There were times when even President Trump seemed surprised how fervent Elon Musk was about heading a government efficiency commission and slashing the size of the federal bureaucracy.
He's a "real patriot," Trump said on March 9. "This is something that's really not good for him, and yet he's doing it. He's opened a lot of eyes."
Those were the glory days of DOGE, the volunteer commission that essentially shuttered the US Agency for International Development and put thousands of workers at other federal agencies out of work. For a couple of months, bureaucrats and their agency bosses feared and loathed Musk, whose chainsaw motif reflected not just the speed of his actions but also the brutality.
Yet the bureaucracy is winning, still. Musk is leaving DOGE to return to Tesla (TSLA), SpaceX (SPAX.PVT), and his other companies, his hubris punctured and his visions of a lean government evaporating. Musk has criticized the big Republican bill in Congress that was supposed to formalize hundreds of billions of dollars in DOGE cuts, but will do no such thing -- instead adding a few trillion dollars to the national debt. The chainsaw bravado is gone, with Musk now saying with what sounds like regret that he got too deeply involved in politics.
A lot of people saw a Musk-Trump breakup coming, in part because both men have giant egos and are used to being in charge. But the Musk flameout also highlights Trump's habit of delegating thankless tasks to others and then stepping out of the way when the inevitable reckoning comes.
Trump was happy to let Musk attack the bureaucracy, which fit with Trump's own conspiracy theory of a "deep state" that ought to be dismantled. But Trump was never going to do the heavy lifting required to wrangle the legislation that would be necessary to downsize the government for real.
Former Republican House Speaker Kevin McCarthy said recently that Trump has two guiding policy principles: Tariffs are good, and drug prices are too high. You could probably add to that Trump's innate preference for deregulation and low taxes.
Bureaucratic reform has never been something Trump particularly cared about. The same with debt and deficits. The DOGE commission wasn't even Trump's idea. It was Musk's. So Trump let Musk run his own pet project without any serious pledge to do what it would take to see the work through.
As many budget experts have repeatedly pointed out, an advisory commission such as DOGE has no legal authority to cut federal spending, close federal agencies, or cancel federal contracts. DOGE can make some recommendations that the president or appointed officials have the authority to carry out. But most spending or spending cuts require congressional legislation. So do most moves to create or eliminate government agencies.