LARRY KUDLOW: DOGE is going to take out the regulatory state

DOGE is going to take out the regulatory state and that’s the subject of the riff. The hottest ticket in Washington these days is an outfit called DOGE. If you haven’t followed the story, that is the Department of Government Efficiency, run by Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy and it’s a non-governmental department, which is wonderful.  

The two superstars running it spent all day today on the Hill briefing members of both parties. President Trump is totally behind it. Most everybody seems to be in favor of the work of DOGE, even though a lot of people don’t really understand what DOGE is trying to do.  For example, many elected officials are saying how wonderful it is that we have a commission that will get rid of waste, fraud and abuse, reduce government costs and cut the budget deficit.  

Ok, that’s true – to some extent, but I think the real purpose of DOGE is a vast undertaking to stop the unelected regulatory state that has been mis-governing America for far too long. 

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As Steve Forbes has pointed out, socialist-type central planning in the modern age operates through the hundreds of thousands of unelected bureaucrats who exercise their vast power over the economy through over 220 regulatory agencies. That’s right. 220. That’s your regulatory state.  

In my frequent conversations with Vivek Ramaswamy, it seems like chopping down the regulatory state and reducing the overextended government power of the executive branch is a principal DOGE goal. I have served two presidents down through the years, but I had no idea there are over 220 of these agencies.  

Of course, American taxpayers don’t need all of them and running a thumb down multiple pages of lists of these agencies, it sure looks like many are duplicative or unnecessary.  

Vivek has told me several times that he intends to use Supreme Court decisions such as West Virginia v. EPA and overturning of the so-called Chevron deference, in which they criticized the regulators for doing things without any Congressional mandate.  That, of course, is what central planners always do.  They invent their authority to run the country – but there is no Constitutional authority, no Congressional authority, and no taxpayer authority. They just do it to enhance their own power.  

They’ve been getting away with it for a very long time. Until now. Until DOGE. Now, Vivek and Elon do intend to eliminate many of these agencies and significantly reduce the headcount of the entire federal bureaucracy.  

One small item is government employees who don’t come to their offices to work. So federal buildings are empty. Why not lease them out to private-sector companies – and make some money in the process? 

What’s that noise I hear? It’s a combined knee-knocking of millions of government workers, correctly worried about their jobs.  Elon and Vivek also want to look at federal procurement policies and, yes, look for large-scale budget reductions.  

They will work through Russ Vought’s Office of Management and Budget and his Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs to implement the DOGE recommendations. The budget-cutting number of $2 trillion has been floating around for a while – that may be possible over 10 years or even longer, but really the work and value of DOGE is not tied up in the Washington DC swamp cliche of “ending waste, fraud, and abuse.” 

The higher mission is to take apart the unelected regulatory state and chop down wherever possible the alphabet agencies that have been so badly mismanaging the American economy for so many years. A worthy cause. That’s the riff.  

This article is adapted from Larry Kudlow’s opening commentary on the Dec. 5, 2024, edition of “Kudlow.”