Hello, I'm Ryan Bourne. I'm the R. Evan Schaff Chair for the Public Understanding of Economics here at the Cato Institute.

I'm Alex Narasta, the Vice President for Economic and Social Policy Studies at the Cato Institute.

Doge 1.0 is over. Donald Trump's Department of Government Efficiency has kind of hit the rails with Elon Musk

leaving his loyal lieutenant, Steve Davis, departing government as well. And we learned that Edward

Corresting, the young programmer, effectively known as Big Bulls, has departed the federal government

too. We call him Beebe in the office, but I think this marks the real transition for Doge is when Beebe left.

Yeah, I mean, it's been a period that's been sometimes chaotic, sometimes amusing, sometimes concerning, but always interesting.

And President Trump kind of set Elon Musk and his team of young Tetros loose on the federal government.

And so with these kind of rumors of a new Doge 2.0 coming pretty soon,

we thought it would be a good time to review the impact of the Department for Government

Efficiency so far and talk about its economic effect.

So Alex, have you been entertained by Doge?

I have been entertained.

I also can't help look at car accidents when I'm driving down the

road. No, I don't want to be too negative about it. And we talked about this and our publications

are about this. I think that the goals of Doge have been wonderful. I mean, it's what we've worked

our entire careers for, right? Is to shrink the size and scope of the federal government

down and to make sure that whatever's left works pretty well. You and I had big hopes for it,

and I think it really, unfortunately, under-fulfilled its promises in a lot of ways, right?

I mean, and I'm not sure what the promises were. They kept shifting,

right? So this is, I think, part of the problem with Doge from the beginning is, you know, there's

two trillion dollar cuts. Then it's one trillion dollars. Then we're going to do all this technology

...