Elon Musk and DOGE — the Department of Government Efficiency — are all the rage.
As this is written, here are a few sample headlines:
- The Washington Times: “Trump order calls for agencies to run regulations past DOGE.”
- Newsmax: “IRS Fires 6,000 Workers as Trump Slashes Government.”
- Fox News: “CHRISTOPHER RUFO: How DOGE could take down the Department of Education,” with the subtitle, “Thanks to Elon Musk and DOGE, Americans can now see that the Education Department functions, in part, as a patronage scheme for left-wing ideologies.”
- The Washington Post: “IRS starts mass layoffs, with 7,000 expected to lose their jobs,” with the subtitle, “About 5,000 of the targeted employees come from the tax agency’s enforcement and collections section, according to a person familiar with the decision.”
- The New York Times: “Trump Dismantles Government Fight Against Foreign Influence Operations,” with the subtitle, “The Trump administration has reassigned or forced out several dozen government employees who had been working to fight foreign interference in U.S. elections at multiple agencies, according to current and former officials.”
- The Washington Examiner: “Trump’s ban on federal spending for illegal immigrants could affect billions of payouts.”
One could go on and on and on and on. Out there in the media universe is one headline after another cataloguing this, that or yet another attempt to rein in federal government spending.
To which the appropriate response is: America has been here before with similar headlines — and nothing happened. For a reason.
Hop in the time travel machine and journey back in time with me to the early 1980s. My younger (much younger!) self was relatively newly arrived in Washington. It was 1981. I had been there barely three years. My very first job involved working for a U.S. Congressman from Pennsylvania — Congressman Bud Shuster by name. While I started as press secretary, soon enough I was moved up the ladder to legislative director, and then the Congressman’s staffer on the all important House Budget Committee.
Another new arrival in Washington in 1981 was someone you have probably heard of: President Ronald Reagan. And central in his political appeal — he had been elected in a 44 state landslide over incumbent Democrat President Jimmy Carter — was his core promise to cut the federal budget, spending, the size of the federal government — and taxes as well.
And with the Reagan arrival came the flood of headlines recording the new President’s decidedly serious budget cuts and tax cut proposals. Igniting a flood of headlines very much like those headlines in today’s America about the Trump and Musk efforts to do the same.
There was even someone in the Reagan Cabinet who resembled President Trump’s favorite budget cutter Elon Musk. That would be one-time Michigan Congressman David Stockman.
Stockman was a tornado of energy and fiscal conservatism. Reagan was so impressed with the young congressman that he appointed him the Director of the Office of Management and Budget, or “OMB” as it was shorthanded in Washington parlance.
In the day, the young ex-Congressman was a whirlwind of budget cutting activity. A trip all these years later to Wikipedia and the description of Stockman says:
Stockman was one of the most controversial OMB directors ever appointed, also known as the “Father of Reaganomics.” He resigned in August 1985. Committed to the doctrine of supply-side economics, he assisted in the passing of the “Reagan Budget” (the Gramm-Latta Budget), which Stockman hoped would curtail the “welfare state“. He thus gained a reputation as a tough negotiator with House Speaker Tip O’Neill‘s Democratic-controlled House of Representatives and Majority Leader Howard Baker‘s Republican-controlled Senate. During this period, Stockman became well known to the public during the contentious political wrangling concerning the role of the federal government in American society.
Later, after departing unhappily from the Reagan Administration, Stockman penned his memoirs, The Triumph of Politics: Why the Reagan Revolution Failed.
In the book — note well Elon Musk — we see individual members everywhere from the Reagan Cabinet to GOP Members of Congress (not to mention the Democrats in House and Senate) fighting behind the scenes tooth and nail Stockman and Reagan’s efforts to get a financial and bureaucratic grip on the federal government.
Stockman writes this at the end of his book:
Politics had triumphed: first by blocking spending cuts and then by stopping revenue increases.
….Lavish Social Security benefits, wasteful dairy subsidies, futile UDAG grants, (Urban Development Action Grants), and all the remainder of the federal subventions do not persist solely due to weak-kneed politicians or the nefarious grasping of special-interest groups.
Despite their often fuzzy rhetoric and twisted rationalizations, congressmen and senators ultimately deliver what their constituencies demand. The notion that Washington amounts to a puzzle palace on the Potomac, divorced from the genuine desires of the voters, thus constitutes more myth than truth.
Stockman wrote this in his memoirs a full 39 years ago. His book is worth Elon Musk’s attention and reading. Why? Because while President Trump — and Elon Musk — are the epitome of change, Washington D.C. (aka “The Swamp”) is not even close to being even the slightest bit interested in serious tangible fashion to change. One might even suggest that if anything, the problems David Stockman encountered in the Swamp of 1981 are even worse in the Swamp of 2025.
One can only wish Elon Musk great good luck as he sets out to take on the Swamp that is Washington D.C.
Not to mention even more good luck and best wishes to President Trump.
Both of them will need — and deserve — that good luck.
Read David Stockman.
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