Stoneage Ramblings

By John R. Stone

President-elect Donald J. Trump has proposed a Department of Government Efficiency that would look at various divisions of government and make recommendations to make the Federal government smaller and more efficient.

As of this writing this organization would be headed by Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy, both entrepreneurs and billionaires. Of the two, Musk, who heads Tesla, SpaceEx and X (formerly Twitter) to name few is the world’s richest man with an estimated worth of $280 billion. Ramaswamy isn’t quite that rich, his worth is estimated at $1 billion.

Working outside of government these two, and perhaps a staff of people they might hire, would have a goal of presenting a plan to streamline government by July 4, 2026.

These are not the first efforts to streamline government in the past 40 years or so.

In 1982 President Ronald Regan hired J. Peter Grace to run a government study later called the Grace Commission.

The commission came up with about 2,500 suggestions that it said would save about $424 billion over three years.

Most recommendations were never implemented since many would have required changes in laws or government policies.

Later President Bill Clinton had Vice-President Al Gore conducted the National Performance Review in the 1990s. This effort, using 250 government employees, concentrated on ways of speeding up government processes in house. It targeted overhead costs.

Two thirds of the proposals of this commission were enacted. Between January of 1993 and 2000 there were 25,000 layoffs and the Federal workforce was reduced by 426,000 people. I suspect some of the 426,000 were people who were going to retire anyway. A buyout program was also part of the effort.

Critics of that program said that the government lost a lot of skilled people with the effort and that “some of those who remained we would have been better without.”

Of the two, Musk has been the most aggressive with reducing employee counts at his businesses, but then he has more businesses. Thousands were booted from X, formerly Twitter, after Musk purchased the online platform.

Ramaswamy told people in October that it would be easy to cut the government workforce in half by terminating every worker whose Social Security number ended with an odd number.

It appears these folks are thinking big. The president elect has already said he would like to eliminate the Department of Education. Others have mentioned the Departments of Agriculture, Energy, Labor, Transportation, HUD, IRS and more. Could it be easier to eliminate a department than to change it or reduce its size?

The president elect has also said he would like to see the Affordable Care Act replaced with something different. A key part of that would be changing the program to allow insurers to charge larger premiums for the elderly and those with health issues who would be likely to use their insurance more.

Outside of the military the Federal government employs 2.3 million people at a cost of $213 billion, according to the Wall Street Journal. I was surprised that Veterans Affairs employs 486,000 at its clinics, hospitals and elsewhere. Musk wants to cut $2 trillion from the budget which means a lot of people and programs would go.

Whether or not much of this happens depends upon Congress. Members will likely object to changes affecting their states. At the same time it is their responsibility to make sure the government is fiscally sound.

Some change is needed, whether Musk and Ramaswarmy come up with a workable plan remains to be seen.