Godspeed Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy. The “Department for Government Efficiency” (“DOGE”) does not yet have statutory authority. But he will have the ear of the president-elect, and President Donald Trump will have the ears of House Speaker Mike Johnson and Senate Majority Leader-elect John Thune.

Every year that the House and Senate can agree on a budget, they can then implement it the statutory “reconciliation” process. to pass laws affecting the implementation of that agreed budget by a simple majority of the Senate. Such bills are not subject to Senate filibuster rules.

The first budget reconciliation cycle is expected to be used to extend and revise (and hopefully make permanent) Trump’s tax cuts from 47 to 45. These tax cuts expire at the end of next year and the economic engine. growth for decades to come in the United States lies in this expansion. There will also be revisions to the tax code — to exempt tips from taxable income and perhaps increase the state and local tax deduction from its very low limits. But the fiscal package must go through the first of two budget reconciliation cycles.

ELON MUSK SAYS ‘ALL ACTIONS’ TAKEN BY DEPARTMENT OF GOVERNMENT EFFICIENCY WILL BE ONLINE: ‘TRANSPARENT’

Other measures may be added to this “51-votes-in-the-senate-is-enough” package of bills. I think the budget could, for example, authorize the fast-track licensing and construction of “small modular reactors” (advanced nuclear reactors) in the US, provided a very small tax is placed on their very large, indeed vast, combined output , kilowatt-hours of energy that AI, national security, and the high-tech sector generally need in the coming years.

Trump announced that Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy will lead the Department of Government Efficiency (“DOGE”) on Tuesday, November 12, 2024. (Getty Images)

I think federal education spending going to states can be conditioned on states wanting the help to provide robust school choice programs and keep boys from participating in girls’ sports. (Some deep blue states will simply refuse, and money will be saved for the budget as a result.)

Certainly, spending on National Public Radio and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting can be cut to zero, and federal government “enforcement cuts” can be authorized “despite any law,” as can Dreamers’ “regularization” and any other group of migrants. already in the country the president-elect wants to regularize upon registration and payment of a fee.

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The lawsuit could authorize the completion of the “Wall” and the expansion of the Border Patrol. The budget can also authorize the immediate and necessary turbocharging of our shipyard capacity and the Navy’s shipbuilding plan. This is the best term package for the first quarter of 2025.

But DOGE doesn’t have a plan yet and won’t for several months. Whatever Musk’s plan is and Ramaswamy and colleagues come up with will rely on statutory changes to have a deep and lasting impact on the behemoth of the federal government. If their proposals do not become statutes, there is a limit to what they can do. If they are in the right, only the Constitution constrains them (as it should and surely will.)

If, for example, the Environmental Protection Agency is merged with the Department of the Interior, and at the same time the EPA is stripped of its authority to “lift” Section 404 permits and Section 7 consultations conducted by the US Army Corps of Engineers, and , the United States Fish and Wildlife Service, these changes will be introduced in the 2026 budget and reconciliation package. (There is a lot of jargon, but believe me, this sentence contains worlds of reform, and a massive amount of productivity would be unleashed this way.)

Do you want to abolish the Department of Education and rehouse its remains in Health and Human Services, where it resided until President Jimmy Carter unleashed it on American education in 1979? Use the 2026 budget and reconciliation cycle. It is the “magic bullet” legislative vehicle for DOGE.

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Whatever comes of cutting and merging DOGE, along with changes to the tenure-like federal civil service system that embeds “resistance” into so many agencies — all of that should be taken care of for the budget and reconciliation package and for the House and Senate GOP. majorities next year. DOGE could lead to the most significant reorganization and streamlining of the federal government since 9/11, where the crisis of those times led to a hasty reorganization and necessary expansion of our homeland security apparatus.

Musk and Ramaswamy could change more than reporting lines on paper. They could actually reshape the federal government for the information age. But unless DOGE’s proposals are codified into federal law, those changes may not last. The GOP is likely to get hammered in the 2026 election, so President-elect Trump gets two big legislative changes, and maybe just two. The first in 2025 is for the tax/expenditure/reduction laws outlined above. The second, in 2026, should be for DOGE. But the co-chairs had better enlist some excellent editors and maybe a retired Senate lawmaker or two while they’re at it.

Hugh Hewitt is the host of “The Hugh Hewitt Show,” heard weekday mornings from 6:00 am to 9:00 am ET on the Salem Radio Network and simulcast on the Salem News Channel. Hugh Awakens America on over 400 affiliates nationwide and on all streaming platforms where SNC can be seen. He is a frequent guest on Fox News Channel’s News Roundtable hosted by Bret Baier weekdays at 6:00 PM ET. A native of Ohio and a graduate of Harvard College and the University of Michigan Law School, Hewitt has been a professor of law at Chapman University’s Fowler School of Law since 1996, where he teaches constitutional law. Hewitt launched his eponymous radio show in Los Angeles in 1990. Hewitt has appeared frequently on all major national television news networks, hosted television shows for PBS and MSNBC, written for every major American newspaper, written a dozen of books and moderated dozens of Republican articles. candidate debates, most recently the November 2023 Republican presidential debate in Miami, and four Republican presidential debates in the 2015-16 cycle. Hewitt focuses his radio show and column on the Constitution, national security, American politics and the Cleveland Browns and Guardians. Hewitt has interviewed tens of thousands of guests from Democrats Hillary Clinton and John Kerry to Republican Presidents George W. Bush and Donald Trump over his 40 years on the air, and this column presents the main story that will drive his radio show /TV today.

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