America’s future depends on DOGE
Subscribe to enjoy similar stories. Critics view the Department of Government Efficiency’s emails asking federal employees for evidence of productivity as chaotic, arbitrary and even cruel measures to impose on a devoted civil service. But Elon Musk is simply bringing normal private-sector standards to a government that desperately needs them.
Since the Pendleton Act of 1883 introduced merit-based selection and civil-service job protections for federal workers, the administrative state has proliferated without sufficient checks and balances from the president or Congress. The federal bureaucracy has ballooned from a few agencies to more than 400, many of which are “independent" of the president. Americans often view the president as responsible for the actions those agencies take.
The system nudges new presidents to give up and go along. And that’s exactly what they’ve done. No president—not Calvin Coolidge, Herbert Hoover, Richard Nixon or Ronald Reagan—has cracked this nut.
Most reforms have made the administrative state larger, not smaller. As we’re seeing now, substantial opposition awaits anyone who challenges the bureaucracy. Unions are powerful.
Intimidation from those with institutional knowledge can be overwhelming. Fear of the media has also been a deterrent to action. Every president has been at least somewhat fearful of the intelligence agencies.
Industry leaders who have captured the agencies, including many campaign donors, have been too powerful to unseat or control. Countless cabinet secretaries come and go with the intention of changing the system. They get big offices, a nice portrait and social status, but the bureaucrats know that the political appointees are temporary and easily can be ignored.
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