What is the difference in how the Philippine and United States governments handle government savings?

Finance Secretary Ralph Recto redirected excess funds from government-owned and controlled corporations (GOCCs) to cover the costs of unprogrammed appropriations — funds that, in reality, mostly consist of crucial budget items displaced by legislators to make room for their pet projects.

As a result, the 2025 budget was riddled with insertions from members of Congress, designed primarily to generate kickbacks and commissions from largely unnecessary projects.

In the United States, despite the intense criticism from opponents, the administration of President Donald Trump plans to distribute $5,000 “DoGE dividends” to American taxpayers, funded by savings from government efficiency efforts.

DoGE, the Department of Government Efficiency, was created by Trump to be supervised by technology tycoon Elon Musk who was named a “special government employee.”

To say the least, the philosophy Musk applied in building his billion-dollar empire has upended the federal bureaucracy, leading to savings that directly benefit American citizens.

A philosophical thought called the principle of parsimony or Occam’s razor states that the explanation that requires the fewest assumptions is usually correct.

What the members of the Philippine Congress did to bastardize the national budget and line their pockets was to embed a provision in the budget that would allow Recto to impound billions of pesos in public funds and switch regular items in the Department of Public Works and Highways allocations with their pork barrel projects.

In contrast, DoGE is streamlining the US bureaucracy for the sole purpose of cutting federal spending, reducing the government workforce, and improving the efficiency of federal agencies.

The benefits will go directly to the citizens — not the politicians.

Under a Trump executive order signed on Inauguration Day, DoGE is a temporary organization within the White House that will spend 18 months, until 4 July 2026, carrying out its mission.

In the weeks since its inception, DoGE has canceled several diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) initiatives at federal agencies, along with certain consulting contracts. It has also terminated leases for underused federal buildings and has been working to consolidate agencies and programs with overlapping functions.

Musk pledged in a post on X that “all actions of DoGE will be posted online for maximum transparency. We will also have a leaderboard for the most insanely dumb spending of your tax dollars. This will be both extremely tragic and extremely entertaining.”

So far DoGE has claimed savings of $55 billion from wasteful spending, though Trump critics dispute the amount.

Trump, nonetheless, said he is considering a plan that would give 20 percent of the total savings back to Americans and 20 percent to pay down debts.

While the move is intended to provide financial assistance to citizens, some experts have raised concerns about the potential for increased inflation.

However, James Fishback, CEO of investment firm Azoria and the architect of the DoGE dividend proposal, has defended the initiative as a non-inflationary measure that will reallocate federal savings back to tax-paying households.

“Giving the people a stake in DoGE’s savings will incentivize them to call out waste, fraud, and abuse wherever they see it, increase the total amount of money that DoGE saves, and increase the size of President Trump’s DoGE dividend checks,” Fishback said.

“The more DoGE saves, the less the government spends, and the lower inflation will be. It’s that simple,” he said.

The same principle should apply to Recto and his allies — only the more excess funds extracted from the government, the more satisfied the congressmen become.

As Americans receive DoGE dividends, Filipinos are left with a budget that has gone to the dogs.