Clamoring to capitalize on the MAGA base’s excitement over Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency, Republican officials in more than a dozen states have moved to start their own versions.
But they want everyone to know they’ve already spent years cutting costs.
“We were DOGE before DOGE was cool,” Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida said recently. Or as Gov. Kevin Stitt put it in a social media post: “We’ve been DOGE’ing in Oklahoma before it was cool.” Then there was Gov. Brad Little, who in his Jan. 6 State of the State address boasted that “Idaho was DOGE before DOGE was cool.”
The flurry of state efforts to replicate the Trump administration’s work in Washington comes as state budgets across the country are under strain, with tax revenue falling and federal spending drying up.
In Oklahoma, Governor Stitt said he hoped to cut more than a thousand jobs over the next year from the state’s current work force of 31,600, though he and his staff emphasized retirements and attrition, and said layoffs were not “Plan A.” Governor DeSantis has said he plans to cut 740 jobs, announced as part of his budget.
But the state initiatives so far do not reflect what is taking place in Washington. Nobody appears to be unleashing software engineers to rewrite government code and delve into confidential databases. Threats of job cuts have been relatively few so far, which is not to say there won’t be some measure of bona fide budgetary relief that emerges.
Many of these efforts to leverage the DOGE brand — such as the panels recently created in Texas, North Carolina and Kansas — have been started by state lawmakers and resemble cost-cutting committees that frequently crop up in legislatures. In some cases, lawmakers are setting up websites and soliciting citizen advice. (“Your submissions will be reviewed and incorporated into our ongoing efforts to make government processes more efficient,” a Missouri Senate panel says on its new cost-cutting portal.)
To aid a new efficiency panel in Louisiana, the New Orleans-based Pelican Institute for Public Policy said on its website that it would “reveal the best ideas” it receives from citizens in a summit scheduled for April, “and recognize our budding Elons in Louisiana with some special prizes!”
Some fans of the effort are even starting municipal spinoffs. The town of Keenesburg, Colo., with a population of about 2,000, is recruiting members for its DOGE advisory board with a Wild West “Wanted” poster — even as elsewhere in Colorado, hundreds of people protested Mr. Musk and his panel’s work last week outside a Tesla dealership.
The governors embracing the new mantra have typically been in power for some time, and their efforts resemble the blue-ribbon advisory panels that have long been a staple of state government.
In Oklahoma, the state work force has actually increased marginally under Governor Stitt, a Republican first elected in 2018, but is well below where it was a decade before.
There is concern about fresh talk of job cuts. While public sector unions are powerful in the Northeast and the West Coast, worker organizations face restrictions in many red states. In a statement, the Oklahoma Public Employees Association has described “an outpouring of concerns from state employees,” adding that “threatening layoffs is counterproductive — especially when many employees are already doing the work of two or three people with no pay increase in sight.”
The governor noted in an interview that federal funding currently makes up roughly 40 percent of the state budget. He said a priority for his state’s newly created government efficiency panel would be to work with Washington to shape how federal cuts will play out.
“If they’re going to cut state funding, we believe the states need to be having a voice at the table,” the governor said. “So I’ve instructed our team to say, ‘Hey guys, show — if we needed to cut 10 percent out of our federal funding, how do we do that without affecting core services?’ And then we can share that with Elon and the team up there.”
But time is running short in a state with more federal employees than state workers. Layoffs have already hit Oklahomans who work for federal agencies like the Bureau of Indian Affairs, the Department of Agriculture, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and the Federal Aviation Administration, among others.
Mr. Stitt said he was sympathetic to those who are losing their jobs. But he added that “the federal government cannot possibly employ everyone in the United States.” Making the transition will take time, he added. “We’ve got ourselves in this problem over the last hundred years, and we’re going to have to work ourself out of it.”
Oklahoma lawmakers have set up a portal for public suggestions. All of the posturing has bemused Democrats, who face Republican supermajorities in both houses of the legislature.
“The Republicans have been in control of the state of Oklahoma for nearly 20 years, so whatever waste they find will be at their feet,” said Representative Cyndi Munson, the leader of her chamber’s Democratic caucus.
While many Republicans at the state level have been cheering on Mr. Musk, he and his group have been assailed by critics for potential conflicts of interest, for hyping cost cuts that are later quietly reversed and for carrying out rapid-fire layoffs even at agencies with important public safety roles like the F.A.A. Objections from President Trump’s cabinet secretaries led him to curb some of Mr. Musk’s powers on Thursday.
The government efficiency efforts in Washington have also targeted programs with even the faintest whiffs of diversity, equity and inclusion, a priority that has likewise cropped up in some state initiatives. One effort taking place in North Carolina, under the auspices of the Republican-led House Oversight Committee, has already questioned several state officials — including some appointed by their new Democratic governor, Josh Stein — and members seem determined to root out any D.E.I. programs in the government.
In Iowa, Gov. Kim Reynolds, a Republican who angered Mr. Trump when she endorsed Governor DeSantis for president in 2024, was effusive in her praise of Mr. Trump’s efficiency initiative. She said that Iowa would create a similar state advisory body, which a prominent business leader would lead. And she noted that her state had long been working to slash regulations and consolidate agencies.
“We were doing DOGE before DOGE was a thing,” she said in her Condition of the State speech in January.
But critics have questioned the necessity of Governor Reynolds’s initiatives, pointing out that the state already has an elected state auditor who is tasked with making government more efficient. It’s no coincidence, they say, that the auditor, Rob Sand, also happens to be Iowa’s only statewide elected Democrat, and that Governor Reynolds and the Republican-dominated legislature have already weakened the auditor’s powers in recent years, despite objections from the National State Auditors Association and others.
“Anyone who guts the engine for finding waste, fraud and abuse in government against the advice of the entire profession probably shouldn’t be listened to when they say they want to do anything DOGE-like,” Mr. Sand said in an interview.
In Arkansas, State Senator Bryan King, a Republican, has introduced a resolution calling for a constitutional amendment that would create a Department of Government Efficiency. His proposal includes some specific cuts, such as eliminating the office of the lieutenant governor, an elected position, which he said would save $5 million over a decade. No action is expected until the end of the session; if it were to pass, an amendment could be on the ballot in 2026.
Mr. King is a fiscal conservative who has not been afraid to criticize fellow Republicans for excess spending.
“It happens on both sides — let’s be honest,” he said in an interview. “This whole DOGE thing — I was bashing Republicans down here because they were spending too much money.”
Richard Fausset contributed reporting.
