Governor Greg Abbott signed Senate Bill 14, passed with bipartisan support, to create the Texas Regulatory Efficiency Office — a regulatory agency aimed at reducing Texas’ bureaucratic regulations.

On April 23, Abbott traced this bill’s inspiration to Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency. Abbott stated that “Texas can have our own DOGE,” explaining, “What this law is going to do is make [the] government more efficient and less costly.”

DOGE has wielded a sledgehammer, tearing away existing structures within the federal government and upending federal bureaucracies at Americans’ expense. Similarly, Abbott is not merely trying to create an efficient government. He is consolidating power by creating an agency within his control.

The law grants Abbott the power to appoint members to the agency’s panel, which impacts the agency’s political makeup. The ability to appoint allows Abbott to carry out his vision for Texas’ bureaucracy seamlessly. 

The sinister nature of this ploy lies in the fact that Texas agencies already receive government oversight. The Sunset Advisory Board, established in 1977, is a legislative tool that reviews agencies for efficiency and recommends to lawmakers which agencies to eliminate or consolidate. Texas has had an agency similar to DOGE before DOGE’s conception.

The passage of SB 14 is about more than just creating an efficient government; the bill is about wreaking havoc on Texas’ regulatory agencies in the same way DOGE has done to the federal bureaucracy.

Instead of passing legislation to maximize the board’s efficiency, lawmakers and Abbott have passed a law that gives the governor more control over the state bureaucracy. 

Texas House Speaker Dustin Burrows explained, “The fewer regulations we have, the more efficient they are, the easier they are to understand — [will] help Texas business and economy continue to boom.” That is the exact function of Texas’ DOGE: eliminating or hindering state agencies that regulate businesses for manipulative, illegal practices. 

Fewer regulations are not conducive to economic or governmental efficiency; they incentivize businesses’ rogue behavior and disregard consumer well-being for profit. 

Texas bureaucracy is complex. With its complexity and less centralized form of power, state agencies may function slower and more disconnected; however, addressing these inefficiencies meaningfully should be done on a line-by-line basis, with expert advice and in coordination with the Texas Legislature. Like DOGE, Abbott is bypassing viable solutions and exploiting a weakness within the Texas government to attain more power, preparing himself to wreck Texas’ bureaucracy.