Small-Government Conservatives Should Give DOGE a Chance

President-elect Donald Trump’s announcement of a “Department of Government Efficiency” (DOGE) caught many conservatives off guard. On paper, a parastatal entity determined to “dismantle Government Bureaucracy, slash excess regulations, cut wasteful expenditures, and restructure Federal Agencies” should be catnip to small-government types. And yet, many Reaganites rolled their eyes. Oddly enough, a scattering of leftist lawmakers, including Bernie Sanders and Ro Khanna, have shown more enthusiasm—or at least an openness to hijacking DOGE’s brief—to streamline defense spending. Several budget hawks on the right, by contrast, have largely dismissed DOGE as a sideshow to Congress.

We understand the skepticism. Didn’t David Stockman, the “father of Reagonomics,” try cutting spending in the early 1980s in his role at the Office of Management and…more