Steelman Analysis

Our Thesis (Restated)

DOGE produced "negative returns on destruction" -- it cost taxpayers more than it saved, destroyed irreplaceable institutional capacity, and was quietly institutionalized at OMB not to reform government but to permanently incapacitate it.

Primary Counterargument: The Thesis Conflates Fiscal Savings with Structural Reform -- and Judges a Structural Project by the Wrong Metric

The single strongest challenge to our framework is that "negative returns on destruction" measures DOGE against a goal its most sophisticated defenders never claimed it was primarily pursuing. The article frames DOGE as a fiscal efficiency project that failed on its own terms. But the most intellectually serious version of the DOGE argument -- the one advanced by policy thinkers at Heritage, the Claremont Institute, and within the Vought wing of the administration itself -- was never primarily about cutting the deficit. It was about restructuring the relationship between the administrative state and elected government. By measuring DOGE in dollars saved versus dollars lost, the article may be constructing a devastating ledger against a strawman version of the project while leaving the actual ideological claim unaddressed.

The public choice tradition, rooted in Buchanan and Tullock's work and extended by William Niskanen's theory of budget-maximizing bureaucracies, holds that government agencies are not neutral instruments of the public interest. They are self-interested institutions that expand their budgets, resist reform, and accumulate regulatory authority in ways that serve their own survival rather than the citizens they nominally serve. From this perspective, the federal workforce is not simply "where 8% of the money goes" -- it is the mechanism through which the other 92% is directed, regulated, and made resistant to democratic change. A smaller, less entrenched bureaucracy is not just cheaper; it is more responsive to elected leadership.

This is a genuinely different theory of government than the one the article assumes. If you believe the core problem is not spending levels but administrative autonomy -- the "deep state" argument stripped of its conspiratorial trappings and restated as a political science claim about bureaucratic capture -- then DOGE's failure to reduce spending is beside the point. The point was to break the bureaucracy's capacity for autonomous action and subordinate it to presidential direction. Spending rose because mandatory programs are on autopilot; what changed was the discretionary bureaucracy's ability to regulate, enforce, and resist. By that metric, DOGE may have succeeded.

The article acknowledges this possibility only in its final movement, where it frames Vought's institutionalization as "incapacitation." But defenders would call the same evidence "democratic accountability" -- bringing unelected agencies under elected control. The article needs to directly engage with this distinction rather than treating it as self-evidently sinister. To many Americans who distrust federal agencies, a government that "cannot regulate" is not an incapacitated government; it is a liberated economy.

Who Makes This Argument

This argument comes from the intellectual infrastructure of the New Right: the Heritage Foundation's Project 2025 authors, Claremont Institute scholars who draw on the "unitary executive" theory, public choice economists in the Buchanan-Tullock tradition, and administrative law reformers who have long argued that the post-New Deal regulatory state exceeds constitutional bounds. Within the administration, Russell Vought himself has explicitly framed DOGE as a project of restoring presidential control over the bureaucracy, not merely cutting costs. Prominent voices include Christopher DeMuth (former AEI president), John Marini (Claremont), and the CEA's own deregulation analysis, which claims regulatory reduction boosts GDP growth by 0.29%-0.78% annually over 20 years.

Why It Has Merit

There is a legitimate political science debate about bureaucratic autonomy. The observation that federal agencies accumulate regulatory authority, resist presidential direction, and develop institutional interests separate from the public they serve is not a fringe conspiracy theory -- it is a mainstream finding in public administration literature. The article's thesis implicitly treats the pre-DOGE federal government as a well-functioning machine that was vandalized. But much of it was genuinely sclerotic: agencies running on 1970s-era IT systems, procurement processes that took years, duplicative programs across dozens of departments, and a workforce where performance management was functionally nonexistent. The fact that 72% of Americans support "government efficiency" as a concept reflects a real and justified frustration. If the article dismisses the structural critique entirely, it risks sounding like a defense of the status quo ante -- which was not, in fact, working well for most Americans.

Where It Falls Short

The structural reform argument fails on its own terms for two reasons. First, if the goal was subordinating the bureaucracy to elected control, DOGE's method was spectacularly counterproductive: the courts reinstated 24,000 fired workers, multiple federal judges found the actions illegal, and the institutional chaos actually strengthened the legal precedents for bureaucratic independence. You cannot "restore democratic accountability" through actions that courts rule unconstitutional. Second, the deregulation benefits the defenders promise are speculative and long-term, while the costs are concrete and immediate: 6 million people waiting for Social Security decisions, degraded food safety inspections, a widening tax gap. The structural reform argument requires you to believe that the economic gains from deregulation will eventually exceed the compounding costs of capacity destruction -- and neither history nor the CBO's February 2026 projections (deficit at $1.9 trillion, debt heading to 120% of GDP by 2036) support that bet. The administration's own reconciliation law adds $4.7 trillion to the debt. If fiscal discipline were the actual goal, the policy mix makes no sense. If incapacitation were the goal, it makes perfect sense.

Secondary Counterarguments

"Short-Term Costs, Long-Term Gains" -- The Corporate Restructuring Analogy

Defenders argue that the $135 billion in transition costs is the price of restructuring, analogous to a corporate turnaround where you take a hit in Year One to build a leaner, more effective organization in Years Two through Five. Every major corporate reorganization looks bad on a one-year balance sheet. You cannot judge a decade-long project by its first twelve months. The workforce is now smaller, legacy IT systems are being modernized, procurement regulations have been updated, and the precedent for meaningful reform has been established. The Penn Wharton data showing tax collections broadly in line with projections through April 2025 suggests the fiscal sky-is-falling predictions were overstated. Give it time.

This argument has some genuine force, particularly regarding technology modernization and the Penn Wharton data. But it collapses under scrutiny because corporate restructurings are designed to preserve the most valuable employees and institutional knowledge while cutting redundancy. DOGE did the opposite: it used blunt instruments (hiring freezes, "fork in the road" emails, across-the-board RIFs) that drove out the most experienced, most employable workers first -- the STEM PhDs, the senior auditors, the career professionals who had the most outside options. A corporate restructuring that loses its best talent and keeps its least mobile workers is not restructuring; it is adverse selection at industrial scale. Moreover, the 11:1 departure-to-hire ratio at research agencies means the "rebuild" phase is not happening. This is not a turnaround. It is a liquidation.

"Technology Modernization Was Real and Required Disruption"

The doge.gov transparency platform, the Treasury payment tracking fix, the AI-driven fraud detection, and the GSA tape conversion are genuine accomplishments that critics too often dismiss. Some defenders argue that these innovations required the political cover and institutional disruption of DOGE -- that the entrenched bureaucracy would have blocked these changes under normal reform processes. The CMS Fraud Detection Operations Center suspended payments to 33 fraudulent providers in its first month. OPM cut contract spending by 50%. These are real results.

This is the counterargument that should make us most careful about tone. Technology modernization is real, the achievements are documented, and dismissing them costs credibility. However, the article's thesis already accounts for this: you did not need to fire 271,000 people to build a website or make a database field mandatory. The 18F program, USDS, and GSA's Technology Transformation Services had been doing exactly this kind of work for a decade without mass layoffs. The technology wins are real but tiny relative to the destruction -- $242 million in OPM contract savings and $1 million in tape conversion savings set against $135 billion in hidden costs and $198-323 billion in projected lost IRS revenue. The good things DOGE did could have been accomplished without the bad things. The question is whether the good things were the purpose or the alibi.

"The Federal Workforce Was Genuinely Bloated and the 8% Framing Is Misleading"

Some critics of our thesis will argue that the "8% of spending" frame, while mathematically accurate, is analytically misleading. Federal employees do not simply consume 8% of the budget; they administer 100% of it. A bloated, inefficient workforce does not just cost its own salaries -- it inflates the cost of every program it touches through slow procurement, duplicative processes, and regulatory capture. The conservative argument is that reducing the administrative layer generates savings throughout the system that do not show up as direct salary cuts but as reduced program costs, faster processing, and less regulatory burden on the private sector. The CEA's deregulation analysis claims regulatory reduction could boost GDP growth by up to 0.78% annually -- which over 20 years would dwarf any direct salary savings.

This argument is theoretically coherent but empirically unsupported in the DOGE context. The Cato Institute -- ideologically disposed to find these indirect benefits -- looked for them and found nothing: spending rose $248 billion despite the workforce cuts. If reduced administration were generating system-wide savings, it would show up somewhere in the aggregate numbers. It has not. Meanwhile, the service degradation evidence (SSA backlogs up 71%, 2.5-hour call wait times) suggests the "administrative layer" was not bloat but load-bearing infrastructure. When you remove it, things get worse, not better.

"Incapacitation Is a Feature, Not a Bug -- And That Is a Legitimate Political Position"

The most honest version of the DOGE defense simply owns the incapacitation thesis: yes, the goal was to reduce the federal government's capacity to regulate, enforce, and intervene in the economy and in Americans' lives. This is not sabotage. It is the fulfillment of a political philosophy -- rooted in Reagan's "government is the problem" and refined through decades of libertarian and conservative thought -- that holds Americans are better off with less government capacity. A government that cannot regulate is a government that cannot overregulate. A government that cannot enforce is a government that cannot overenforce. The question is not whether capacity was destroyed but whether that capacity was being used well in the first place.

This is the one counterargument that is genuinely irreconcilable with our thesis -- it is a values disagreement, not a factual one. Our article should acknowledge it honestly as such. The rebuttal is empirical and historical: the UK austerity experiment, the most direct parallel, produced a deficit that was worse after cuts than before, 42 billion pounds in uncollected tax, and degraded public services that took a decade to partially restore. But reasonable people can disagree about whether those costs were worth the reduction in state capacity. The article should make the case on the evidence without pretending this is a debate that facts alone can resolve.

Our Weak Points

1. The $135 billion cost figure is a single estimate from one organization. The Partnership for Public Service is credible and nonpartisan, but this number has not been independently replicated. If the article treats it as settled fact rather than as one analysis, it is vulnerable to the same criticism it levels at DOGE's inflated savings claims. The asymmetry is unflattering: we attack DOGE for fabricating numbers while anchoring our own argument in an unreplicated estimate.

2. The IRS revenue projections remain models, not observed data. The Yale Budget Lab's $198-323 billion projection is well-constructed, but the Penn Wharton finding that short-term tax receipts held up is a genuine complication. The article's thesis depends on the claim that compliance erosion is a slow-moving phenomenon -- which is plausible and supported by the UK parallel -- but we do not yet have the American data to prove it. If FY2026 tax receipts come in near projections again, the IRS revenue argument weakens significantly. The article should present this as a projected trajectory, not a confirmed outcome.

3. The "negative returns" framing requires comparing incommensurables. The article adds claimed savings ($214B), verified savings ($1.4-11.7B), hidden costs ($135B), and projected lost revenue ($198-323B over a decade) as though they exist on the same ledger. But these are different categories measured over different time horizons with different levels of certainty. One is a fabricated number, one is a verified number, one is a single-source estimate, and one is a 10-year model projection. Stacking them creates the appearance of precision that the underlying data does not support. A critic could argue this is its own form of "industrial-scale fabrication."

4. The article risks proving too much with the "incapacitation by design" argument. By arguing that the real goal was never efficiency but permanent incapacitation, the article enters the territory of imputing intent -- always a vulnerable rhetorical position. Vought's OMB institutionalization is genuine evidence, but the article needs to be careful about the gap between "this is consistent with deliberate incapacitation" and "this proves deliberate incapacitation." The administration's defenders can plausibly argue that embedding efficiency staff at OMB is exactly what you would do if you wanted reform to outlast a single initiative -- it is evidence of seriousness, not sabotage.

5. The private equity analogy may alienate readers who support private equity. The leveraged buyout framing is rhetorically powerful but politically loaded. For center-right readers in the secondary audience -- the ones uncomfortable with MAGA but not hostile to markets -- comparing DOGE to an LBO may read as an attack on capitalism rather than on DOGE specifically. The analogy works best with readers who already view private equity negatively; for others, it may undercut the article's credibility.

6. The 92% figure, while structurally sound, oversimplifies. Federal employees do not merely cost their salaries. They also manage, administer, and oversee the programs that constitute the other 92%. The relationship between workforce size and program cost is not zero; it is complex and bidirectional. The article's clean "8% vs. 92%" framing is analytically useful but risks appearing glib to readers who understand that administrative overhead affects total program costs.

Recommended Handling

Address the structural reform argument head-on. This is the counterargument that most threatens the article's framework, because it challenges the metric, not the data. The article currently treats fiscal cost as the self-evident measure of success. It should spend one paragraph -- maybe in Movement 4 -- acknowledging that sophisticated defenders make a structural, not fiscal, argument. Then make the case that even by the structural metric, DOGE failed: the courts blocked it, the bureaucracy's legal protections were strengthened by the litigation, and the capacity that was destroyed was the capacity to collect taxes, deliver benefits, and conduct research -- functions that serve citizens regardless of ideology. Incapacitation is not accountability.

Handle the Penn Wharton data proactively. Do not wait for critics to raise it. Mention it explicitly: "Short-term tax receipts held up through April 2025 -- a data point DOGE defenders cite, and fairly." Then explain the lag effect: audit compliance is behavioral, taxpayers are rational actors, and the UK's experience confirms that the revenue erosion takes years to fully manifest. This is already flagged in the thesis's "Potential Pitfalls" section, and the instinct is correct.

Use the $135 billion figure carefully. Present it as "one nonpartisan analysis estimates" rather than as established fact. Note that it excludes litigation costs, which means the true number could be higher, but acknowledge the estimate has not been independently verified. This hedging is not weakness; it is the credibility move that makes the rest of the numbers hit harder.

Concede the technology wins cleanly and without grudging. The strongest version of our argument is not "DOGE accomplished nothing" but "DOGE accomplished some genuine things that did not require destroying the federal workforce." Conceding honestly makes the distinction between reform and destruction sharper, not weaker.

Do not dismiss the "government needed reform" sentiment. 72% of Americans believe government efficiency matters, and they are right. The article should explicitly align itself with this majority: "The problem is not wanting efficient government. The problem is that DOGE made government less efficient, less capable, and more expensive -- the opposite of what 72% of Americans voted for." This framing turns the polling data into an asset rather than a vulnerability.

Let the "incapacitation by design" argument be implied by evidence rather than stated as conclusion. The Vought data, the OMB budget increase, the conversion to political positions -- lay these facts out and let the reader draw the inference. Explicitly declaring "the goal was always incapacitation" opens the article to charges of conspiratorial thinking. The facts speak clearly enough.