Is Privatizing Public Services the Ulterior Motive of DOGE?

Trump's supporters may well be hit the hardest by such an agenda

- Patricia Lopez

US Republicans have long thought that what the federal government does can be done better, faster, or cheaper by the private sector. So it should not shock anyone that US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent recently revealed a larger agenda that sheds light on the Trump administration's seemingly indiscriminate cuts to federal workers and agencies. President Donald Trump's overarching goal, Bessent said, is to "reprivatize the economy."

That casts Elon Musk and his unofficial Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) in a new light—as the vehicle for slashing agency functions to a skeletal state and outsourcing the rest to what would be a much more lightly regulated private sector. Musk himself at a recent Morgan Stanley conference suggested that the government privatize "as much as possible."

The DOGE cuts so far are not enough to make a dent in the national debt or offset Trump's proposed tax cuts for the wealthy. Nor do they make government more efficient, which would require a thoughtful assessment. There is no evidence that the "fraud, waste, and abuse" Musk claims to have discovered amounts to anything more than spending with which he and Trump disagree.

But as a means to push the nation closer to mass privatization of services? Now the cuts make sense.