Government efficiency panels like DOGE have a long and disappointing history

As Elon Musk readies a new commission focused on reducing government spending, he is bringing memes and social media clout to a Washington tradition that dates back over a century - and often ends in disappointment.

Since at least the administration of Theodore Roosevelt, presidents have been appointing commissions to recommend reforms to the executive branch in the name of making government more efficient or saving money. But many have come up short in their goals to tackle waste and abuse, especially when led by business leaders with limited experience in federal bureaucracy.

Commissions that attempt to deliver private sector efficiency to government are “all abject failures,” said Douglas Holtz-Eakin, president of the American Action Forum, a conservative-leaning think tank.

“The things that make them successful businessmen … don’t translate to setting rules for competition in government,” Holtz-Eakin said.

Musk, who is known for his pugnacious leadership style at Tesla, Starlink and X, is now bringing that combative approach to the typically arcane practice of fiscal planning. He warned that people working on the commission would “make lots of enemies” and has said the world is “suffering slow strangulation by overregulation.”

“Every year the noose tightens a little more,” he tweeted.

Many of the specifics of the “Department of Government Efficiency,” which the Tesla and SpaceX chief executive Musk is co-leading with entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy, remain unclear. Despite its name, the organization will be outside government, though it will work closely with the White House Office of Management and Budget. The panel, nicknamed “DOGE” after a dog-branded cryptocurrency that Musk sometimes promotes, is currently soliciting applications for “super high-IQ small-government revolutionaries willing to work 80+ hours per week on unglamorous cost-cutting.” Applicants were encouraged to submit their résumés via direct messages on X, the social media site formerly known as Twitter, which Musk owns. But as of Thursday afternoon, only users who were paying for a premium service on the platform could send messages to the DOGE account.

Musk and Ramaswamy have not said how the commission will be funded. Trump’s aides are also preparing unconventional strategies to implement at least some recommendations from DOGE with or without approval from Congress, which could upend the balance of powers in the federal government, The Washington Post has reported.

Since 1905, there have been many commissions focused on reforming the executive branch, resulting in a total of 164 reports, said Kevin Hawickhorst, a policy manager at the Foundation for American Innovation. The most successful have relied on a mix of people from the government and industry, such as the Hoover Commission in the 1940s.

Despite the repeated efforts, though, the overall fiscal trajectory hasn’t changed much: The federal budget deficit hit $1.8 trillion as of the fiscal year that ended in September, and the national debt is now roughly $36 trillion.

“If you look at the history, we’re probably due for a government reform commission,” Hawickhorst said.

Here’s a look at some of the previous ones.

Truman’s Hoover Commission

Following explosive government growth during World War II, former president Herbert Hoover led a bipartisan commission to reduce the number of federal departments and increase government efficiency. More than 70% of its recommendations were implemented by Congress or the executive branch, resulting in the consolidation of some government departments. The commission also helped create new agencies, including a department that oversaw health and education.

The commission was in part successful through setting up a lobbying group that helped market the group with local chambers of commerce and citizens.

The commission was so successful that it has been frequently replicated. Hoover led another federal commission in the wake of the Korean War in the 1950s, and many states have created “Little Hoover” commissions to replicate this effort.

Reagan’s Grace Commission

When President Ronald Reagan sought to “drain the swamp” in 1982, he turned to chemical company president Joseph Peter Grace Jr. to assemble a commission composed of more than 150 business executives. The effort is a cautionary tale for Musk and Ramaswamy.

The commission produced a report with 2,500 recommendations about ways to cut fraud and abuse, but they were largely not implemented. A joint study by the Congressional Budget Office and General Accounting Office found that the commission overstated the deficit reductions that it could yield: The commission estimated that most of its recommendations would result in savings of $298 billion over three years. But the review found they would save only $98 billion in that time period.

Because the commission drew exclusively from the private sector, it had little understanding of how the agencies it was tasked with cutting actually operated. That resulted in a time-consuming process, impractical recommendations and, ultimately, little interest from Congress, Hawickhorst said.

Clinton’s Reinventing Government

More than 30 years ago, President Bill Clinton and Vice President Al Gore appeared on the South Lawn with a pair of forklift trucks carrying tens of thousands of pages of budget rules and federal regulations. The 1993 stunt was intended to bring attention to a Gore-led effort to “make government cool again,” through cutting red tape and putting “customers” (or the American taxpayers) first. As the country adapted to the World Wide Web, Gore was also tasked with developing an “e-government,” bringing government services online and hiring technical talent. The 250-person commission ultimately made its recommendations, and the Clinton administration promoted the effort as a success because it reduced the federal workforce by 377,000.

However, some of the program’s critics have said the workforce reductions contributed to a drain of expertise in the government, particularly at the Pentagon. Much of the panel’s work was subsequently undone by the George W. Bush administration, and the federal government continues to struggle with adapting its services to new technologies, such as artificial intelligence.

Obama’s Simpson-Bowles

As lawmakers were locked in a divisive debate about the deficit in 2010, President Barack Obama signed an executive order that created a commission to address long-term fiscal challenges. The bipartisan effort was chaired by former White House chief of staff Erskine Bowles and former Republican senator Alan K. Simpson, and it had unique clout: If a supermajority of members approved its recommendations, they would be sent to Congress for an up-or-down vote. The co-chairs made dramatic recommendations, including increasing the age for full Social Security retirement and raising taxes on the wealthy.

But after months of meetings, only 11 of 18 commissioners supported the recommendations - not enough to advance to Congress. An attempt to pass legislation based on the recommendations later failed, too.

The total national debt at the end of the 2010 fiscal year? About $15 trillion - less than half what it is today.