Can DOGE slay the deficit dragon?

The United States is in a brutal struggle with a fiscal crisis made worse by an upside-down population with too many elderly beneficiaries and too few young workers. On top of that, federal responses to crises ranging from 9/11 to the subprime mortgage lending collapse to COVID have led to explosions in federal deficits (now yearly exceeding a trillion dollars) in the shocking quarter century that has followed the nation’s last balanced budgets. The combined pressure of bad demographics and a gigantic debt burden is slowly getting the attention of the political class and Americans more broadly.

Enter Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy. Both men are extremely successful entrepreneurs who have recently made high-profile turns to politics. The two have made a mark very quickly operating within the orbit of Donald Trump’s third presidential campaign. Now that Trump has regained office, we’ve discovered that Musk and Ramaswamy will head up the new Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE, a humorous reference to the cryptocurrency Musk favors). While the acronym is a joke, the new project is anything but a jest. The need to take a hard look at federal programs and the enormous federal workforce is pressing.

In terms of historical cycles, it’s also simply time to revisit reform. This kind of effort has been undertaken before. In the late 1930s, the Brownlow Committee of public administration experts sought to reorganize the executive branch to improve the president’s ability to coordinate and manage the bureaucracy. During Harry Truman’s administration, the Democratic president turned to a Republican predecessor, Herbert Hoover, to eliminate waste, fraud, and inefficiency in the federal government. While Hoover’s presidency drowned in the Great Depression, he was an engineer who was deeply respected for his organizational and logistic strengths that he’d demonstrated in saving millions from starvation during World War I. Truman exhibited considerable shrewdness turning to the Republican Hoover to improve governmental operations. Hoover actually came back for a second go at the work when he was nearly 80 years old. The work of his commission yielded considerable fruit with more than 100 recommendations implemented.

Ronald Reagan also attempted to eliminate waste and fraud in the federal government with his high-profile Grace Commission. While some elements of the Grace Commission’s work were implemented, Congress largely ignored it. The Clinton administration’s National Performance Review was more successful. Clinton gave Vice President Al Gore the primary responsibility to root out inefficiency and operational bloat. The effort is said to have eliminated 250,000 federal jobs. It is not a coincidence that the Clinton administration made significant strides in deficit reduction. The Gore-led project piggybacked on the highly influential book Reinventing Government, which pointed to substantial evidence that the government is good at making policy and bad at actually doing things.

There is little question that it is time to scrutinize government spending and operations. While Ramaswamy brings unquestionable intelligence and verve to the work of the new Department of Government Efficiency, it is Musk’s involvement that should really raise the hopes of observers. Time and again, he has demonstrated the ability to take leadership in challenging areas and to make a major difference. Facing tremendous skepticism from Wall Street, Musk seemed almost single-handedly to find a way to make the electric car business economically viable with Tesla. Today, the company dominates the U.S. market with nearly 50% of the EV business. While NASA has taken major steps back from its earlier moonshots and space shuttle programs, Musk’s SpaceX has taken giant leaps of its own. Musk’s Starlink satellite-based internet service has proved its worth in areas ravaged by wars and storms. When he became concerned that social media services such as Twitter posed a threat to free speech, he bought the platform and worked to protect free expression. Any one of these accomplishments would be significant. Yet, Musk has been at the center of all four and, depending on the day, is the world’s richest man.

Musk and Ramaswamy are relatively young, technologically sophisticated, and are motivated to make a difference in American politics and government. Notably, both men have roots in other nations and exhibit a real love for their adopted country. Previous efforts to root out waste and inefficiency have made a difference, but it seems possible that with a combination of greater analytical tools and determined political leadership, the Department of Government Efficiency could do more than simply turn the tide for another period. Instead, it may be possible to figure out which parts of government are working and which parts are simply serving as places where middle-aged bureaucrats build time toward pensions. In addition, we may be able to figure out where process needs to give way to a results-orientation. If DOGE succeeds, it will benefit nearly every American.