Harrisburg, Pa. (AP) -The first and messy first days of President Donald Trump’s Department of Government Efficiency, once the world’s richest man Elon Musk, the mimicry made state mimicry as a republican governor and legislator that they follow with the leader of their party.
The governors have always done political hay to tame waste or tame bureaucracy, but in a way, Doge has increased the missions for them to show that they are reducing the costs. Many drive home with the point that they have always focused on the government’s cutting, even if they do not make mass decisions.
“I would like to say that we did Doge before Doge was one thing,” said Iowa Governor Kim Reynolds in January when she announced her own task force.
Critics agree that some of these initiatives are not modern and suggest that they are wasteful and essentially duplicate processes that are normally the area of legislative committees or independent state examiners.
At the same time, some governors apply their Doge vehicles to aim at the GOP goals of the moment such as social programs or diversity, equity and inclusion programs. And some governors who have an eye on a run of a white house in 2028 rename their cost reduction initiatives as a dog to claim the coat of the coat of the coat from everyone.
No chainsaws in the states
According to the in Washington, DC, Washington, DC, in Washington, at least 26 states initiated in Washington institute in a dog-style institute
Most efforts of Doge were carried out by arranging a governor – including the governors in Florida, Iowa, Louisiana, Montana, New Hampshire and Oklahoma – or by legislators who introduce laws or introduce a legislative committee.
The state initiatives have a significantly different character than Trump’s Slash-and-Burn approach, which is symbolized by Musk’s appearance of the chainsaw fire height when the conservative political action committee appears in February.
The governors tend to entrust their Doge offices to the loyalists rather than the independent auditing, and often apply the years of processes to consolidate the procurement, modernize information technology systems, to introduce AI tools, to reduce or reduce or reduce auto fleets, to reduce office dout or evidence.
Steve Slivinski, a high-ranking scholarship holder at the libertarian Cato Institute, which examines the regulatory structures of the state government, said that a lot of what he saw from Doge Initiatives at the state level in the state governments that they have seen on a fairly regular basis anyway.
States usually have routine examination procedures and the way states save money are “relatively unsexy,” said Slivinski.
And while the doke vehicles at the state level could be useful over time to find marginal improvements, “the branding of Doge is more of a press surgery than something new than what they normally do,” said Slivinski.
Analysts of the Pro Laboratory Economic Policy Institute say that governors and legislators, mainly in the south and the middle west, apply Doge to bring long-term agendas to modern life to determine the power of state authorities and civil servants, civil servants, public services and benefits and privatization.
“It’s not really about reducing the costs based on tax responsibility,” said EPI analyst Nina Mast.
Governors who promote spending cuts
Jeff Landry, the governor of Louisiana, renamed his “fiscal responsibility program” as Louisiana Doge and was the first to promote it, who has teamed up with the federal government to scrub illegitimate participants from welfare programs. In June, it has already achieved 70 million US dollars in the Medicaid program in an “unprecedented” coordination.
In Oklahoma, Governor Kevin Stitt, who says in a blurb on the Oklahoma Doge website: “I have Doge-Ining in Oklahoma before it was cool”-Splash with the first report of his government’s division of efficiency by declaring that the state would reject about $ 157 million in the state health representatives.
Most of them were $ 132 million to support epidemiology and laboratory ability to control outbreaks for infectious diseases.
The Stitt government said that the financing ETWA exceeds a third of the total amount of eight years.
The left -wing institute in Oklahoma Policy questioned wisdom and pointed out the increasing number of measles and whooping cough and the rocky transition under the public health laboratory of the state of Oklahoma City to Stillwater.
The Democrats of Oklahoma spent Retuk and quoted Oklahomas Miese ranking of public health.
“This is not a leadership,” said Senator Carri Hicks. “It’s negligence.”
Stitts Oklahoma Doge von Stitt has recommended changes to the Federal Law to save money, to open up proposals for the public employees and members of the public and to achieve a table with cost savings initiatives in his administration.
This includes things that are as secular as agencies of paperless, refinancing bonds, the purchase of automated lawnmowers for the Capitol site or the elimination of a fax machine line in the State Board of License for professional engineers and surveying.
The governor of Florida, Ron Desantis, signed an executive order, a Task Force of Doge teams in every state agency in February.
In the order, Desantis recited 10 points to what he already described as the “history of the prudent fiscal management” and Florida’s “history” before Doge.
Among other things, Desantis swore the expenditure of state universities and municipal and district governments – including the DEI initiatives – at a time at a time when Desantis strives to abolish the property taxes that mainly finance local governments.
Since then, his administration has published letters to universities and governments, which dealt with REAMS of information and received a blessing from the legislator who passed laws that approved the investigation and imposed fines for companies that do not answer.
After the signing ceremony on June 30th, Desantis explained on social media: “We now have the full authority to make the local governments of Doge.”
Governor Sarah Huckabee Sanders started her chargeable Arkansas striker in front of Doge in Arkansas last year and later said that the state had done the “same” as mastiff.
Their administration spent a huge part of 2024 to create a 97-page report in which hundreds of options were listed in order to save $ 300 million in a budget of $ 6.5 billion.
The achievement of these savings, especially through the standardization of information technology and the mercy of the purchase, sometimes spends on expenditure and years to achieve savings.
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Follow Marc Levy on X at: https://x.com/timelywriter

