President-elect Donald Trump has promised to put Elon Musk in charge of an efficiency initiative: the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE). This sort of reform initiative has a venerable pedigree—presidents since Theodore Roosevelt have been appointing commissions to reform the executive branch. But not all commissions are created equal. The two most ambitious presidential reform commissions in recent history illustrate the range of outcomes: the successful Reinventing Government initiative under Clinton led to far-reaching reforms, while the largely ineffective Grace Commission under Reagan accomplished very little.
If Musk wants to seriously shake up the bureaucracy, he should learn two key lessons from Reinventing Government. First, he should recruit business and executive-branch staffers. Second, and even more importantly, he should have a detailed plan to implement his recommendations. These lessons would help him avoid the mistakes of the ineffectual Grace Commission.
The Grace Commission is a cautionary tale for would-be government reformers today. In 1982, President Reagan convened the Private Sector Survey on Cost Control, often called the Grace Commission after its chairman, the chemical manufacturer J. Peter Grace. Reagan tasked it with cutting fraud, waste, and abuse, and it quickly set to work. The executive committee of 161 business executives produced a final report in January of 1984, with nearly 2,500 recommendations. Unfortunately, these recommendations were largely ignored; as the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library admits, "Most of the recommendations, especially those requiring legislation from Congress, were never implemented."
By contrast, Reinventing Government largely achieved its goals. Reform was a priority of President Clinton from the beginning of his administration, as he had promised to inject entrepreneurial spirit into the federal government. In March of 1993, he put Vice President Al Gore in charge of this commission—formally called the National Performance Review—and tasked it with issuing a report within six months. And the 250 career civil servants working for Gore indeed turned in their initial report in September. This report recommended 1,250 specific actions; the commission claimed to ultimately have enacted over half of them. This claim must be taken with a grain of salt, but by anyone’s measure, it was fairly successful.
Why was Al Gore able to succeed where J. Peter Grace fell short? Two reasons stand out. The first was implementation: Reinventing Government had a plan to get its recommendations adopted, but the Grace Commission did not. The second was staffing: Reinventing Government brought on executive branch officials to help write recommendations, whereas the Grace Commission only had membership drawn from the private sector. For both of these choices, Musk should be like Gore, not Grace.
The Grace Commission’s woes started when it decided to draw exclusively from the private sector. Almost 2,000 people were involved, and essentially all were from the private sector. People with private-sector backgrounds were excellent at identifying government waste, but less successful at proposing reforms. The Commission proposed many far-reaching reforms: radical cuts to federal pensions, slashing subsidies, imposing user charges. But there was a mismatch between means and ends: these recommendations required congressional action, and Congress wasn’t interested. The recommendations led to some successes—most notably Base Reduction and Closure (BRAC), the first serious effort to close unneeded military facilities. But on the whole, the Commission achieved rather little.
By contrast, Reinventing Government drew mainly from civil servants and gave them a narrow goal: Gore tasked them with avoiding legislative proposals and proposing administrative reforms. Although Musk might not share Gore’s politics, he could applaud the focus of the recommendations: injecting dynamism, cutting regulations, and reducing the government’s headcount. If he wants to accomplish the same, Musk should avoid the temptation to draw appointees exclusively from the private sector—although many certainly ought to be from business. But a reform effort will also need executive branch expertise: Chief Information Officers, Chief Procurement Officers, Chief Financial Officers, and so forth.
But coming up with recommendations is only half the battle. The real problem is implementing them. And once again, the Grace Commission fell short. After presenting its report, the Grace Commission disbanded. Unsurprisingly, the recommendations languished.
By contrast, Reinventing Government had an implementation plan that continued long after the initial report was delivered. This initial report—called the Phase I report—was delivered in September 1993, and recommended over 1,000 actions that aimed to save roughly $100 billion. In 1994, the White House implemented these Phase I recommendations, with President Clinton promptly issuing executive orders to implement these actions. In particular, he ordered that the federal workforce be reduced by 252,000 people and that internal agency regulations be cut in half. The White House negotiated performance agreements with the agency heads—something never done before. Further, these executive actions were a springboard to work with Congress on passing laws. In particular, Congress passed laws aimed at streamlining acquisition, creating government performance metrics, and allowing civil servants to be laid off through buying them out with severance—goals which should be music to Musk’s ears!
From 1995 to 1998 (when the initiative ended), the Reinventing Government initiative came up with another round of recommendations, the Phase II recommendations. These further developed the Phase I recommendations and also made use of the authorities recently granted by Congress’s new laws. By the initiative’s end, Reinventing Government purported to have cut 16,000 pages of regulation from the Code of Federal Regulations and to have laid off 351,000 government employees.
A DOGE commission will need to propose innovative and dynamic ideas. But just as importantly, it needs to have a plan to implement them. It is not necessary to copy Reinventing Government’s elaborate approach exactly. The DOGE commission has many options. It could set up a new implementation office in the Office of Management and Budget (or in the White House generally). It could implement its goals through the existing Presidential Management Council. But what is most important is to have a plan. In the history of executive branch reform commissions since 1900, every successful commission had a plan to implement its recommendations.
What does the history of government reform commissions show? There is a wide variety of outcomes, from transformative success to utter failure. And these outcomes depend upon how the commission is organized. There are many choices to make when organizing a commission—but two of the most important are drawing upon executive branch expertise, and having a plan for implementation. In short: Musk should be like Gore, not Grace.
