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Northeastern public policy experts say the board could have some organizational impact; but without the backing of Congress, it won’t be able to deliver sweeping changes.
President-elect Donald Trump has tasked billionaire Elon Musk and conservative entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy to run a new Department of Government Efficiency that Trump says would help slim down the federal bureaucracy.
“Together, these two wonderful Americans will pave the way for my Administration to dismantle Government Bureaucracy, slash excess regulations, cut wasteful expenditures, and restructure Federal Agencies,” Trump said in a statement this week.
While not actually a department of the federal government (only Congress has the power to create departments), the effort has historical precedent. It is reminiscent of the Private Sector Survey on Cost Control, popularly known as the Grace Commission, created by former President Ronald Reagan, which was similarly tasked to eliminate government waste and inefficiency.
Northeastern University public policy experts say the board could have some organizational impact, but without the backing of Congress, it won’t be able to deliver on any sweeping changes promised during the campaign.
Musk has said that he hopes to cut at least $2 trillion in federal spending, or roughly one-third of the budget. Ramaswamy suggested he would get rid of up to 75% of the civil service, according to CNN.
It’s more likely that the government efficiency commission would recommend organizational changes pertaining to how the government manages its finances or workforce, which could lead to some savings, says John Portz, professor of political science at Northeastern.
But any policy recommendations, including changes to the federal budget, would require backing by Congress — a fact that became a point of friction between lawmakers and those staffed on the Grace Commission in the 1980s, Portz says.
Trump has said the “department” would operate outside of the federal government and work with the White House Office of Management and Budget.
Though there are few details as to the government efficiency board’s structure, Musk and Ramaswamy “are going to have to put together a budget and hire a team of researchers,” Portz says.
At the very least, he says, the non-governmental board can make management-focused recommendations which could be implemented, at least in part, by Trump without congressional buy-in, so long as they are administrative in nature.
Ultimately, the Grace Commission — even with bipartisan support — had little fiscal impact, says Christopher Bosso, professor of public policy and political science at Northeastern.
“It didn’t save that much money,” Bosso says. “A lot of the recommendations that were carried out were paperwork reduction type stuff.”
It’s just one illustration of the difficulty that attaches to campaign promises of scaling back the government: many of its most expensive programs are hugely popular — even among Republicans, the experts say. And, as it relates to government waste, you always have to spend money to find it.
As the Republican platform has long included a vision for smaller government, Bosso says he thinks the Musk-led commission is largely a symbolic gesture given the potential roadblocks.
“If you look at the federal budget, about 70% of it is confined to four buckets: defense spending, Medicare, Social Security and payment on the national debt,” he says. “That leaves the other 30%, often referred to as the ‘discretionary’ end, which usually includes programs that are really quite popular. Good luck on cutting, for example, programs that support agricultural production.”
“They’ll probably produce reports and get a few things done, and they’ll probably go after the Department of Education, which is the Republicans’ symbolic great white whale,” Bosso says.
“As it relates to the Department of Education, the fact of the matter is there’s not much money there,” Bosso says. “Republicans have been going after the Education Department since it was created — and the fact they haven’t gotten rid of it yet is telling.”
If the Trump administration were to successfully dismantle and defund the Department of Education, it would have to go after its programs, which Bosso and Portz say make up the bulk of the department’s spending. Should they dissolve the department but leave the programs in place, they would continue to be administered by a different department, they note.
Portz says another way the commission could have an impact is if Trump implements the Schedule F plan, which would reclassify civil servants into political appointees, thus stripping them of protections.