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Executive Summary

Improving government efficiency should be an urgent national priority. The United States faces growing fiscal, economic, and governance challenges that require leadership from the White House and Congress. The nation’s current fiscal path has been described as “unsustainable” by the Treasury Department, and the federal government’s budget deficit totaled $1.8 trillion in 2024, according to the Congressional Budget Office (CBO). CBO predicts that between 2024 and 2034, the federal government’s deficit spending will total nearly $19 trillion.

The federal government’s structural deficits and rising debt require an increasing share of federal expenditures to be made on interest payments for federal borrowing. In 2024, the federal government spent $950 billion on interest payments for the national debt, more than the national defense budget. The federal government is on track to spend $1.6 trillion on interest payments by 2034, nearly the amount that is expected to be spent on Medicare that year.

This fiscal course poses a significant threat to the American economy and national security. Rising debt and debt payments contribute to inflation and rising interest rates, creating economic hardship for the American people. They also have the potential to crowd out private investment that is critical for economic growth. The rising debt also poses a risk to American security: in 2010, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff warned that the national debt was the greatest threat to national security, since it limits the nation’s ability to adequately resource national defense. Since that time, the federal debt has more than doubled.

Addressing the nation’s fiscal and economic challenges will require leadership from both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue. But for decades, Congress has allowed the nation’s fiscal situation to deteriorate, and lawmakers have punted the difficult decisions that must be made into the future. The people’s elected legislative representatives have also become accustomed to deferring substantial authority to the executive branch. While the American people wait for Congress to reassert its constitutional authorities, the urgent responsibility for addressing the nation’s fiscal and economic challenges lies with the president.

In 2025, a top priority for the president of the United States must be to reverse the nation’s unsustainable fiscal path and address the pressing economic challenges facing the American people. The White House and executive agencies have a bipartisan mandate from Congress to use executive authority to achieve substantial efficiencies and cost savings across the federal government by improving management and enacting nonpartisan watchdog recommendations. Moreover, the president has broad authority to promote economic growth and address the current cost-of-living crisis facing the American people by streamlining, eliminating, and waiving certain federal regulations. In addition, the White House should use its bully pulpit to work with Congress to enact legislation to achieve substantial cost savings and reform or end federal programs that are no longer authorized or no longer work effectively for the American people.

This report presents an executive branch efficiency agenda for 2025 and beyond. The report describes four categories of action:

• Eliminating waste, fraud, and dysfunction across federal programs and agencies by implementing nonpartisan watchdog recommendations and preventing federal misspending.
• Using artificial intelligence (AI) to streamline operations and reduce bureaucracy.
• Eliminating and streamlining federal regulations to promote economic growth and address the rising cost of living.
• Presenting legislation to Congress to achieve taxpayer savings, improve government performance, and end or reform unauthorized federal programs.

These broad recommendations are detailed in the pages that follow. Enacting this agenda could achieve hundreds of billions in savings per year and make the federal government more accountable to the American people. This report builds upon the Foundation for American Innovation’s ongoing work focused on strengthening American governance. FAI’s policy recommendations have informed reforms to modernize Congress, improve congressional oversight, increase government transparency, and expand science and technology expertise within government.

To be clear, correcting the United States’s unsustainable fiscal path will require legislative action and substantive reforms, including of federal entitlement programs and federal revenues. However, executive action to improve government efficiency and achieve hundreds of billions of dollars in savings, along with being valuable in its own right, would demonstrate that substantial savings can be achieved and potentially build momentum for broader fiscal reforms in collaboration with the legislative branch.