RIP DOGE

What coulda, shoulda been

Does everyone remember the beginning of Trump’s 2nd administration when DOGE was making progress, and we had hope that something would FINALLY change?

Of course, that was before Trump backed off, caved to public pressure, and let it all fade away. He didn’t even attempt to pressure Congress into codifying any DOGE changes. He simply gave up. No angry tweets. No fierce press conferences. No teams sent to negotiate on Capitol Hill. No pressuring GOP representatives or threatening to primary them. No selection of a meaningful successor to Elon. Nothing.

What a profound disappointment.

We’ll likely never get that close to genuine fiscal change again.

DOGE wasn’t capable of passing legislation, so I never assumed it would make lasting change entirely on its own, but I DID have hope that it would highlight issues which lawmakers would then be pressured to fix. DOGE routinely shed light on unacceptable government mismanagement of our finances. It raised awareness, put agencies under the microscope, and offered some degree of accountability. (More than politicians and bureaucrats typically experience, at least.)

By letting it dissipate into the dustbin of history, we lost the source of political leverage that might have led to the popularization of fiscal sanity. I understand that DOGE wasn’t popular in its small 3-month tenure, but that’s a very short period of time in the grand scheme of things. Had it been allowed to continue, the problems it continued to highlight could have armed future candidates with evidence and examples as to what needs changing. It could have placed us in a better position to build a meaningful political alliance based on fiscal sanity.

Trump simply didn’t care enough to push through the public criticism. He caved. It’s just one of the ways this 2nd Trump administration has let me down.

h/t Jay Hubbard, guest columnist