DOGE sprouts in red states, as governors embrace the cost-cutter brand and make it their own

Los Angeles Times

19 hours ago

HARRISBURG, Pa. — The brash and chaotic first days of President Donald Trump 's Department of Government Efficiency, once led by the world's richest man Elon Musk, spawned state-level DOGE mimicry as Republican governors and lawmakers aim to show they are in step with their party's leader.
Governors have always made political hay out of slashing waste or taming bureaucracy, but DOGE has, in some ways, raised the stakes for them to show that they are zealously committed to cutting costs. Many drive home the point that they have always been focused on cutting government, even if they're not conducting mass layoffs.
'I like to say we were doing DOGE before DOGE was a thing,' Iowa Gov. Kim Reynolds said in announcing her own task force in January.
Critics agree that some of these initiatives are nothing new and suggest they are wasteful, essentially duplicating built-in processes that are normally the domain of legislative committees or independent state auditors.
At the same time, some governors are using their DOGE vehicles to take aim at GOP targets of the moment, such as welfare programs or diversity, equity and inclusion programs. And some governors who might be eyeing a White House run in 2028 are rebranding their cost-cutting initiatives as DOGE, perhaps eager to claim the mantle of the most DOGE of them all.
At least 26 states have initiated DOGE-style efforts of varying kinds, according to the Economic Policy Institute based in Washington, D.C.
Most DOGE efforts were carried out through a governor's order — including by governors in Florida, Iowa, Louisiana, Montana, New Hampshire and Oklahoma — or by lawmakers introducing legislation or creating a legislative committee.
The state initiatives have a markedly different character than Trump's slash-and-burn approach, symbolized by Musk's chainsaw-brandishing appearance at a Conservative Political Action Committee appearance in February.
Governors are tending to entrust their DOGE bureaus to loyalists, rather than independent auditors, and are often employing what could be years-long processes to consolidate procurement, modernize information technology systems, introduce AI tools, repeal regulations or reduce car fleets, office leases or worker headcounts through attrition.
Steve Slivinski, a senior fellow at the libertarian Cato Institute who researches state government regulatory structures, said that a lot of what he has seen from state-level DOGE initiatives are the 'same stuff you do on a pretty regular basis anyway' in state governments.
States typically have routine auditing procedures and the ways states have of saving money are 'relatively unsexy,' Slivinski said.
And while the state-level DOGE vehicles might be useful over time in finding marginal improvements, 'branding it DOGE is more of a press op rather than anything new or substantially different than what they usually do,' Slivinski said.
Louisiana Gov. Jeff Landry rebranded his 'Fiscal Responsibility Program' as Louisiana DOGE, and promoted it as the first to team up with the federal government to scrub illegitimate enrollees from welfare programs. It has already netted $70 million in savings in the Medicaid program in an 'unprecedented' coordination, Landry said in June.
In Oklahoma, Gov. Kevin Stitt — who says in a blurb on the Oklahoma DOGE website that 'I've been DOGE-ing in Oklahoma since before it was cool' — made a DOGE splash with the first report by his Division of Government Efficiency by declaring that the state would refuse some $157 million in federal public health grants.
The biggest chunk of that was $132 million intended to support epidemiology and laboratory capacity to control infectious disease outbreaks.
The Stitt administration said that funding — about one-third of the total over an eight-year period — exceeded the amount needed.
The left-leaning Oklahoma Policy Institute questioned the wisdom of that, pointing to rising numbers of measles and whooping cough cases and the rocky transition under Stitt of the state's public health lab from Oklahoma City to Stillwater.
Oklahoma Democrats issued rebukes, citing Oklahoma's lousy public health rankings.
'This isn't leadership,' state Sen. Carri Hicks said. 'It's negligence.'
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis signed an executive order in February creating a task force of DOGE teams in each state agency.
In the order, DeSantis recited 10 points on what he described as his and Florida's 'history of prudent fiscal management' even before DOGE.
Among other things, DeSantis vowed to scrutinize spending by state universities and municipal and county governments — including on DEI initiatives — at a time when DeSantis is pushing to abolish the property taxes that predominantly fund local governments.
Levy writes for the Associated Press. Follow Marc Levy on X at: https://x.com/timelywriter