While Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency has blitzed through federal agencies, copycat teams in Republican-led states are working at a more standard pace as they seek to streamline state government.
State committees, commissions and task forces inspired by DOGE are holding hearings, considering bills, interviewing agency leaders and preparing recommendations. Members are considering trimming excess spending, eliminating diversity initiatives and using artificial intelligence to improve government processes, among other goals.
With public opinion divided on Musk’s aggressive strategy, state DOGE leaders are quick to say they are working thoughtfully and within legal limits.
“There has been an absolute outcry from the people of Wisconsin for a state-level response that is similar to DOGE,” said Rep. Amanda Nedweski (R), chair of the Assembly Committee on Government Operations, Accountability and Transparency. “But not necessarily the same approach.”
The bipartisan committee’s work is “not being done in a bulldozer fashion,” Nedweski said. “It’s being done in a more deliberate and paced way.”
Republican state leaders rushed to mimic DOGE after President Trump announced the effort last year, before taking office.
Lawmakers in Kansas, Missouri, North Carolina, Texas and Wisconsin have formed committees inspired by DOGE, according to lobbying firm Multistate. The governors of Iowa, Florida, Louisiana, Oklahoma and New Hampshire have created DOGE-inspired task forces and commissions.
State efforts to make government more efficient are not new, policy analysts on the right and left say. Governors and lawmakers regularly scrutinize agency spending when they put together a budget, particularly in years like this, when money is tight and some states must address funding shortfalls.
Leaders in many states are taking a close look at government spending without using the DOGE brand, said Jonathan Williams, president and chief economist of the American Legislative Exchange Committee, a membership group for conservative state lawmakers.
“There are a lot of efforts going on that aren’t called DOGE, but are doing exactly the same thing,” Williams said.
Democratic state leaders are also seeking to trim government spending and improve efficiency. Governors and legislative leaders in Colorado, Maryland and Washington have been digging deep into agency budgets this session, searching for savings as they try to close budget holes.
Some Democratic governors have name-dropped DOGE when talking about their efforts to improve government efficiency.
“One of the first hires I made was a chief performance officer,” Gov. Wes Moore (D) recently told Semafor. “We’ve been doing DOGE in Maryland long before anyone knew what that word was.”
Still, Williams said, going beyond by creating a special committee or commission to take a deep dive into spending is a good idea, as state leaders likely don’t do so every time they draw up a budget.
“Not only is it time-consuming and difficult,” Williams said of scrutinizing budgets line by line, “it [risks] raising a lot of political opposition.”
Newly formed state DOGE teams are just starting their work.
New Hampshire’s Commission on Government Efficiency, composed of two lawmakers and 13 gubernatorial appointees, met publicly for the first time last month. Members shared updates on their collaborative meetings with state agency leaders.
“I will say that the smiles have been contagious from our side as well as theirs, which is a great way to start this,” commission co-chair and former Gov. Craig Benson (R) said then, according to the New Hampshire Bulletin.
Benson told the Bulletin he and his co-chair, businessman Andy Crews, were not going to mimic Musk’s aggressive strategy. “I’m not Elon Musk — nor is Andy,” he said. “We’re not trying to do things the same way.”
The bipartisan Texas House Committee on Delivery of Government Efficiency has met four times so far. The first ran a marathon 12 hours as members heard from, among many others, the state information technology department, auditor’s office, comptroller’s office and Sunset Advisory Commission, a state entity that regularly evaluates state agency performance.
During its second hearing, the committee considered three bills that would create a regulatory efficiency office, tweak the work of the Sunset Advisory Committee, and ban governments from charging for access to certain election-related information.
In Wisconsin, Nedweski’s GOAT committee held its first hearing last week. Lawmakers questioned agency leaders on their remote work policies.
Nedweski told Pluribus News the committee does not have the sweeping powers Trump has granted Musk.
“We do not have the authority to barrel into state agencies with hammers, or scalpels, or anything in between,” she said. “We don’t have the authority to fire people, we don’t have the authority to change their organization, or tell them how to do things. What we do have the authority to do is basically say, we’ve identified these problems, there could be a time savings here or a cost savings here, and make those recommendations to the administration.”
Ignoring those recommendations could have consequences, she said. “The legislature does have the power of the purse.”