由 deltafang 
我们的国家建立在一个基本理念之上：我们选举出来的人负责管理政府，他们颁布的才是我们遵守的法令。
但今天的美国并非如此。
大多数法律条款并非由国会制定的法律，而是由未经选举的官僚们制定的“规章和条例”——每年有成千上万的规章和条例出台。大多数政府的执法决策和自由裁量权的支出，并非由民选总统或其政治任命官员做出，而是由数百万未经选举、未经任命的公务员在政府机构中做出，他们认为自己因为有公务员保护制度而不会被解雇。
这种做法是反民主的，违背了开国元勋们的愿景。
它给纳税人带来了巨大的直接和间接成本。幸运的是，我们有一个历史性的机会来解决这个问题。11月5日，选民们决定性地选举了特朗普，并授权他进行他们（纳税人）应得的全面改革。
特朗普总统要求我们两人领导新成立的政府效率部（DOGE，也称为政府效率办公室），以缩减联邦政府的规模。根深蒂固、不断膨胀的官僚体系对我们的共和国构成了生存威胁，而政治家们已经容忍它很长时间了。这就是为什么我们要采取不同的方法。我们是企业家，不是政治家。我们是外部志愿者，不是联邦官员或雇员。与政府委员会或咨询委员会不同，我们不仅仅是写报告或剪彩。我们要削减成本。
我们正在协助特朗普过渡团队识别和雇佣一支精干的小政府改革斗士团队，包括一些国家最聪明的技术和法律人才。该团队将与新政府的白宫管理和预算办公室紧密合作。我们将在每一步为政府效率办公室提供建议，以实施三大类改革：
放宽管制、行政缩减和节省成本。
我们将特别强调通过现有立法的行政行动促进改革，而不是通过制定新法律。我们改革的指导思想是美国宪法，重点关注他在任期内的两个重要最高法院判决。
在西弗吉尼亚州诉环境保护局（2022年）案中，法官们裁定，除非国会明确授权，否则机构不能执行涉及重大经济或政策问题的法规。在洛珀·布莱特诉莱蒙多（2024年）案中，法院推翻了切弗龙原则，裁定联邦法院不应再对联邦机构对法律的解释或其自身的规则制定予以尊重。这两个案例共同表明，大量现有的联邦法规超出了国会通过法律赋予的权限。
政府效率办公室将与政府机构的法律专家合作，利用先进技术将这些裁决应用于这些机构制定的联邦法规。政府效率办公室将向唐纳德·特朗普总统提交法规清单，他可以通过行政行动立即暂停这些法规的实施，并启动审查和废除程序。
这将使个人和企业从国会从未通过的非法法规中解放出来，并刺激美国经济。
当总统废除数千项此类法规时，批评者指责行政部门越权。事实上，这是在纠正行政越权，即那些从未得到国会授权的成千上万通过行政命令制定的法规。
总统在立法时应服从国会，而不是联邦机构内的官僚。
用行政命令增加繁琐的新规则来取代立法是违反宪法的，但用行政命令废除错误规避国会的法规是合法且必要的，以符合最高法院最近授权。而且，在这些法规被完全废除后，未来的总统不能简单地按下开关来恢复它们，而必须请求国会这样做。
联邦法规的大幅削减为联邦官僚体系的大规模裁员提供了合理的行业逻辑。政府效率办公室打算与机构内部任命人员合作，确定机构执行宪法允许和法定职能所需的最低员工人数。被裁减的联邦雇员数量至少应与被废除的联邦法规数量成比例：不仅需要更少的员工来执行更少的法规，而且一旦其权限范围得到适当限制，机构将创造更少的法规。被裁减工作的员工应该得到尊重，政府效率办公室旨在帮助他们过渡到私营部门。总统可以利用现有法律鼓励他们提前退休，并支付自愿遣散费以促进他们体面离职。
传统观点认为，法定的公务员保护措施阻止了总统甚至他的政治任命官员解雇联邦工作人员。这些保护措施的目的是保护员工免受政治报复。但法规允许不针对特定员工的“裁员”。该法规进一步授权总统“制定管理竞争性服务的规则”。这个权力非常广泛。以前的总统利用这个权力通过行政命令修改公务员规则，最高法院在富兰克林诉马萨诸塞州（1992年）和柯林斯诉耶伦（2021年）案中裁定，他们这样做时不受行政程序法的约束。有了这个权力，特朗普总统可以通过实施各种“管理竞争性服务的规则”来遏制行政部门的过度行为，从大规模解雇到将联邦机构搬迁出华盛顿地区。要求联邦雇员每周五天在办公室工作将导致一波自愿离职潮，我们对此表示欢迎：如果联邦雇员不想工作，在冠状病毒时代，美国纳税人不应该支付他们待在家里的特权。
最后，我们致力于为纳税人节省成本。
怀疑论者质疑政府效率办公室仅通过行政手段能控制多少联邦支出。他们指出，1974年的拨款控制法案阻止总统停止国会授权的支出。特朗普总统此前曾表示该法案是违宪的，我们认为当前的最高法院可能会支持他的观点。但即使不依赖这一观点，政府效率办公室将通过针对国会未授权或以国会从未意图的方式使用的每年超过5000亿美元的联邦支出，帮助结束联邦超支。从每年5.35亿美元的公共广播公司和15亿美元的国际组织赠款，到近3亿美元的进步团体，如计划生育团体。
联邦政府的采购流程也存在严重缺陷。许多联邦合同多年来未经审查。在暂停支付期间进行大规模审计可能导致重大财政节省。五角大楼最近连续第七次未能通过审计，这表明该机构的领导几乎不了解其每年超过8000亿美元预算的支出情况。批评者声称，如果不针对国会需要缩减的医疗保险和医疗补助等权益计划，我们就不能有效地、有意义地减少联邦赤字。然而，这转移了人们对浪费、欺诈和滥用的注意力，几乎所有纳税人都希望结束这些行为，政府效率办公室的目标是通过确定精确的行政措施来立即为纳税人节省开支。
有了决定性的选举授权和最高法院6:3的保守派多数，政府效率办公室有历史性的机会对联邦政府进行结构性削减。我们准备应对华盛顿根深蒂固的利益集团的冲击。我们期待胜利。现在是采取决定性行动的时候了。
我们为政府效率办公室设定的主要目标是到2026年7月4日消除其存在的必要性——我们为该项目设定的最后期限。在我们建国250周年之际，没有什么比建立一个开国元勋们为之骄傲的联邦政府更好的生日礼物了。
Our country is built on the basic idea that the people we elect to run the government are the ones we edict. But that’s not the case in America today. Most of the provisions of the law are not laws enacted by Congress, but “rules and regulations” enacted by unelected bureaucrats… there are tens of thousands of rules and regulation every year. Most of the government’s law enforcement decisions and discretionary spending are made not by the elected president or even his politically appointed officials, but by the millions of unelected, unappointed civil servants in government agencies who believe they will not be fired because of the protections of the civil service.
This approach is anti-democratic and runs counter to the vision of the Founding Fathers. It imposes significant direct and indirect costs on taxpayers. Thankfully, we have a historic opportunity to address this. On November 5, voters decisively elected Trump and authorized him to make sweeping changes that they (taxpayers) deserve.
President Trump asked the two of us to lead the new Department of Government Efficiency.Of Government Efficiency, DOGE- Also known as the Office of Government Efficiency) to reduce the size of the federal government. The entrenched, ballooning bureaucracy poses an existential threat to our republic, and politicians have tolerated it for a long time. That’s why we’re taking a different approach. We’re entrepreneurs, not politicians. We are outside volunteers, not federal officials or employees. Unlike government committees or advisory committees, we don’t just write reports or cut ribbons. We’re going to cut costs.
We are assisting the Trump transition team in identifying and hiring a lean team of small government reform fighters, including some of the nation’s brightest technical and legal talent. The team will work closely with the White House Office of Management and Budget in the new administration. The two of us will advise the Office of Government Efficiency at every step to implement three broad categories of reform: deregulation, administrative reduction, and cost savings. We will place particular emphasis on promoting reform through executive action based on existing legislation rather than through the enactment of new laws. The polar star of our reform will be the Constitution of the United States, focusing on two important Supreme Court decisions during his tenure.
In West Virginia v. Environmental Protection Agency (2022), the justices held that agencies cannot enforce regulations that involve significant economic or policy issues unless Congress expressly authorizes them. In Loper Bright v. Raimondo (2024), the Court overturned the Chevron principle, holding that federal courts should no longer defer to federal agencies’ interpretation of the law or to their own rulemaking. Together, these cases demonstrate that a large number of existing federal regulations go beyond the authority given by Congress by law.
The Office of Government Efficiency will work with legal experts in government agencies to apply these rulings to federal regulations created by those agencies, with the help of advanced technology. The Office of Government Efficiency will present the list of regulations to President Donald Trump, who can immediately suspend their implementation through executive action and initiate a review and repeal process. This would free individuals and businesses from illegal regulations that Congress never passed, and stimulate the American economy.
When the president nullifies thousands of such regulations, critics accuse the executive of overstepping his authority. In fact, this is correcting executive overreach, i.e. the thousands of regulations enacted through executive orders that were never authorized by Congress. The president should obey Congress when legislating, not bureaucrats within federal agencies. Using executive orders to add cumbersome new rules to replace legislation is a violation of the Constitution, but using executive order to repeal statutes that wrongly circumvent Congress is legal and necessary to comply with the Supreme Court’s recent authorization. And, after these regulations have been fully repealed, future presidents cannot simply press the switch to restore them, but will have to ask Congress to do so.
The drastic cuts in federal regulations provide a reasonable industry logic for mass layoffs across the federal bureaucracy. The Office of Government Efficiency intends to work with agencies’ in-house appointees to determine the minimum number of employees required for an agency to perform constitutionally permitted and statutory functions. The number of federal employees cut should be at least proportional to the number of federal statutes repealed: Not only will fewer employees be needed to enforce fewer statutes, but the agency will create fewer of them once its scope of authority is properly limited. Employees whose jobs have been eliminated deserve to be treated with respect, and the Government Efficiency Office aims to help them transition into the private sector. The president could use existing laws to encourage them to retire early and pay voluntary severance payments to facilitate their dignified departure.
Conventional wisdom holds that statutory civil service protections prevent the president and even his political appointees from firing federal workers. The purpose of these protections is to protect employees from political retaliation. But the regulations allow for “laying off” that does not target specific employees. The statute further authorizes the president to “develop rules governing competitive services.” This power is very broad. Previous presidents have used this power to amend civil service rules by executive order, and the Supreme Court ruled in Franklin v. Massachusetts (1992) and Collins v. Yellen (2021) that they were not subject to the Administrative Procedure Act when they did so. With this authority, President Trump could curb the excesses of the executive branch by implementing a variety of “rules governing competitive services,” from mass firings to relocating federal agencies out of the Washington area. Requiring federal employees to work in the office five days a week will lead to a wave of voluntary departures, which we welcome: if federal employees don’t want to work, American taxpayers shouldn’t pay them the privilege of staying home in the age of the coronavirus.
Finally, we are committed to cost savings for the taxpayer. Skeptics question how much federal spending the Office of Government Efficiency can control with administrative means alone. They point out that the Appropriations Control Act of 1974 prevents the president from halting spending authorized by Congress. President Trump has previously said the bill is unconstitutional, and we believe the current Supreme Court is likely to uphold his view on this issue. But even without relying on this view, the Office of Government Efficiency will help end federal overspending by targeting more than $500 billion a year in federal spending that Congress did not authorize or used in ways that Congress never intended. From $535. million a year for public broadcasters and $1.5 billion in grants to international organizations, to nearly $300 million for progressive groups such as family planning.
The federal government’s procurement process is also deeply flawed. Many federal contracts have gone unreviewed for years. Large-scale audits during the suspension of payments could result in significant financial savings. The Pentagon recently failed an audit for the seventh time in a row, suggesting that the agency’s leadership knows almost nothing about how its more than $800 billion annual budget is spent. Critics claim that we can’t effectively and meaningfully close the federal deficit without targeting entitlement programs like Medicare and Medicaid that Congress needs to shrink. However, this diverts attention from waste, fraud and abuse, which almost all taxpayers want to end, and the Office of Government Efficiency aims to save taxpayers immediately by identifying precise administrative measures to address them.
With a decisive electoral mandate and the Supreme Court’s 6: 3 conservative majority, the Office of Government Efficiency has a historic opportunity to make structural cuts to the federal government. We are ready to deal with a shock from entrenched interests in Washington. We look forward to winning. Now is the time for decisive action. Our primary goal for the Office of Government Efficiency is to eliminate the need for its existence by July 4, 2026… the deadline we set for the project. On the 250th anniversary of our founding, there is no better birthday present than building a federal government that our founding fathers are proud of.