House Republicans launch Michigan DOGE Task Force to slash state departments, jobs, spending, ‘return value back to the taxpayer’

Michigan DOGE, at last. I wish state legislators happy hunting! They are acting with remarkable speed and organization.

Should they need any ideas of places to look for WFA (waste, fraud, and abuse), last month Citi Journal wrote that the largest funder of Al-Shabaab terror group is the Minnesota taxpayer, while PJ Media tracked how California, among other states "swimming in tax dollars, lost track of more than $24 billion of homeless spending. Spending on homelessness is being plundered."

The latter article in particular brings Michigan's budget details to mind.

https://www.themidwesterner.news/2025/12/house-republicans-launch-michigan-doge-task-force-to-slash-state-departments-jobs-spending-return-value-back-to-the-taxpayer/

House Republicans launch Michigan DOGE Task Force to slash state departments, jobs, spending, ‘return value back to the taxpayer’

Rep. DeSana: 'Michiganders deserve a government that works for them, not against them'

Victor Skinner     |     December 11, 2025

How much money can lawmakers save Michigan taxpayers by eliminating waste, fraud and abuse?

It’s a question House Republicans plan to answer.

“Michiganders deserve a government that works for them, not against them,” state Rep. James DeSana, R-Carleton, said in a statement Thursday announcing a new DOGE Task Force. “The DOGE Task Force will shine a light on what’s broken, cut through the bureaucracy, and push for real reforms that put the people of Michigan first.

“This initiative is about accountability, transparency, and delivering results,” he said.

DeSana announced the task force alongside his Republican colleagues at a press conference at the Capitol “with the intent to streamline Michigan government … and get us back to where we need to be, where the people of Michigan can prosper.”

“Yesterday we had our first meeting,” DeSana said, noting the task force he chairs consists of a dozen state representatives. “Obviously, we’re focusing on waste, fraud and abuse, especially zeroing in on Medicaid. We’ve had some research done that we have discussed where there’s $1.8 billion in proven Medicaid fraud, and that’s with only about 40% of Medicaid being verified, so that number could easily double …”

Estimates suggest there’s 12,000 millionaires on Medicaid in Michigan, he said, based on research and bank account information.

Task force members also “want to reduce the amount of departments in the state” from 18 to 12, DeSana said, noting the Medicaid fraud is in addition to “a lot of ineligible people collecting SNAP benefits,” referring to the federal food stamp program.

“When it comes to state government, we believe a lot of the reduction in state costs for employees can be done through attrition, natural retirement,” he said. “We need to shrink the size of state government.”

DeSana pointed to a state budget that has swelled by $30 billion over the last eight years, which has coincided with an increasing state workforce to roughly 50,000, or 180,000 including local government workers supported by state funds.

Other issues include administrative salaries and benefits in the Michigan Department of Education outstripping the same for teachers in the budget for the first time in Michigan history.

“We should be focusing our resources on the classroom and on teachers, not on administrative costs,” DeSana said, adding estimates project a 20% decline in high school graduates over the next decade.

“This DOGE process will look at every process of state government, how can we cut state government,” he said.

“We believe the catalyst for Michigan, the catalyst to get us back, is going to be a reduction in state government and at some point a return of resources to the taxpayer,” DeSana continued. “We believe that Michiganders are overtaxed, both in income and in property taxes, and we believe we have to get to a fairer system where we look at our house and try to return value back to the taxpayer.”

While the task force is named after the same on the federal level, where DOGE is an acronym for Department of Government Efficiency, its work is modeled after similar efforts underway in Ohio, which are focused in large part on Medicaid, he said.

Priorities in Michigan will focus on bloat in the state’s departments of Health and Human Services; Natural Resources; Environment, Great Lakes and Energy; and Education, among others, DeSana said.

“We have whole buildings that are not being used in the state of Michigan,” he said, adding that while the task force is entirely Republicans, it welcomes input from across the aisle.

The task force is expected to craft recommendations for lawmakers, though DeSana acknowledged that implementing those recommendations could rest on voters electing a Republican governor in 2026.

“We’re hoping to get back to where we … have a governor on board that can make some of these changes,” he said.

“We have several candidates for governor talking about cutting the income tax, or possibly eliminating the income tax altogether,” he added.

In addition to DeSana, members of the Michigan DOGE Task Force include Appropriations Committee Chair Rep. Ann Bollin, House Oversight Committee Chair Rep. Jay DeBoyer, Communications and Technology Committee Chair Rep Jamie Greene, Election Integrity Committee Chair Rachelle Smit, and Rules Committee Chair Rep. Bill Schuette, along with Reps. Steve Carra, Gina Johnsen, Joseph Pavolv, Bradley Slagh, Donni Steele, Jason Woolford, and Jennifer Wortz.