WASHINGTON — President-elect Donald Trump has tapped entrepreneurs Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy to lead a new initiative to cut federal spending.

It’s called the “Department of Government Efficiency” or DOGE, and it’s named after a vintage memesbased on an image of the Shiba Inu dog, which is also the namesake of Musk’s favorite crypto token. The new DOGE, in other words, is disruptive, it’s exciting, and it already looks cool social media account.

But it’s also an old and broken concept with a long history of hype and failure. Although it has “department” in its name, the new bill looks more like a “blue-ribbon” presidential commission, a group of nongovernmental experts who study an issue and issue a report with nonbinding recommendations.

Whether established by Congress or the president, expert panels can be a way for policymakers to reduce the complexity of issues, break down collective action bottlenecks, and increase the visibility of a policy issue. They are also a way for policymakers to delay action, avoid accountability, and empower unelected bureaucrats. Trump himself has done it before criticized the concept.

“We can’t keep setting up blue-ribbon committees with your wife and your wife and your husband and they meet and have a table and talk. Talk, talk, talk,” Trump said when he was president in 2018. “That’s what we got in Washington. I have all these blue ribbon committees. Everyone wants to be on a blue ribbon committee.”

On his Monday announcement about DOGETrump has indicated that he will not be an official part of his administration, saying he will instead “provide advice and guidance from outside the government and work with the White House and the Office of Management and Budget to drive broad structural reforms and to create an entrepreneurial approach to government never seen before.”

Musk said he could easily identify $2 trillion worth of cuts to the federal government’s $6.5 trillion annual budget, but Congress should actually handle government spending, as several lawmakers noted in interviews with HuffPost this week.

“One of my colleagues said, ‘I thought this is what Congress was supposed to do,’ like study the government and make it more efficient,” Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.) said. “I mean, I’m excited to have people like Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy looking at how to make it more efficient. Then it’s up to us to vote on that.”

Sources in Trump’s orbit are according to reports is looking for ways to give the DOGE commission real power to cut federal spending without congressional approval, though any such effort would undoubtedly face a legal challenge and significant pushback from members of Congress who zealously retain control over federal spending.

Along with potentially bypassing the Senate for nominationsTrump bypassing lawmakers on spending would be a big step toward neutralizing Congress as a co-equal branch of government. Republicans on Capitol Hill love Musk and Ramaswamy, but they also love their constitutional role as stewards of public funds.

“Obviously, ultimately, Congress controls the purse strings,” said Rep. Mike Lawler (R-N.Y.), a moderate GOP member of the House. “In many ways this is like setting up a debt commission, a blue ribbon panel. They’ll make recommendations to the executive branches, to Congress, and that’s fine, and then obviously we’ll work through any recommendations that come up. Ultimately, Congress will have the final say on spending.”

Asked about the prospect of DOGE having unilateral spending power, other Republicans suggested Congress should still be involved.

“I hope that Musk and Ramaswamy will be fully empowered, to the greatest extent possible,” said Rep. Bob Good (R-Va.), former chairman of the right-wing House Freedom Caucus. “I hope Congress will come back and give them additional help and authority.”

“I want to hear their proposals first in terms of how much is advisory versus action,” said Rep. Chip Roy (R-Texas), another partisan. “I’m all for slashing and burning the federal bureaucracy. So whatever they want to do to bring that forward, great, let’s make sure we have the ability as Congress to do the proper oversight and all the things that we’re supposed to do.”

The DOGE project resembles a bipartisan commission established by then-President Barack Obama to executive order in February 2010. Obama charged the commission with “identifying policies to improve the medium-term fiscal situation and achieve long-term fiscal sustainability.”

Obama established the commission at a time when budget deficits were a major focus in Washington, with even Democrats agreeing that Congress should find ways to cut spending. Of the commission the recommendations were controversialespecially proposals to raise the Social Security eligibility age and slowly increase benefits, and committee members ended up not endorsing their own product.

Trump has already ruled out cuts to Social Security and Medicare, leaving DOGE with limited budget space in which to operate. But Musk and Ramaswamy remain bullish, with Ramaswamy suggesting on social media On Wednesday, the government is supposed to eliminate any program that receives an annual appropriation from Congress, even if a basic authorization has expired. It’s an idea that might make a lot of sense to someone completely unfamiliar with how Congress works.

“There are over 1,200 programs that are no longer authorized but still receive credits. It is completely insane,” Ramaswamy wrote, noting that defunding such programs would save hundreds of billions.

Congress appropriating money for programs with expired authorizations may seem like Washington turned on a money spigot and forgot to turn it off, but it’s actually a spending category that remains. carefully researched. The biggest item is more than $100 billion for the Department of Veterans Affairs, which stands for health care and benefits for veterans — a politically untouchable pot of money.

“Trump’s budget czar wants to cut $119 billion in veterans health care,” Rep. Debbie Wasserman-Schultz (D-Fla.) he said in response at Ramaswamy. “I will not allow the GOP to destroy veterans’ hard-earned benefits.”

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