OPINION: The Fights Ahead on Government Efficiency

A few weeks ago on X, that social-media platform’s owner, Elon Musk, tweeted that he has the U.S.’s twice-yearly Daylight Savings/Standard Time change in his sights. “Looks like the people want to abolish the annoying time changes!” he wrote. Vivek Ramaswamy responded quickly: “It’s inefficient & easy to change.” This wasn’t just two billionaires musing about a source of annoyance to lots of Americans, but two billionaires who believe they’re in a position to do something about it. That’s thanks to the bureaucracy-cutting effort President-Elect Donald Trump has asked them to undertake, the so-called “Department of Government Efficiency”. But let’s ponder those words, “easy to change.” Really? Any change will have to go through Congress. And though Republicans will control both houses, this won’t be a partisan issue. Instead, the divisions will be regional. Do we shift to permanent Daylight Savings Time, as legislators from the coasts would prefer? Or do we install permanent Standard Time, since politicians in the center of the country note that under the alternative, wintertime sunrise could come as late as 9 a.m. in some cities? You can see how quickly this gets complicated. That’s a small example of what lies ahead as Musk and Ramaswamy pursue their agenda, long sought by politicians of both parties (remember Al Gore’s National Partnership for Reinventing Government in the 1990s?), of cutting and streamlining the federal government. The two laid out their thoughts in a Wall Street Journal commentary in November, and while it covered a lot of ground, the gist is that they intend to pursue “mass head-count reductions across the federal bureaucracy,” require federal employees to work in the office five days a week (which “would result in a wave of voluntary terminations that we welcome”), roll back — or at least pause — thousands of regulations, eliminate entire agencies or portions of them, and end “waste, fraud, and abuse.” In subsequent interviews, Ramaswamy has also talked about cutting “billions” from Social Security. It’s an ambitious agenda, and I suspect a lot of people are interested in seeing what the pair can accomplish. I don’t know anyone in either party who believes the federal government is a lean, highly efficient organization. Still, for all their confidence and air of certainty, I wonder if Musk and Ramaswamy understand what they’re taking on. Let’s consider those “mass head-count reductions.” Americans have no love for “faceless bureaucrats” — but they depend on them. The VA health care system — which falls under their blanket of “unauthorized” government expenditures — serves some 6.2 million veterans. As administrative law attorney Mark Maher wrote recently in the Philadelphia Inquirer about the Musk-Ramaswamy effort, “These people act like our administrative state is staffed by grifters making your life more expensive. The reality is agencies keep our air breathable, our water drinkable, and our food edible. They protect our rights to work in a safe workplace…. They protect our Medicare and Social Security.” Or as a GOP House committee chair put it, proposing to cut appropriations that haven’t been officially authorized by Congress, as Musk and Ramaswamy have done, is “an amateur’s comment.” All of which is to say, if Musk and Ramaswamy plan to take a meat cleaver to government in the name of downsizing — rather than pursue strategic streamlining — there is a good chance that Americans will come to question the results, especially as their benefits shrink and smart, knowledgeable, and experienced civil servants head for the exits. Congress will likely want to have a word before that happens. Which brings up an interesting question: In their Journal piece, the pair said they want to “reverse a decades long executive power grab.” “The president owes lawmaking deference to Congress, not to bureaucrats deep within federal agencies,” they wrote. But civil servants don’t write laws — they write regulations, usually at the direction of Congress. So it’s a fair bet that at some point, the Department of Government Efficiency will be at loggerheads with Congress, either over rule-making or over cuts that Congress rightly considers within its prerogatives — and not the domain of unelected officials deep within a made-up “department” that doesn’t even have the force of law. My bet? Watching the conflicts play out will become a new inside-the-Beltway pastime.               

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Lee Hamilton, 93, is a senior advisor for the Indiana University (IU) Center on Representative Government, distinguished scholar at the IU Hamilton Lugar School of Global and International Studies, and professor of practice at the IU O’Neill School of Public and Environmental Affairs. Hamilton, a Democrat, was a member of the U.S. House of Representatives for 34 years (1965-1999), representing a district in south-central Indiana.