servants who raise legal and ethical objections.
In doing so, Mr. Musk, the billionaire head of a newly minted Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, appears to be carrying out the mission of President Donald Trump, who has vowed to cut waste and fraud in Washington.
To President Trump’s supporters, the Silicon Valley ethos that Mr. Musk brings to overhauling taxpayer-funded institutions is why he’s needed in Washington, where a permanent political class has proved unwilling or unable to prune a bloated bureaucracy. Previous presidents, like Ronald Reagan, who vowed to pursue smaller government all failed. Mr. Reagan himself quipped in 1964, “a government bureau is the nearest thing to eternal life we’ll ever see on this earth.”
Why We Wrote This
The Trump administration and Elon Musk seem to think drastic upheaval is the only way to tame bloated government bureaucracy. The question is whether they are smashing the Constitution to bits along the way.
That Mr. Musk is the world’s richest person and a huge political donor wielding a chainsaw over federal agencies that regulate his companies and safeguard citizens’ data is seen as less important than the results. And to MAGA loyalists who believe that an anti-Trump “deep state” operates in Washington, the ends are fully justified.
Frustration with Congress’ failure to tackle budget deficits, whichever party is in power, also plays into the narrative of Mr. Musk as the outsider who can cut the Gordian knot.
“We need some fresh eyes on this thing who are outside of Washington, who can say, ‘What’s wrong here? How can we get this on track?’ And I think DOGE serves that purpose,” says Tom Davis, a former Republican congressman from Virginia.
Democratic lawmakers and other opponents of Mr. Trump have recoiled at Mr. Musk’s cavalier attitude and his assault on the U.S. Agency for International Development. Over the weekend, Mr. Musk insisted that the agency should be shut down. On Monday, Secretary of State Marco Rubio said that USAID would be downsized and folded into his department. Mr. Musk also had a hand in a memo sent to federal employees seeking resignations by Sept. 30 titled “Fork in the Road,” the same as an offer sent to Twitter workers in 2022 when he bought the social platform now called X.
Some warn that a constitutional crisis is under way, as Mr. Musk and his DOGE team ride roughshod over various statutes governing how the executive branch operates, such as the 1974 Impoundment Control Act, as well as protections for career civil servants. Mr. Trump’s advisers view some of these laws as unconstitutional constraints on the executive, setting up a fight in the courts.
“This vision of executive power is extremely dangerous,” says Richard Painter, the chief White House ethics lawyer under former President George W. Bush.
Where does DOGE fit in government?
Mr. Musk’s ill-defined role in the Trump administration and what DOGE does may also be challenged, says Professor Painter, who teaches law at the University of Minnesota. An executive order signed by Mr. Trump after he took office made DOGE part of the executive branch, not an advisory panel as it was first envisioned. Mr. Musk hasn’t been confirmed by Congress, and his group appears to operate as a stealth unit within the administration.
As a federal officer in the Trump administration, Mr. Musk would have the authority to demand the cooperation of a government agency, says Professor Painter. But he would then also be required to disclose his financial assets and to recuse himself from any matter that could have a direct impact on his assets. The other option is for DOGE to be a federal advisory panel, which is required by law to hold public meetings and disclose its records. “You can’t just pick and choose,” he says.
White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt told reporters Monday that Mr. Musk is classified as a “special government employee,” not a full-time employee. Such an employee works for 130 days or fewer per year.
Sen. Elizabeth Warren, a Massachusetts Democrat who serves on the Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs, wrote to Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent questioning why Mr. Musk and his team were granted access to federal payments systems that process more than $5 trillion annually, including tax refunds and Social Security checks. “I am alarmed that as one of your first acts as Secretary, you appear to have handed over a highly sensitive system responsible for millions of Americans’ private data – and a key function of government – to an unelected billionaire and an unknown number of his unqualified flunkies,” she wrote.
Also on Monday, the American Federation of Government Employees union joined other groups to sue the Treasury Department “for sharing confidential data with the so-called Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), run by Elon Musk.”
“He’s a big cost cutter”
Mr. Musk argues that his goal is to stop “illegal” payments that go through the Treasury Department. He wrote on X that his team is “cutting funding to fraudsters, wastrels & terrorists.” He also accused Treasury officials of “breaking the law every hour of every day by approving payments that are fraudulent or do not match the funding laws passed by Congress.”
It’s not clear which, if any, payments have been stopped, although Mr. Musk claimed that he had cut off a refugee support-services agency. Mr. Musk’s focus on Treasury payments comes as a White House effort to pause all federal financial assistance is tied up in federal court.
On Sunday, Mr. Trump said he supported Mr. Musk’s efforts, without commenting on specific actions. “He’s a big cost cutter,” Mr. Trump told reporters. “Sometimes we won’t agree with it and we’ll not go where he wants to go, but I think he’s doing a great job. He’s a smart guy, very smart, and he’s very much into cutting the budget of our federal government.”
For longtime advocates of limited government, however, Mr. Musk’s high-profile strikes on federal agencies and the use of executive orders to force change have obvious drawbacks.
Alex Nowrasteh, vice president of economic and social policy studies at the Cato Institute, a libertarian think tank, was enthusiastic when DOGE was first announced. But he’s not impressed by its attempt to shut down USAID, or its claims of huge savings from fraud and waste that can be found, when the bulk of government spending goes for pensions, health care, and defense.
Mr. Musk is “getting a lot of pushback on trying to reform a tiny sliver of the U.S. budget,” Mr. Nowrasteh says. “It seems like a lot of pain borne by American governing institutions and not much payoff.”
Congress’ power of the purse at stake
The best-case scenario, says Vin Weber, a former Republican congressman from Minnesota, is that ultimately Congress works with the administration to pass spending bills that rein in deficits. “They are trying to tell the country that Washington can work,” says Mr. Weber, a GOP strategist, referring to Mr. Trump and Mr. Musk.
A less rosy outcome, Mr. Weber says, would be protracted litigation that sours voters even more on the government’s efficacy. Either way, lawmakers share the blame for winding up with a dysfunctional system for spending bills. “Congress needs to look in the mirror. If they had protected the regular appropriation process, I don’t think we would be where we are today,” he says.
Matt Salmon, a former GOP congressman from Arizona who served on what is now the House Committee on Foreign Affairs, says Mr. Musk is wrong to dismantle USAID, not only because the agency does good work, but also because Congress has authorized its spending. Mr. Salmon, a Trump critic, says Republicans who are ignoring DOGE’s excesses have short memories.
“I used to complain a lot when President Obama was, through executive orders, doing things that clearly should have been [done] by Congress. If you’re a strict adherent to the Constitution, you can’t [complain] just when it’s a president of the other party,” Mr. Salmon says.
Rooting out waste and increasing transparency are worthy goals, says Faith Williams, director of the Effective and Accountable Government Program at the Project on Government Oversight, a nonpartisan watchdog group. But empowering Mr. Musk, an unelected businessman, to close down an agency without holding any hearings doesn’t feel like accountability, especially when the Trump administration is simultaneously firing inspectors general at multiple government agencies.
“When we talk about abuses [in government] we also talk about abuses of power, and that’s what we’re seeing now,” Ms. Williams says.
She also expects to see litigation over DOGE’s free-wheeling tactics. Still, even if the courts ultimately overturn specific actions, the damage may already have been done to expectations for how presidents can wield authority. “The norms are being weakened and challenged, and that’s not something that we litigate,” she says.
