OPM’s Absorption of DOGE Was a Corrupt System Protecting Itself

The absorption of DOGE into the Office of Personnel Management — confirmed quietly in November 2025, eight months before its July 2026 charter deadline — will be remembered, if it is remembered at all, as the moment the administrative state demonstrated once again that it does not need to win arguments.

It only needs to wait.

This is not cynicism. It is organizational mechanics, and it has been documented with depressing regularity since at least 1984, when Ronald Reagan commissioned J. Peter Grace to lead a private-sector audit of federal operations.

The Grace Commission identified approximately $424 billion in projected savings over three years, in 1984 dollars. Congress and the permanent bureaucratic apparatus enacted a fraction of those recommendations. The remainder disappeared into the institutional immune response that is the signature feature of every entrenched bureaucracy.

They did not fight the reforms. They outlasted them.

This is the relevant historical