President-elect Trump should add “and Elimination” to his Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE). The federal government has grown far too large to be managed efficiently. Even if federal workers were highly industrious, and even if politicians were laser-focused on the public interest, the government’s vast size would still create failure after failure. To achieve efficiency, we need major program eliminations. We need a DOGEE.
Federal spending in 2024 of $6.75 trillion was almost 100 times larger than spending by the average state government of $68 billion, as shown in the figure. The average state legislature oversees a budget the size of a bungalow, but Congress (is supposed to) oversee a budget the size of the Empire State Building.
Economist Milton Friedman said, “The tragedy is that because government is doing so many things it ought not to be doing, it performs the functions it ought to be performing badly.” We all know that is true, yet Congress keeps adding more agencies, programs, and spending.
There are 441 federal agencies, as Elon Musk noted. Those agencies run more than 2,400 subsidy programs, have imposed 188,000 pages of regulations, and buy more than $750 billion a year of goods and services. The federal government owns 640 million acres of land and owns or leases almost 300,000 buildings. The federal government is massive in size and sprawling in scope.
Members of Congress don’t have time to oversee even a fraction of this empire. They are consumed by fundraising, meeting with lobbyists, and giving speeches. They routinely miss committee hearings. They don’t know the details of the vast majority of programs they’ve enacted, let alone fix the broken ones. Congress seizes vast powers over society but doesn’t bother ensuring that its interventions actually work.
Sadly, we are squandering a built-in advantage of American democracy that would improve governance. I’m talking about federalism, or allowing the states to handle most government activities. Instead, politicians of both parties have acted to crush federalism and centralize power in Washington over the past century.
They have done so for no good policy reason: centralization benefits politicians, not citizens. Congress has created hundreds of federal programs to supposedly help the public in recent decades, yet polls show that Americans have become ever more disgusted by Washington’s dysfunction and corruption.
The House will be creating a DOGE subcommittee to work with Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy. But we really need a DOGEE, with the elimination part coming first.
Data note: I estimated total state spending for 2024 based on data from the National Association of State Budget Officers and divided by 50.