After winning the 2024 US Presidential Election, President elect Donald Trump announced that Tesla and SpaceX owner Elon Musk will team with former presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy to run a new federal commission to eliminate government waste. The new commission will be known as the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE).
The DOGE’s primary goal is to cut $2 trillion by July of 2026.
“Taxpayers are rightly skeptical about commissions and grand promises from Washington to cut spending,” but we support DOGE,” said CEO of Open the Books, John Hart.
Hart said there’s a lot to uncover when it comes to eliminating waste and streamlining costly regulations.
“We’ve blown the whistle on everything from the militarization of the IRS to DEI programs in federal agencies that divert funds from basic health research,” Hart said. “Reporting such findings directly to the public will be key to maintaining long-term support for belt-tightening.”
For years, groups like Open the Books and other entities have exposed billions in government spending.
Each year, Senator Rand Paul (R-KY) published his list of government waste totaling around $500 billion. Some of the documented programs included studies on transgender monkeys, grants for DEI and checks to dead people. Sen. Paul said DOGE can start by evaluating the projects and programs that he documented
Hart said his group has the largest private database of public spending in history.
“There are 10 billion lines of data at every level of government, Hart said. “110,000 government agencies are there to audit. And we have 172 million salary and pension records. Let’s put it all to use in the coming weeks, months and years.”
Allies of Trump want the commission to go further and reorganize federal agencies.
According to Open the Books, since 2011, the Government Accountability Office has released an annual report, and each year, the report reveals redundancies that could potentially save billions, if they were eliminated.
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