Clamoring to capitalize on the MAGA base’s excitement over Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency, Republican officials in more than a dozen states have moved to start their own versions.

But they want everyone to know they’ve already spent years cutting costs.

“We were DOGE before DOGE was cool,” Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida said recently. Or as Gov. Kevin Stitt put it in a social media post: “We’ve been DOGE’ing in Oklahoma before it was cool.” Then there was Gov. Brad Little, who in his Jan. 6 State of the State address boasted that “Idaho was DOGE before DOGE was cool.”

The flurry of state efforts to replicate the Trump administration’s work in Washington comes as state budgets across the country are under strain, with tax revenue falling and federal spending drying up.

In Oklahoma, Stitt said he hoped to cut more than 1,000 jobs over the next year from the state’s current workforce of 31,600, though he and his staff emphasized retirements and attrition, and said layoffs were not “Plan A.” DeSantis has said he plans to cut 740 jobs, announced as part of his budget.

But the state initiatives so far do not reflect what is taking place in Washington. Nobody appears to be unleashing software engineers to rewrite government code and delve into confidential databases. Threats of job cuts have been relatively few so far, which is not to say there won’t be some measure of bona fide budgetary relief that emerges.

Many of these efforts to leverage the DOGE brand — such as the panels recently created in Texas, North Carolina and Kansas — have been started by state lawmakers and resemble cost-cutting committees that frequently crop up in legislatures. In some cases, lawmakers are setting up websites and soliciting citizen advice. (“Your submissions will be reviewed and incorporated into our ongoing efforts to make government processes more efficient,” a Missouri Senate panel says on its new cost-cutting portal.)

The governors embracing the new mantra have typically been in power for some time, and their efforts resemble the blue-ribbon advisory panels that have long been a staple of state government.

In Oklahoma, the state workforce has actually increased marginally under Stitt, a Republican first elected in 2018, but is well below where it was a decade before.

There is concern about fresh talk of job cuts. While public sector unions are powerful in the Northeast and on the West Coast, worker organizations face restrictions in many red states. In a statement, the Oklahoma Public Employees Association has described “an outpouring of concerns from state employees,” adding that “threatening layoffs is counterproductive — especially when many employees are already doing the work of two or three people with no pay increase in sight.”

Stitt noted in an interview that federal funding currently makes up roughly 40% of the state budget. He said a priority for his state’s newly created government efficiency panel would be to work with Washington to shape how federal cuts will play out.

“If they’re going to cut state funding, we believe the states need to be having a voice at the table,” the governor said. “So I’ve instructed our team to say, ‘Hey guys, show — if we needed to cut 10% out of our federal funding, how do we do that without affecting core services?’ And then we can share that with Elon and the team up there.”

But time is running short in a state with more federal employees than state workers. Layoffs have already hit Oklahomans who work for federal agencies like the Bureau of Indian Affairs, the Department of Agriculture, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and the Federal Aviation Administration, among others.

Stitt said he was sympathetic to those who are losing their jobs. But he added that “the federal government cannot possibly employ everyone in the United States.” Making the transition will take time, he added. “We’ve got ourselves in this problem over the last hundred years, and we’re going to have to work ourself out of it.”

Oklahoma lawmakers have set up a portal for public suggestions. All of the posturing has bemused Democrats, who face Republican supermajorities in both houses of the Legislature.

“The Republicans have been in control of the state of Oklahoma for nearly 20 years, so whatever waste they find will be at their feet,” said state Rep. Cyndi Munson, the leader of her chamber’s Democratic caucus.