Abbott signs DOGE bill, targets state bureaucracy

John C. Moritz

Austin American-Statesman | USA TODAY NETWORK

Gov. Greg Abbott, flanked by the top two legislative leaders April 23, signed the first bill of the 2025 session into law, a measure designed to reduce red tape for business and find efficiencies to streamline state bureaucracy.

“Business could not be doing better, with one exception,” Abbott said as he affixed his signature to Senate Bill 14. “Among the CEOs that I talk to every single week, there were growing concerns, and concerns that were repeated time and again, that the regulatory environment in Texas is getting too burdensome.”

SB 14 has been dubbed the “DOGE bill,” taking its cue from Elon Musk’s federal cost-cutting initiative known as the Department of Government Efficiency. The legislation is something of an homage to the Trump administration’s effort to downsize the federal government, and it establishes the Texas Regulatory Efficiency Office “to provide

critical assistance and direction in identifying rules that are no longer necessary or useful,” according to the Legislature’s bill analysis.

Despite holding the state’s highest government office for 10 years, and with Republicans having control of both chambers of the Legislature and all the statewide elective offices since 2003, Abbott said he was “shocked” to learn that Texas has the fifth-highest regulatory burden for business in the nation.

Abbott said that before President Donald Trump and Musk, the billionaire owner of Tesla, Space X and X (formerly Twitter), had enshrined the term “DOGE” into the political vernacular, his administration began working to reduce red tape at the state level to promote business startups and relocations.

He used Musk – Trump’s point person for DOGE – as an example, saying the founder of electric vehicle maker Tesla approached him in 2020 about the prospect of building an assembly plant in Texas. Abbott said that he swiftly got behind the proposal and that the sprawling Tesla Gigafactory along the Texas 130 toll road in Travis County was operational within 18 months of its ground-breaking.

Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick, the state Senate’s president who fast-tracked SB 14 through the upper chamber, said government bureaucracy must always be closely monitored.

House Speaker Dustin Burrows, a Lubbock Republican in his first session at the helm of the lower chamber, said that, though the proposal seeks to put business development on a glide path, it will not replace oversight with a blind eye.

“Texas businesses, Texas citizens, they deserve regulations that are (in) plain English,” Burrows said. “What this bill is going to do is provide an efficient regulatory framework. And what I believe is, the fewer regulations we have, the more efficient they are, the easier they are to understand, it is going to help Texas’ business and economy continue to boom.

“We want to have a clear review of all of our agencies, where we can trim and how we can save taxpayers money so that they will continue to come here and create jobs and to our economic viability and competitiveness.”

“Texas businesses, Texas citizens, they deserve regulations that are (in) plain English.”

House Speaker Dustin Burrows