It Can’t Just Be DOGE

President-elect Donald Trump’s return to Washington will surely bring with it a renewed focus on the administrative state and its excesses. Exemplifying that effort is the much–media–maligned Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, headed by Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy. While the two currently seem sidetracked by immigration debates online, we shouldn’t forget where their energies will (hopefully) soon be directed back to their wildly popular new gig overseeing DOGE.

There’s a reason the effort is so popular with ordinary Americans: wasteful government spending is undoubtedly a problem. Every year, the federal government, through its opaque and often progressively infused grantmaking process, spends billions of dollars on the types of things few sane Americans would support. From federal pickleball funding to nearly $10 billion per year spent on unused buildings, there are plenty of examples of ridiculous government outlays that benefit few, if any, Americans.

The latest is the news revealed last month that the Department of Education spent $1 billion (yes, with a B) on promoting Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) efforts, including “a $1.2 million grant for training 40 elementary school teachers how to ‘enact equity-centered education,’” whatever that means. Any move to rein in this insane leviathan of federal spending, under an administration that has pledged to change things up is one that should be supported.

But we shouldn’t confuse DOGE with a solution to wasteful government writ large. The Trump-Vance administration should approach the rest of the federal bureaucracy with the same gusto as it has teed up DOGE.

Much more can be done to put into practice this anti-bureaucratic zeal. There is perhaps no more low-hanging a fruit on this score than enforcement of the National Environmental Protection Act, or NEPA, which requires all proposed projects that touch federal land or use federal monies (so, a huge chunk of them) to undergo an analysis on said project’s potential environmental impact.

While an environmental review before federal projects may sound innocuous at first blush, the practice has been weaponized by activist interests. While challenges under NEPA were envisioned as an opportunity for communities and scientists to push back, nearly 60% of all challenges come from public interest groups. On average, NEPA reviews delay major projects by four years, and ground countless others as builders weigh the risk of extended legal fights.

The administration has plenty of options to improve the NEPA process, from setting time limits on appeals to consolidating lawsuits against proposed projects and streamlining them more effectively.

And it should move quickly to overhaul the way NEPA enforcements proceed. Late last year, a federal appeals court in Washington, D.C., found that NEPA has been broadly misinterpreted, and lacks the statutory power courts have given it to-date. More legal action is no doubt on the way, but the incoming administration should take the opportunity, while it’s fate is uncertain, to at least take a sledgehammer to the abuses the law encourages.

There’s plenty more red-tape worth cutting. Permitting reform around energy extraction could help expand the affordable, domestic energy that major projects rely on, while giving a little relief to American consumers after years of crushing inflation. The Government Accountability Office has identified dozens of other regulations prone to misuse and abuse.

Our current regulatory regime has squandered America’s productive potential for decades. Tens of thousands of new regulations over the last few decades helped usher in the demise of American manufacturing. And new efforts have cost the American people directly. The Biden administration added an estimated $1.4 trillion in new regulations over just the last four years. Clearing these self-imposed hurdles can help restart domestic industry, allowing entrepreneurs and innovators to take advantage of America’s bountiful resources.

As the incoming administration rightly focuses on a return of American manufacturing and industry, current NEPA enforcement presents a major, avoidable stumbling block. Trump’s focus on tariffs and other trade measures could level the playing field after decades of global abuse. Doing so will empower domestic industry, unburdened from unfair competition with China and other mercantilist nations, will have more room to grow stronger.

But NEPA and other burdensome regulations could strangle that effort in its cradle. And the hamstringing done by these rules and restrictions provide ample ammunition to opponents of Trump’s views on trade. Unleashing America’s productivity potential could help put those opponents to flight, and finally set global policy on America’s terms.

More will be needed beyond just cutting the red tape that threatens a return to American industrial greatness. But the Trump-Vance administration can build on the energy of DOGE to power a serious look at some of the other lodestones across the federal government, rather than just picking off wasteful spending.