Even before he was inaugurated, President Trump established the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), an advisory body led by Elon Musk, to reduce federal government expenditures and streamline government. Now that President Trump holds the reins of government, the question for legislators and the agencies is, how will this actually work?
DOGE will function as an advisory body without direct legal authority, and will collaborate with the Office of Management and Budget and various federal agencies to streamline operations, reduce the federal workforce, and alleviate regulatory burdens. Musk has said one goal is to reduce spending by up to $2 trillion, or 30%, by 2026.
Similar efforts in the past have been less ambitious. In the 1940s and 1950s, the Hoover Commission was formed to make the federal government more efficient after WWII, resulting in creation of the General Services Administration (GSA). The 1980s Grace Commission under President Reagan identified $420 billion in what it said was waste and inefficiency, mostly in entitlement and defense spending. Vice President Al Gore’s Reinventing Government initiative in the 1990s promoted a “smaller, smarter government” that it claims eliminated over 300,000 federal positions. President Trump’s “Two-for-One” Regulatory reform initiative during his first term focused on cutting inefficiencies and scaling back thickets of government rules.
Each of these efforts faced bureaucratic and political resistance. That’s because few of the efforts were backed up by statutes. The fights that should have been engaged in Congress to make reforms permanent played out in the form of resistance by bureaucrats and constituencies that stood to lose under cuts and efficiencies.
A better approach is to push any DOGE changes through Congress. And the best way to do this is to put everything Mr. Musk claims will improve efficiency or save money into the Reconciliation bill that Republicans in Congress have made a priority. The problem is, virtually no one outside of Congress knows what a “reconciliation bill” is, let alone how it relates to the priorities of the new Administration and Congress they voted to support.
The good news is that “reconciliation” can mean “DOGE Bill” as far as every voter is concerned. If Republicans want efficiency in government and less spending, they should adopt what has worked in the past—actual statutory outcomes that are permanent—and avoid every other effort that has been fleeting.
Mr. Musk was chosen for the DOGE commission to inject private-sector efficiency into government operations, similar to his own strategies at Tesla, SpaceX, and X, including aggressive cost-cutting and consolidation of operations. These are worthy approaches to modernize any government. They also fit nicely into the quirky requirements of the Reconciliation bill and its “Byrd Rule” limitations.
To make DOGE matter, compel Congress to make its provisions in government permanent. To ensure success, make sure the Reconciliation Bill becomes the DOGE Bill.
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