After much ballyhoo and euphoria over Elon Musk’s DOGE findings, it now appears that the federal budget will not decrease one penny this fiscal year. What went wrong? As a long-time consultant in the banking industry, I know how hard it is to implement change. In fact it is so hard that I developed a short lecture for the benefit of management in which I listed the crucial steps required.
- Identify improvement opportunities.
- Get management approval to implement the required changes.
- Sell the changes to middle management.
- Sell the changes to the rest of the staff.
- Implement the changes.
- Track the results.
Elon Musk and his DOGE team accomplished step number one and possibly step number two. They have progressed no further. To the bitter disappointment of the American people, the federal budget deficit is larger than ever and growing. It appears that nothing much has changed.
Elon and his crew accomplished the easiest part; i.e., identifying the improvement opportunities. There is so much waste, corruption, and incompetence in government, especially at the federal level, that very little expertise is required to identify it. Unfortunately the potential improvements were treated as if identifying them was all that was necessary. Perhaps President Trump himself believed that to be the case, although as a businessman he should have known better. We’ll give him the benefit of the doubt that he passed step number two—gave his approval to implement the required changes—and then moved on to other affairs of state. And that’s where DOGE died, as have many other attempts to streamline the federal government. (See The Grace Commission Report.) He should have handed this herculean task to another powerful politician, such as Vice President J.D. Vance, to work closely with Musk’s DOGE and loyal go-getters in Congress to sell these changes to Middle Management; i.e., Congress.
OK, Congress is not really “middle management” because its members are not appointed by the president but are elected by hometown and home state constituents. But the analogy to selling change to middle management still holds. President Trump has the American electorate on his side, at least for awhile, so his influence with Congress is peaking. He and his team need to work with Congress to sell real change to the American people, who can be considered as “the rest of the staff” in step number four above. There’s a lot of low hanging fruit that needs to be picked quickly before moving on to the really big numbers represented by Social Security, Medicaid, Medicare, and the military. These may appear to be sacrosanct but such is not necessarily the case. The military may be the most vulnerable to cuts. The entitlements will be more difficult, but there are lots of excellent proposals by real experts and real economists of how it can be done. For example, decades ago Professor George Reisman, in his magnum opus Capitalism: A Treatise on Economics, outlined how Social Security could be phased out over time. I am sure that Medicare and Medicaid could be phased out, too. In any event, let us not be under the illusion that this level of government spending can be continued much longer. The US annual deficit is running at a three trillion dollar clip and the federal treasury is in a debt trap. The world’s appetite for US Treasury debt is drying up and most likely going into reverse. That means the default buyer is the Fed via outright money printing, what is euphemistically called “monetizing the debt”.
Moving on to step number five, one would think that implementing changes that have been accepted by all parties would be an easy thing, but such is not the case. Subtle and not-so-subtle sabotage is common. Those opposed to the change will erect all kinds of barriers as to why something “just can’t be done”. Or, moving on to step number six, management is told that the changes have been implemented but…ta da!..nothing happened. Or, worse yet, the changes supposedly caused even more expense, etc. Since it is often the case that technicians are required to implement the changes and track the results, there are lots of opportunities to sabotage the entire effort. I’ve seen it happen.
Fans of British television will recognize the above scenario as a typical episode of Yes, Minister and Yes, Prime Minister. Hapless politician James Hacker is manipulated by his professional chief-of-staff Sir Humphrey Appleby into doing exactly what Sir Humphrey wants or doesn’t want. Poor Jim is left scratching his head in amazement. Substitute the American people in the place of the bewildered Jim Hacker and you have the same outcome. Nothing ever gets done.
The solution, of course, is for President Trump to get personally involved and revive his “You’re Fired!” persona. He only has so many hours in the day, so I’m sure that his attention is being diverted to many pressing problems. Nevertheless, his attempts at securing peace in Ukraine have little chance of success. The problem is the same with his efforts in the Middle East. Aside from making his desires known, those issues can be resolved only by the participants involved. What he can do is fix America’s out-of-control spending, waste, and corruption. Spend your political capital where it has a chance of success, Mr. President, and stop wasting your time on securing peace in the Balkans and the Middle East.
© Patrick Barron 2025 Website
