By Bob Maistros via Issues & Insights | December 09, 2024
Wow. A government commission/initiative will cut waste. Reduce headcount. Chop a quarter of federal spending, including entire agencies. Eliminate counterproductive regulations. And increase efficiency to boot.
Stop me if you’ve heard this one before.
Hmm. Would that be President Taft’s Commission on Economy and Efficiency? Most recommendations were ignored, except the 1921 introduction of the federal budget process putting the executive in charge of driving budgets. That worked great a decade or so later when FDR generated a more-than-doubling of federal spending by 1940.
Oh, wait. You mean the (Herbert) Hoover Commission? Two of them, really, reporting in 1949 and 1955, respectively. They were so effective that outlays jumped 152% between the first report and 1961.
Richard Nixon’s proposal to squish all of government outside State, Treasury, Defense, and Justice into four “super departments”? That reorg effort ended by creating four additional entities, including – horrors! – the super-regulators at EPA.
Surely Tricky Dick did better with the other trick up his sleeve: historically aggressive use of impoundment. Uh, no. That ploy prompted Democratic Watergate tormentors to force him to sign a 1974 budget process “reform” under which the U.S. has avoided a deficit exactly four times. The last time all the appropriations bills it envisioned passed on time? Try 1997.
Jimmy Carter’s “zero-based budgeting?” So complex that most agencies actually started with a baseline of about 70% of spending, the initiative was abandoned by that notorious big spender: Ronald Reagan.
OK, give Dutch his props: he axed non-defense spending in real terms by 9.7% in term 1 and kept it flat thereafter. Yet, elimination targets like the Departments of Energy and (yes) Education? Still standing when he left office.
His Grace Commission? An entirely private sector-run initiative tasked with finding “(o)pportunities for increased efficiency and reduced costs”? One more informally charged by The Gipper to – wait for it – “drain the swamp”? The result, per Reagan’s own presidential library: “Most of the [2500] recommendations, especially those requiring legislation from Congress, were never implemented.”
The Great Communicator’s 1981 Social Security benefit-trimming, tax-cutting reform plan? The newly GOP-controlled Senate rushed through a resolution condemning his proposal 96-0. Instead, the Greenspan Commission accelerated tax hikes and installed new levies on benefits plus phased-in increases in the retirement age.
Not long after came Gramm-Rudman, designed to balance the budget via automatic cuts if targets weren’t hit. Original version declared unconstitutional. Never balanced the budget.
Al Gore’s “Reinventing Government?” Again, a modicum of success, with some 250,000 federal positions eliminated. Yet despite the peace dividend throughout the ‘90s, outlays continually rose.
How about OMB Director Mitch Daniels’ Program Assessment Rating Tool during the George W. Bush years, grading government agencies’ effectiveness with the goal of eliminating ones that flunked? The then-Uniparty/Republican Senate Appropriations chairman’s warm response: “the best thing Daniels could do to repair relations with Congress” was to “go back to Indiana.” Which he did soon after, successfully implementing his reforms as Hoosier State governor.
Bush’s proposal to privatize Social Security and his bipartisan tax reform commission? Congressional Republicans again ran like scared rabbits from the first, and the second belched out such a nerdy, politically unpalatable monstrosity that the administration disavowed it.
Simpson-Bowles? Didn’t even garner enough votes from the commission that drafted it to reach the floor of Congress. A bill nevertheless patterned after its recommendations went down in the House – by a 10-1 margin.
Sequesters? Central to so-called PAYGO requirements in the 1990s, and then an agreement greenlighting an increase in the debt ceiling in 2011. The PAYGO provisions actually helped generate a surplus – until they were abandoned during the W years to accommodate the budget-busting Medicare Part D. The 2011 pact amazingly reduced spending in FY 2012 and 2013 – after which the sequesters were skirted again, and outlays resumed their inexorable rise.
What accounts for the decidedly mixed record of efficiency and reform efforts? Not to mention this commentator’s skepticism, despite his best wishes for – and the astronomical talents, infectious enthusiasm, and media magnetism of – the dynamic duo of Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy?
Three splashes in the face with simple, cold reality. First, there’s that appropriations process. Failure to pass funding bills means financing government via continuing resolutions, in which the operative word is “continuing.”
Except spending is almost never just “continuing.” More like “larding,” such as the $1.65 trillion FY 2023 omnibus(t) appropriations bill described on these pages as a “4,155-page Leviathan, stuffed like a Christmas goose not only with 7,500 earmarks totaling $16 billion but also with stealth substantive statutory changes.”
This annual exercise in cupidity isn’t a lack of discipline, it’s deliberate: sneaking billions of dollars through without a smidgeon of oversight. Good luck breaking the Uniparty of that ingrained habit.
Second: every program forwarded for elimination will have champions not just among Dems but in the GOP caucus. Think Susan Collins and Lisa Murkowski will stand for deep-sixing PBS and Planned Parenthood, two programs just singled out by Speaker Mike Johnson? Ha.
Third: the Iron Triangle truly is immutable. Here’s what will happen: When a program is targeted for elimination, an influence-peddler will be waiting for each Senator and Representative stepping off the elevator or the floor – they’re called “lobbyists” for a reason – with a fact sheet in hand (your correspondent has written them).
Said document will list spending under that program in said pol’s state or district. At events back home, he or she will absorb sob stories describing how essential that funding is to businesspeople’s or communities’ continued existence.
Memes detailing state-by-state Department of Education funding for special needs programs – the K-12 monolith’s most sympathetic issue – are already making the rounds on X, Musk’s own platform.
To paraphrase legendary Ways and Means Chairman Wilbur Means on taxation: Don’t cut you, don’t cut me. Cut that fellow behind the tree.
Welcome to the Swamp, Elon and Vivek.
Still, all is not entirely hopeless. There is a path forward – but it will have to wait for part II of this analysis.
Bob Maistros, a regular contributor to Issues & Insights, is a messaging and communications strategist, crisis specialist, and former political speechwriter.
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