Trump administration’s DOGE push to make government efficient now reaching state level

A Wisconsin group is asking its state government to undergo spending and staffing reviews similar to those the incoming Trump administration intends to conduct with a newly created agency that will be led by successful entrepreneurs Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy.

The Trump agency is named the Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE. Musk, a billionaire, owns Tesla, Twitter and SpaceX. Ramaswamy is also an entrepreneur and reportedly worth hundreds of millions. 

The request from the Wisconsin’s Institute for Reforming Government is not entirely new.  It was conceived last year but revived as Republican Donald Trump campaigned, then won the presidency on such promises as cutting jobs, replacing career civil servants with federal appointees and relocating government offices.

The institute's plan focuses on reducing the number of full-time state employees by finding redundancies and contracting for professional services and

The group has also proposed scaling back state agencies in the Wisconsin capital of Madison and moving state workers into the communities their department serves, creating less office space while making remote work more accountable.

“With renewed attention on right-sizing government and reducing unnecessary bureaucracy at the federal level, it’s time for state lawmakers to seriously rethink how state agencies operate as well,” said Chris Reader, the institute's executive vice president. 

“We released a plan to rethink, reorganize, and modernize state agencies in 2023. It was DOGE before DOGE was cool. With voters distrusting the bureaucracy, [Democrat] Governor [Tony] Evers and lawmakers have a great opportunity in 2025 to listen to voters and reimagine state government.”

Unlike the federal effort, whose leaders say they won’t be working with Congress to reduce the federal spending and staffing levels, IRG is calling for state representatives to lead the effort to reduce government spending.

However, within days of Trump winning the presidency on Nov. 5, then naming acolytes Musk and Ramaswamy to lead DOGE, the GOP-led House announced it had created the Delivering on Government Efficiency, or DOGE, subcommittee for the next Congress and that another Trump loyalist, Georgia Republican Rep. Majorie Taylor Greene, would lead it.

The Wisconsin group said that its polling shows that 73% of residents agree that state agencies should review new regulations before they are enacted and that 67% favor having regulations expire after seven years unless they are re-approved by the legislature. The group is also calling for Wisconsin to create one-stop shops with a single digital portal for government services.