My DOGE Job Application

Dear Elon and Vivek:

Congratulations on launching the new U.S. Department of Government Efficiency! I’m confident that fears about plutocratic authoritarianism will be quelled by your willingness to create this federal department without any statutory authority to do so and to then run it from outside the government while you concurrently operate in the private sector. Bravo.

You recently announced that you are already in the process of hiring for DOGE, whose “team will work in the new administration closely with the White House Office of Management and Budget.” Please accept this cover letter as my formal application for a job in your new department. 

My qualifications include roughly five years of service on Capitol Hill — including two years on the U.S. House Appropriations Committee — as well as years of reporting that spotlights government inefficiency. I also host a podcast and sometimes publish tweets, which I know are particularly important qualifications to you and the Trump administration. Oh, and lots of my Democratic Party haters in Washington, D.C. call me a “Bernie Bro,” so hiring me would be a great way to own the libs — another well-known Trump priority.

In lieu of a MAGA loyalty oath that will presumably be replacing the standard civil service application, please accept the attached memo as my job pitch. My particular application focuses on less well-known examples of government inefficiency than the Defense Department, which is so bloated and inefficient that it just failed its seventh straight audit and probably requires its own separate Department of Pentagon Efficiency (DOPE).