Georgia’s Republican lieutenant governor has introduced a plan similar to the DOGE efforts taking place with the Trump administration that he tells Fox News Digital will bring much-needed government accountability to his state.
“I own my own business employing thousands of people, and I know one of the biggest things that we run into as small business owners is regulatory burdens. And that’s regulatory burdens at the local, state and federal level,” Georgia Lt. Gov. Burt Jones told Fox News Digital of his Red Tape Rollback Act of 2025.
“We’ve been fortunate here in Georgia to be the No. 1 state to do business for 11 years running, and if we want to stay like that, we’re going to have to always be retooling how we do things, improving how we do things, making government more efficient, making it try to work more like business.”
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Jones introduced the plan last year but was unable to move it through the Georgia Legislature. But he said Trump’s DOGE efforts provided an opportunity to pair the plan with the new DOGE brand that has become increasingly popular with Republicans and some Democrats in Washington, D.C.
“That’s what the essence or the genesis behind red tape rollback, which is our state version of DOGE that the Trump administration is doing, and I’m excited about what they’re doing with the first week of that administration,” Jones said.
Georgia Lt. Gov. Burt Jones is pushing a statewide plan in Georgia that’s similar to DOGE efforts by the Trump administration. (Getty Images)
Jones explained to Fox News Digital what the priorities of his statewide DOGE plan would entail if successfully passed through the Legislature.
“The first thing we’d like to do is basically have a reset on all regulatory issues at every state agency. And what I mean by that is, instead of always adding more regulations, we’ll start back at zero and then the agencies just add what they need,” Jones said.
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“There are so many regulations that are on the books that have been put there from decades worth of, you know, legislative laws that were passed or whatever. What our bill will do is basically have a reset just like you would on a computer game or whatever.
“And say there’s a lot of things that are unneeded, whether we’re talking about on the educational front, on the environment front, transportation, whatever it might be, just the entire blanket. Have a reset, and then make the agencies tell us what regulations are needed and which ones they’re glad to get rid of.”
Georgia Lt. Gov. Burt Jones (Elijah Nouvelage/Bloomberg)
Jones said in a press release his bill will “also give legislators the ability to request a ‘Small Business Impact Analysis’ for pending legislation to better understand how a bill might impact Georgia’s most important job creators.”
Jones told Fox News Digital that statewide spending waste is at a much “smaller scale” than federal government waste, but he said he hopes his statewide efforts will help shine a light on waste in the federal government.
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Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy are heading the Department of Government Efficiency. (Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images)
“There’s no question D.C. is the elephant, so to speak, in the room that has gotten so bloated through duplicate agencies, duplicate services, whatever it might be,” Jones said. “There’s a lot of ways to trim the fat at the federal level.
“State government, it won’t be anything like what you have at the federal level, but there’s definitely inefficiencies that need to be addressed, whether it’s in licensing, permitting processes, whatever it might be, regulatory codes and things that need to be repealed. Those are all things that are going to be on the table.”
