The “Department of Government Efficiency,” or DOGE, is officially out of business. With more than eight months left on its charter, the director of the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) told Reuters, “that doesn’t exist anymore.”
The Trump administration tasked DOGE with slashing federal spending. Now, a nonpartisan, nongovernment organization is giving DOGE a failing grade for how it carried out its mission during its 11 months of existence.
“Nothing was saved in the way of money, and real harm was caused to our government’s abilities to solve big problems,” Max Stier told WTOP. He’s president and CEO of the D.C.-based Partnership for Public Service, whose mission is to inspire the next generation of civil servants to transform the way government works. “It was a ‘fire, fire, fire’ effort, rather than a ‘ready, aim fire’ effort.”
His organization gives DOGE an “F.”
“It was an absolute farce in terms of its fundamental purpose, which was to make our government work better, when in fact, it was an exercise an absolute destruction,” Stier said. “DOGE’s disbandment eight months early could not have come soon enough.”
Stier said the Trump administration should have learned from “this deeply destructive and wasteful initiative” and the most important lesson was that destroying the nonpartisan federal workforce “is the exact opposite approach that our country needs to effectively improve the functioning of our government.”
“To that end, it is encouraging that the administration appears to be ending its arbitrary and haphazard hiring freeze and reduction targets,” he said. “It is vital, however, that merit rather than loyalty be the touchstone for the civil service.”
Stier said government leaders realized in 1883 that the so-called “spoils system” of political patronage had to be reformed and the current system has worked, with periodic reforms, for more than 150 years until DOGE was enacted.
“Going to war with the people who are doing the work of government is a bad idea if you want a good outcome,” he added.
It’s estimated that 300,000 people, or a little less than 10% of the federal workforce, lost their jobs during DOGE’s existence. Thousands of those jobs are in D.C., Virginia and Maryland.
“Government is about people and what DOGE succeeded in doing was chasing away some of the very best talent we had in government to serve the American people,” Stier said.
Before he abruptly left government in May, billionaire Elon Musk said DOGE would cut federal spending by up to $2 trillion in its first year. But DOGE’s own calculations put the number at $214 billion. Musk, who helped establish DOGE, once called DOGE “the chain saw for bureaucracy.”
“The problems that DOGE created are going to be with us for a very long time,” Stier said, including recruiting and training the next generation of federal workers, many who will see federal service as too risky.
WTOP has reached out to OPM and the White House for comment.
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