The Purple Wayz ‘DOGE-O-METER’

Artcile #10 Purple Wayz: Navigating to the Center

One of the things I love about writing a series on Navigating back to the Center is that I draw in readers from all over the political spectrum. And it seems like I’m not pissing them off (...too much…)! I received particularly poignant feedback about DOGE from the last PW post. Most agreed that the federal government is bloated in most/all areas and needs a good restructure. A few were in favor of a ‘Sledgehammer’ (or ‘Hatchet’ as Trump calls it) approach, which is largely what DOGE/Elon have been doing. Most preferred the ‘Scalpel' approach, which would take a bit longer, but be more ‘fair and orderly’ with federal employees, and not risk throwing the baby out with the bathwater. Interestingly, a few days after my post, Trump and his cabinet decided to allow the agencies to take the lead, with DOGE moving to a restructuring consultant type role. PW has favored this approach from the start. In practice, however, it looks like DOGE is still driving the bus.

Along with the Sledgehammer problem, DOGE has suffered from a credibility issue. Simply, many people don’t believe that DOGE tells the truth. And they also believe that finding savings and efficiencies is a side goal of Trump and Elon, the main goal being a full dismantling of the ‘swamp’. A major part of this problem is Musk himself–a big fat lightning rod. Although one of the most successful entrepreneurs of our time, he’s also a notorious exaggerator, has many conflicts of interest given his multiple roles, seems to have drunk some of the Rudy Giuliani unhinged juice, and he essentially bought his way into this position. Thought experiment: what if Mitt Romney–moderate right deficit hawk, well-known for his high integrity, former head of Bain Consulting and Bain Capital–headed DOGE? How would everyone feel about the analyses coming out of his shop? For my part, I’d take a lot of comfort that the facts were correct, that the process was responsible, and that the goals were noble and straightforward.

So I thought today we could take a quick look at a number of the DOGE actions and evaluate them at a macro level on 3 criteria: 1) Believability of the DOGE goals in this area, 2) Accuracy of the estimated savings, and 3) Quality of DOGE’s process to fix the problem so far. Spoiler alert–this is going to make Team Scalpel feel much better than Team Sledgehammer/Hatchet. Next week, I’ll do the opposite–deep dive on one of the largest programs that the Trump Administration/DOGE has set its sights on: The Veterans Health Administration.

Below is the Purple Wayz DOGE-O-METER in 5 areas that I picked from the DOGE website. The X Axis presents PW’s views on the 3 criteria–Believability of Need, Accuracy of Savings, and Quality of Process (aka ‘Style points’) along a 1-100% spectrum, 1% being a very low grade and 100% being very high. I’m certain you all will have LOTS to say about this. Particularly the Research/Grants and Department of Education cuts. That’s the idea. Please send your comments in the Substack.

SOFTWARE / CONTENT LICENSES: DOGE has looked across agencies at software, data and content contracts, and when the contract is greater than the use, DOGE has moved to cut the contract back to what is currently being used. In other words, if they bought an Oracle database for 100 users, and only 5 are using it, they can save a lot of money and suffer no decline in productivity.. High on Believability, Savings Accuracy and Style Points. It REALLY helps that this is apolitical. Can’t imagine any Democrat would want to die on this hill. Potential annual savings ~$10-15 billion.

REAL ESTATE LEASES: Same idea as software. Don’t pay for what you don’t use. A little more controversial, because some personnel decisions could be too aggressive, which could mean the government just ended a lease that it might have to redo. There are unconfirmed reports from sources within and outside the government suggesting that at least some of the initial lease cancellations listed by DOGE have been rescinded. Witness the rehiring that’s already happening due to potentially unlawful firings. Believability high, Savings Accuracy medium, style points lower. Potential annual savings ~$2-10 billion.

RESEARCH AND OTHER GRANTS: What’s core? What’s not? There is no doubt in my mind that some government funded research needs to be halted or slowed, keeping in mind our debt crisis and the fact that the private sector provides much R & D. But which ones? This is a HOT ONE, folks. Believability above 50%, but needs a VERY deep dive that we are not doing here today. DOGE claims to have done a deep dive, so give them some credit, but they are employing a biased process. For example, they will search on terms like ‘equity’ and ‘DEI’ to come up with candidates. Also, what about cutting off valuable studies mid-stream? Among the cancellations so far is a clinical trial investigating the long-term efficacy and safety of a novel non-opioid intervention for chronic pain, which had enrolled a significant number of participants and was nearing its primary endpoint data collection. Another was an 11-year study of youths with disabilities, approximately halfway completed. It was supposed to identify which programs were most effective in improving employment and educational outcomes for these students after high school. DOGE might be right that these had already achieved their goals and further spending would be redundant. But how do they know when a statistical endpoint will or won’t be achieved? So Savings Accuracy and Style Points are low. This is the poster child for The Scalpel. You’d need responsible adults, with detailed knowledge of statistical methods, and with no agenda other than the betterment of our society to weigh in on this. Bipartisan a la Simpson Bowles. Give them a budget that’s __% lower than current (10%? 20%? 30%?), and they recommend the cuts. With phase-outs! Who would you put on that committee?

DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION: The Trump Administration cut approximately 1,300 of the 4,133 employees at the Education Department. And nearly 600 had chosen to resign or retire earlier–no doubt including many of the top performers. So almost half of the staff is gone. The two largest segments of the Education Department are Federal Student Aid (FSA) and Office for Civil Rights (OCR). They lost approximately 30-40% of their staff. Could FSA, which had a really lousy year in 2024 with the FAFSA rollout, be rolled into the Department of Treasury? Could the OCR be rolled into the Department of Justice? Both have been suggested and have some logic to them, but both would take an act of Congress. The smaller Institute of Education Sciences was decimated – with over 60% of staff gone. Their work is part of the Research grants above, so would be judged against areas like core science (fusion, genome, climate, etc). Importantly, funding for Title I (those in poverty) and IDEA (children with disabilities) were not touched, although with significantly less staff to administer these programs, they will likely suffer on quality control.

This is another HOT ONE. The central debate here is Federalist in nature: how much control should the federal government have compared to state and local? PW is generally in favor of significant pullback at the Federal level for redundancy reasons. State and local governments are the de facto controllers of education in the US, including everything from curriculum to compliance. In a debt crisis, redundancy is unaffordable. That said, all schools have to comply with Federal laws for civil rights and funding for the poor and disabled. IDEA grants are notoriously fought over by parents. If staffing is too low, that means caseloads per person are too high. Could these funds turn into de facto unmonitored block grants to states? Could the money go to the wrong kids/families? In addition, the Education Department is the keeper of important statistics about our national education performance, clearly a centralized function. Finally, the states don’t push back on everything–they need and value a lot of things the Dept of Education offers. For example, federal contracts that allow state users’ access to technical support services like WestEd and Mathematica are critical for localities. They now can’t access them. So Believability and Savings Accuracy are lower than others. They likely overshot it. Style points are extremely low here too. They employed the Ready Fire (No) Aim approach. No phase-outs or transfers to states/regional orgs. You can burn it down, but then…it’s burning. Now you gotta spend to put the fire out. That’s a wasteful and inefficient process. Savings are ~$3-5 billion annually.

ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTION AGENCY: The EPA has cancelled numerous grants and contracts related primarily to DEI and environmental justice in 3 rounds of spending cuts. They claim to have generated $2 billion of savings, but it’s not clear if that’s annual or over a number of years. They also ‘found’ $20 billion ‘parked at a financial institution’ by the Biden Administration in a ‘rushed effort to obligate money with reduced oversight.’ So far, it’s generally small dollars, and most/all are related to political topics. It is very hard to evaluate the quality of the programs that the EPA decided to cancel. However, it’s believable that the EPA could find 10-30% of costs to cut. PW is just not sure they found the most appropriate ones. So believability is lower than typical, and style points are typically low. Savings are <$1 billion.

So far, there is the only one area that’s apolitical: software. And that is the only one that gets a high score. Hmmm….WWMD? What would Mitt do?

…next time we go deep into Veterans Administration. This one is a bit of a quagmire. Potential savings: very high. Style points so far: very low.