Fighting and winning battles against waste, fraud, abuse, and mismanagement is not easy.  If it were, the federal government would be efficient and effective, the budget would be balanced, and the debt would be lower.  Efforts to achieve those objectives included the Taft Commission on Economy and Efficiency (1910-1912), the Brownlow Committee (1936-1937), Hoover I (1947-1949) and Hoover II (1953-1955), the Ash Council (1969-1971), and the Carter Reorganization Project (1977-1979).  There has never been a dearth of ideas, just a lack of will to get them implemented.

The Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) is the first time since 1982, when President Ronald Reagan established the President’s Private Sector Survey on Cost Control, better known as the Grace Commission, that the federal government is being scrutinized “with an eye toward running it like a business.”  President Reagan asked the 161 members of the executive committee and 2,000 volunteers of the Grace Commission to work “like tireless bloodhounds to root out government inefficiency and waste of tax dollars.”  Elon Musk said that his DOGE team is working 120 hours a week, which demonstrates an equally strong commitment to getting the job done.

The Grace Commission made 2,478 recommendations with savings of $424.4 billion over three years.  When the final report was released in January 1984, President Reagan asked commission chairman J. Peter Grace to avoid letting it gather dust on a shelf.  Peter joined with Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist Jack Anderson to co-found Citizens Against Government Waste (CAGW) to help implement the commission’s recommendations. 

Savings in the first three years after the report was released were $112 billion, and President Reagan said that $240 billion, or 59 percent, of the $424.4 billion had been saved after 10 years.  To date, the implementation of Grace Commission and other cost-cutting recommendations promoted by CAGW have saved taxpayers $2.4 trillion.

The Grace Commission used the principles of private sector management, which require efficient and effective use of resources in a competitive landscape.  If those objectives are not met, the business will eventually be dissolved and adversely impact investors, employees, suppliers, customers, and the community.  They cannot continue to operate with a constant and growing deficit and debt.  As Elon Musk said, the federal government will go bankrupt unless spending is cut.

The reaction to DOGE is like the criticism levied against the Grace Commission, Peter Grace, and W.R. Grace & Company.  The volunteer corporate executives were accosted by claims of conflicts of interest and Peter Grace was accused of undermining social welfare programs and protecting wealthy corporations like his by reducing regulations.  The complainants were the same protectors, promoters, and beneficiaries of massive government spending that are now demonstrating in front of government buildings, objecting to spending cuts at town halls, and filing lawsuits against DOGE and the Trump administration. 

President Reagan persisted in the promulgation of the Grace Commission proposals despite the public objections.  As he said during his remarks to accept the final report, the commission members faced “reluctance or opposition … inside and outside the bureaucracy.”  President Trump is also pushing past petulant protests.  His State of the Union address called for a return to common sense and he instructed his Cabinet secretaries and leadership to be precise and work with a scalpel rather than a hatchet to determine which programs and employees are worth keeping.

Commonsense savings by DOGE include longstanding recommendations like improving the management of software assets, first proposed by President Bill Clinton in 1998.  After DOGE cited the high cost of producing the penny, President Trump told the Treasury to stop making them.  A bill to reduce production of the penny was introduced in 1989, and a bill to suspend production for 10 years was introduced in 2017. 

Eliminating the Department of Education was first suggested by President Ronald Reagan in September 1981, only 16 months after it started operations in May 1980.  He said, “… education is the principal responsibility of local school systems, teachers, parents, citizen boards, and State government.”  The elimination of the department would “reduce the budget” and “ensure that local needs and preferences, rather than the wishes of Washington, determine the education of our children.”

The concept of cutting wasteful spending is always more popular than the people who are responsible for getting the job done.  But winning the battles to make the government more efficient and less wasteful is not about winning a popularity contest, it is about securing the future financial and national security of the United States.

Go DOGE Go.