This Is How Trump Can Execute Elon Musk And Vivek Ramaswamy 'DOGE' Decisions: Government Reform Advocate

On "Forbes Newsroom," Philip K. Howard, Chairman of Common Good, spoke about Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy's proposed Department of Government Efficiency, and how President-elect Trump can use their cost-cutting recommendations – despite ‘DOGE’ operating outside of the federal government.

“Some things you can do by executive order,” Howard says. “I have argued that terminating public employees who everybody knows aren't doing the job is something that the president has a constitutional right to do, and he can simply do that.”

Howard argued that President-elect Trump can “renounce the collective bargaining obligation imposed on the president by Congress – because who is Congress to tell the president how to fulfill his constitutional responsibility? So there are certain things that you can do by executive order.”

A longtime advocate for government streamlining and fiscal reform, Howard recently wrote in the Wall Street Journal that “[t]he greatest gain of reform would come from scrapping the rusty machinery that grinds public choices through years of meetings and box-checking.”

He told Forbes that reducing the size of the federal workforce is not necessarily as important to savings as increasing efficiency.

“If you make government employees – let's pick a number – 25% more efficient, that's $500 billion. So the federal employees cost roughly $2-2.5 trillion. That's their salary and pensions. They're not very effective. To make them more effective, by 25%, would save 25% of that.”

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Howard acknowledges the initiative will require people within federal departments and Congress who are willing to make drastic changes. “People are just so sick to death of a government that costs a lot and achieves little.”

Watch the full interview above.