Party standard-bearers since the Truman years have emphasized the need for greater government efficiency to confront the challenges of the age. President-elect Trump recently joined the list, calling on entrepreneurs Vivek Ramaswamy and Elon Musk to lead an initiative he terms the Department of Government Efficiency. Striving for high-quality, cost-efficient government services is uncontroversial; however, commonsense reforms can offer political cover for more partisan objectives. This article makes the case that analysts should never lose sight of the political calculations that underlie any reorganization of the federal government, drawing on a cautionary tale from the Nixon Administration.
The Origins of the Modern Bureaucracy
Charles Guiteau didn’t think of himself as a murderer. After assassinating President Garfield on July 2nd, 1881, Guiteau claimed that a “political necessity” drove him to regicide. The political necessity he referred to was Garfield’s unwillingness to appoint him as a consul.1 The president’s death drove Congress to pass the Pendleton Civil Service Act of 1883, which created a new Civil Service Commission to standardize merit-based appointments and prevent discrimination in federal hiring.2 Though its scope was initially limited to roughly 10% of federal jobs2, it salved a wound that had been festering since the birth of the republic: Federal jobs were assigned based on political loyalty, rather than competence, engulfing multiple administrations in scandal. 150 years have elapsed since the first modern effort to reform government, but the motivating idea still holds true: Federal offices, no matter how technocratic, cannot be insulated from politics.
Rampant cronyism in late-19th century America triggered a wave of progressive reforms to protect society’s most vulnerable. The Interstate Commerce Commission, established by the Interstate Commerce Act of 1887 as the nation’s first regulatory body, sought to curb the railroad barons’ tyranny over their helpless customers. The five-member panel was tasked with reviewing annual reports from the railroad companies and monitoring price fixing.3 Ironically, railroads became vocal backers of the ICC. As Betty Joyce Nash of the Richmond branch of the Federal Reserve suggests, Interstate Commerce Act mandates that prohibited railways from offering secret rebates and other price concessions undermined the nascent competition in the industry, entrenching the position of established firms. The railroads would later abuse the ICC’s power to stifle the emerging trucking industry.4 The ICC and other examples of what prominent Chicago economist George Stigler terms regulatory capture illustrate another fact about bureaucracy: Good intentions may facilitate bad outcomes.
The impulse for progressive reform continued into the early-19th century. President Roosevelt aggressively wielded the Sherman Antitrust Act of 1890 to oppose the merger of the Great Northern and Northern Pacific Railways, citing antitrust concerns.5 The greatest expansion of federal power in American history, however, would come during the twelve-year presidency of Franklin Delano Roosevelt, who laid the intellectual foundations for the modern Democratic Party. He led Congress to establish an “alphabet soup” of federal agencies tasked with reviving America’s economy during the Great Depression, drawing inspiration from British economist John Maynard Keynes. Besides his pump-priming measures, Roosevelt introduced structural changes that codified liberal thought about federal intervention in the economy. The Social Security Board administered a pension scheme for retirees; the Securities and Exchange Commission clamped down on predatory stock market trading practices; the National Labor Relations Board adjudicated disputes between capital and labor.6 The Roosevelt Administration established a new responsibility for the federal bureaucracy: Manager of crises.
Predictably, the transformation of the federal government during the 1930s triggered a backlash from all sides of the political spectrum. Conservative groups, like the American Liberty League, argued that the New Deal hastened America’s slide towards socialism. Left-wing politicians, like Senator Huey Long of Louisiana, believed it didn’t go far enough.7 Arguments for and against the New Deal primed bitter debates about bureaucratic power.
Nixon-era Executive Reorganization
After his victory in the 1968 presidential election, President-elect Nixon sought to consolidate executive authority and modernize government operations. He established seventeen task forces before his inauguration, and based on their recommendations, convened the President’s Advisory Council on Execution Organization (PACEO) headed by Chairman Roy Ash.8 Between July 1969 and November 1970, PACEO proposed creating some of today’s most recognizable agencies, including the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).
Did Nixon have the power to create federal agencies unilaterally? The Reorganization Act of 1949 enabled the president to reorganize non-Cabinet federal departments, subject to a veto from Congress. The law’s provisions were originally set to expire in 1953.9 Congress periodically amended the law to reactivate it or limit the powers of the executive. This process became contentious in 1963 when President Kennedy requested Congressional reauthorization to create the Department of Urban Affairs and Housing. The House passed a two-year extension but added an amendment prohibiting the president from creating new departments. The Senate passed the House measures in June 1964. (The Department of Housing and Urban Development was ultimately created through legislative means.) Congress occasionally restricted the president’s authority to reorganize the bureaucracy (1964) and sometimes outright denied it (1959), but the Reorganization Act’s requirement of a legislative veto, rather than legislative affirmation, typically advantaged the president.10
Congress extended the Reorganization Act for President Nixon in March 1969. On July 9th, 1970, Nixon declared to Congress his intent to create the EPA and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration within the Department of Commerce. He noted that existing federal programs were “designed primarily along media lines,” even though the causes of pollution were “interrelated and often inter-changeable.”11 The logic was sound. But there was another political reason for his plans. The EPA reported to the president directly, circumventing cabinet heads.12 President Nixon was growing increasingly suspicious of the federal bureaucracy, which he thought was aligned against him. The EPA move allowed him to address concerns about the environment—which was on the top of voters’ minds12—while further consolidating his authority.
The vision for the federal bureaucracy that resonated the most with Nixon was detailed in the last of PACEO’s reports, published in November 1970. It proposed consolidating Cabinet-level domestic policy functions into three departments, downsizing four thousand executive positions to fifteen hundred.13 In 1971, Nixon detailed to Congress his plan to downsize the Cabinet from twelve heads to eight. Four new departments—Natural Resources, Human Resources, Economic Development, and Community Development—would function alongside the existing Departments of State, Treasury, Defense, and Justice. No Congressional action would ever come of the plan: The technical complexity of authoring the necessary legislation and stubborn resistance from special interests contributed to its uneventful end.14 Nonetheless, Congressional testimony from spring 1971 revealed thoughtful, bipartisan deliberations of the president’s plan. Democratic Senator John McClellan of Arkansas, chairman of the Senate Committee on Government Operations, declared that “the present status of our economy and the proliferation of federal services” warranted an evaluation of “governmental effectiveness” like “no [other] time in history.”14 Nixon, anticipating the plan’s inevitable failure to gain traction, still considered it a worthwhile political exercise: As confidant John Connally explained in December 1970, the proposal would position Nixon “on the side of change—while opponents [would] have to argue that the status quo was fine.”13
Nixon prioritized executive reorganization in 1972. This time, he believed it was a cause of greater urgency, the cornerstone of his power. In an April memo to Chief of Staff H. R. Haldeman, he noted that “total loyalty” would be the defining characteristic of the “new establishment” assembled “right after the election.”15 He no longer sought legislative support for his program, however. He would take a cudgel to the government, purging disloyal officials and forcing preferred outcomes through executive orders and budget cuts.15 Nixon intended to reshape the mentality of federal officers. Cabinet heads were no longer representatives of departments to the president, but the president’s agents within their departments.16
Had the nobler elements of the Nixon Administration’s executive reform agenda prevailed, America may have witnessed a dramatic improvement in the quality and cost-effectiveness of public services. Some of the causes that Nixon championed have left an enduring legacy. His revenue sharing model for administering welfare influenced policy debates about welfare reform in the 1990s.17 Ultimately, the reform program veneered a nefarious scheme to reimagine the federal government in Nixon’s image. The president co-opted logical Republican skepticism of federal power to entertain his worst fantasies.
Conclusion
The opportunities before the Department of Government Efficiency are immense. Such enthusiasm for a systematic review of the functions of government hasn’t been palpable since the 1990s. Fareed Zakaria explained that DOGE may finally bring to fruition the Republican Party’s defining goal: Dismantling a state that has grown relentlessly in size and scope over the past century.18
DOGE and its allies must tread cautiously, courting Congressional support for their plans. A unilateral reform effort led by the Trump Administration risks cronyism, a reasonable concern given Elon Musk’s proximity to the government contracts his businesses thrive on. Selective targeting of industries disloyal to President Trump may weaken investor confidence in the American economy. Hopefully, DOGE’s recommendations attract serious bipartisan consideration. But ultimate responsibility for the fate of government reform depends on the incoming administration’s political discipline.
Sources
1 https://millercenter.org/president/garfield/death-of-the-president
2 https://www.britannica.com/topic/Pendleton-Civil-Service-Act
3 https://www.archives.gov/milestone-documents/interstate-commerce-act
5 https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/193/197/
6 https://www.britannica.com/list/7-alphabet-soup-agencies-that-stuck-around
7 https://billofrightsinstitute.org/essays/new-deal-critics
8 https://www.nixonfoundation.org/2014/01/richard-nixon-and-the-creation-of-the-modern-presidency/
9 https://library.cqpress.com/cqalmanac//document.php?id=cqal49-1402250
10 https://www.everycrsreport.com/reports/R42852.html#_Toc343075422
11 https://library.cqpress.com/cqalmanac/document.php?id=cqal70-1290928
12 Page 338, President Nixon: Alone in the White House by Richard Reeves
13 Page 399, President Nixon: Alone in the White House by Richard Reeves
14 https://library.cqpress.com/cqalmanac/document.php?id=cqal71-1254523#
15 Pages 777-778, President Nixon: Alone in the White House by Richard Reeves
16 Page 780, President Nixon: Alone in the White House by Richard Reeves
17 https://www.nixonfoundation.org/2011/08/rns-new-american-revolution/
18 https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2024/11/22/doge-government-cuts-musk-ramaswamy/