Elon Musk’s cost-cutting crusade has reignited discussions about the need for a leaner, more efficient public sector. While Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) has made significant strides in slashing wasteful government spending, much work remains. In addition to chiseling the government’s inflated state, DOGE must work alongside Congress and the President to tackle more fundamental issues, including the reform of entitlement programs such as Medicare and Social Security.
Musk’s goal is clear: he aims to save American taxpayers at least $1 trillion by streamlining government operations. Despite facing resistance from critics and entrenched bureaucrats, Musk has managed to implement meaningful changes in the federal government, focusing particularly on eliminating the worst cases of government “waste, fraud, and abuse.” However, achieving lasting, transformative change within the vast and complex government apparatus will require navigating a host of challenges, including opposition from both a dysfunctional Congress and the sprawling agencies on the chopping block.
DOGE’s Early Wins and Challenges
Under Musk’s leadership, DOGE has focused on cutting waste across a variety of government agencies. Recent initiatives include efforts to overhaul the Social Security Administration (SSA), which recently eliminated 7,000 non-essential positions. In addition, the SSA announced plans to restructure its operations, including closing six of its 10 regional offices. These moves are part of a broader effort to clean up inefficiencies that have long plagued the federal government.
Despite these early successes, these actions alone won’t generate the significant taxpayer savings Musk envisions. To truly reshape America’s fiscal landscape, significant reforms to the nation’s entitlement spending must accompany DOGE’s measures. This is where President Trump, who has historically opposed cuts to entitlement programs, could present a significant challenge. Musk’s role, however, is not to make these cuts himself but to lay the groundwork for a broader structural overhaul that only Congress and the President can enact.
As economist Veronique de Rugy has noted, “even if DOGE eliminates all improper payments and fraud — an estimated $236 billion and $500 billion per year, respectively — we’ll be facing a debt explosion.” The current interest payments on the national debt alone amount to $881 billion annually, a figure that’s projected to skyrocket to $1.8 trillion by 2035 unless substantial reforms are made to entitlement programs.
Lessons from the Past
To understand the potential impact of DOGE, it’s helpful to reflect on past initiatives to enhance government efficiency. One of the most notable attempts occurred in 1982, when President Ronald Reagan established the Private Sector Survey on Cost Control, a private task force chaired by J. Peter Grace, a prominent businessman and registered Democrat. The commission’s goal was to identify wasteful spending across federal agencies, and its findings were nothing short of staggering.
One famous example highlighted by the Grace Commission was the Pentagon’s procurement of hammers. The Navy reportedly paid $436 per hammer — $41 dollars of which was needed to pay general overhead costs for “the engineering staff involved in mapping out the hammer problem.” What would have cost the private sector roughly $7 in the 1980s instead cost the government more than $400 in an astonishing display of waste.
The commission’s final report found that roughly one-third of income tax revenues were consumed by government inefficiency, with another third escaping taxation altogether through the underground economy. While the Grace Commission’s recommendations — nearly 2,500 in total — promised to save taxpayers more than $400 billion and potentially close the federal deficit by 1990, most of these reforms went unimplemented. Moreover, a joint report by the Congressional Budget Office and the General Accounting Office found that the commission had overstated the potential savings from its proposals.
Despite these setbacks, the Grace Commission’s efforts brought attention to inefficiencies that persist today, such as outdated operating systems and overlapping administrative duties across federal agencies.
The NPR and the Limits of Bureaucratic Reform
In 1993, President Bill Clinton launched the National Partnership for Reinventing Government (NPR), a commission aimed at reducing waste and improving the efficiency of federal agencies. Led by Vice President Al Gore, NPR succeeded in cutting the federal workforce by more than 400,000 employees and eliminating more than 640,000 pages of internal regulations. The initiative also closed thousands of field offices and consolidated various federal programs.
Though the NPR achieved some successes, such as agency-wide adoption of the internet, it ultimately fell short of enacting lasting reforms. A key reason for this was the inherent resistance within federal agencies to change. Many agencies quickly reverted to inefficient practices as the incentive to continually modernize faded in subsequent years, leading to outdated computer systems and endless mission creep such as USAID’s nonsensical pet projects. Additionally, a 1999 report by the Government Accountability Office (GAO) found that NPR had overstated its projected savings, further undermining the credibility of its claims.
President Clinton famously declared in 1996 that “the era of big government is over.” To some extent, he was right. His administration’s reforms made considerable progress at the time, but they were unable to achieve the kind of lasting structural change needed to rein in government spending. The NPR’s reliance on career civil servants, many of whom were invested in the status quo, proved to be a significant culprit.
What’s Next for DOGE?
As Musk’s team of tech-based outsiders moves forward with their reform agenda, they should take lessons from both the successes and failures of previous initiatives. While it’s easy to be skeptical of government reform initiatives, DOGE has already demonstrated that it’s possible to overhaul government quickly and effectively.
To succeed in the long run, DOGE must adopt the best aspects of past commissions. Like the Grace Commission, DOGE must maintain its outsider perspective and continue to apply pressure on entrenched bureaucratic interests. However, it also must work collaboratively with Congress, as the Gore-Clinton Commission did, to build a broader coalition of support for systemic reforms.
Most importantly, DOGE’s success will depend on its ability to lay the groundwork for reforming entitlement programs like Social Security and Medicare. While DOGE can propose cost-cutting measures, only bipartisan action in Congress will make comprehensive reform possible. This will require a delicate balance of political will, public support, and careful policymaking.
In the end, Musk’s bold approach offers hope for a more sustainable fiscal future for America, but the road ahead is long and will require greater degrees of collaboration with other branches of government and the agencies DOGE seeks to reform. By learning from the past and building on its early successes, DOGE may prove to be the catalyst for the lasting reforms our government so desperately needs — and has long sought to achieve.
