Donald Trump has appointed Vivek Ramaswamy and Elon Musk to ramrod the Department of Government Efficiency—DOGE—which will recommend ways to cut governmental inefficiency. The good news is they’re not going to be official government employees, which means no confirmation hearings and no governmental entanglements. Also, both have the right mindset: they know about much of the duplication, corruption, sloth, graft and outright stupidity in government service. They’re also more than willing to name names and stomp on sensitive bureaucratic toes.

Graphic: Fox Business Screenshot

The bad news is the Deep State is full of Deputy to the Deputy Assistant Undersecretaries to the Undersecretary of the Undersecretary of Federal Obfuscation and Engorgement, all making six figures with generous benefits and endless opportunities for self-glorification and enrichment. Many have civil service protection, making them virtually eternal. All, and their Deep State patrons and enablers, will fight tooth and nail to stay on the taxpayer payroll. Virtually every attempt at firing one of them will be met with a lawsuit. It’s all part of the new anti-Trump, anti-representative republic, save “our democracy” resistance, fueled by extra strength Trump Derangement Syndrome (TDS).

To be sure, Musk and Ramaswamy and their staff will work hard to make the two trillion in savings Musk has forecast, and there’s little doubt those savings can be attained.  Eliminating lunatic spending will surely be a big part:  

*Cut $2.6 million for teaching Chinese prostitutes to drink more responsibly on the job.

*Eliminate 60 billion in yearly health care fraud.

*No more $13,500 for single dinners for Post Office employees at Ruth’s Chris Steakhouse.

As Everett Dirksen said: “A billion here, a billion there, pretty soon you’re talking real money.” Unfortunately now, its “a trillion here, a trillion there...” We’re the brokest nation in history and our politicians are trying to figure out what comes after “trillion.”

And that’s the other part of the problem: the congressional leviathan dedicated to spending other people’s money. As The Iron Lady, Margaret Thatcher said:

“The problem with socialism is that you eventually run out of other people’s money.”

Congress critters, used to spending other people’s money to enrich themselves and remain in office aren’t going to be anxious to cut vital spending for Chinese prostitutes, determining the sexual habits of shrimp and erecting monuments to themselves in their districts and states, to say nothing of the myriad opportunities to become instant millionaires on low six figure government salaries.

Is there any hope of forcing them, for once, to do the right thing? As it turns out, there just might be, as John Hinderaker at Powerline, explains: 

My organization conducts a quarterly poll of registered voters in Minnesota, the results of which are published in our magazine. The polling is done by Meeting Street Insights. Our pollster was in the field last week, and the results will be published in the January issue of Thinking Minnesota. We asked questions that were intended to help explain why people voted the way they did in this year’s presidential election.

I’m going to leak just one finding from our poll, which I thought was remarkable. We asked whether respondents approved or disapproved of a series of Trump initiatives, one of which was the Department of Government Efficiency (“an Elon Musk plan for government reform that would create a government efficiency commission that would audit federal agencies and eliminate wasteful spending”).

The result? An astonishing 96% approve of DOGE; only 4% disapprove. I would have said that you couldn’t get a 96% consensus on anything in a poll. If you asked whether the Sun rises in the East, you wouldn’t get 96%.

Hinderaker’s organization is The Center For The American Experiment, which largely focuses on countering the Tim-Walz-led lunacy that is Minnesota’s political establishment. As Hinderaker notes, 96% approval of anything in a poll is virtually impossible. That result is particularly amazing in Minnesota, though to be fair leftist insanity in Minnesota is centered around the major population areas. The rest of the state is as red as most of America.

Would honest polling of the rest of America produce similar results? And if it did, would leftist pollsters publish the results? I suspect the results would be similar, if not quite so striking, and at least some pollsters might honestly report those results if for no other reason than that they were in shock and did it as a “can you believe how crazy those Deplorables are?” exercise in self-therapy.

It's that kind of genuine, grass roots, mandate that very well could dampen congressional profligacy, convincing them cutting spending is, for the time being, more likely to keep them in office then sending home truckloads of pork.

Truly, we live in interesting times.

Mike McDaniel is a USAF veteran, classically trained musician, Japanese and European fencer, life-long athlete, firearm instructor, retired police officer and high school and college English teacher. He is a published author and blogger. His home blog is Stately McDaniel Manor.