Inertia – resistance to change, the tendency of a body to stay at rest – is strong. President Trump will face considerable bureaucratic inertia as he begins to downsize. Theodore Roosevelt (TR) and Ronald Reagan showed it can be done, but it is hard – for presidents and governors.
In 1905, having been governor of New York, TR assumed the presidency – winning his first election after the partial term served when McKinley was killed in 1901. McKinley, of course, served after Grover Cleveland’s second term – the only other president, besides Trump, to get elected to serve non-sequential terms.
TR immediately pushed reform of the government, which he thought was wasteful. Ironically, total federal spending when TR got elected was half a billion dollars, $567 million. By the time Reagan won, it was $477 billion. Trump will take over with a $5-trillion annual federal budget, and $36 trillion in federal debt.
Put differently, federal spending and debt today are a whopping 82,000 times more than under TR, 86 times more than when Reagan was cutting. So, you can see the mountain, and see it reaching skyward, that President Trump will need to scale.
TR’s actions are what Reagan later did and what Trump aims to do. He created a downsizing commission headed by a lawyer, banker, and assistant to the Treasury named Charles Keep. Thus, while TR’s commission was officially the “Committee on Department Methods,” it was unofficially the “Keep Commission.”
Succeed? Partially. TR and his commission improved personnel, purchasing, contracting, statistics, and records management, but spending did not fall.
Reagan went further, downsizing as governor of California first. Feeling that the state was adrift, overspending, overtaxing, and encroaching on personal liberties, he set up a commission on “efficiency and cost control,” which generated 2000 findings.
As President, Reagan set up a “Cost Control” commission for federal downsizing, led by a businessman – Peter Grace – and thus was called the “Grace Commission.”
This privately funded group – the “DOGE” of its day – was created by executive order, got $76 million in private money to do its work, pulling ideas from 160 CEOs manning 36 task forces – all aimed at reducing government.
Notably, it had zero federal employees and was told by Reagan to “be bold.” They were. They generated a 47-volume report of 23,000 pages, found 2,478 cost-cutting opportunities, and aimed to save half a trillion dollars, which at the time was a lot.
They reported in 1984: “The federal government is suffering from a critical case of inefficient and ineffective management, evidenced particularly by the hemorrhaging of billions of tax dollars and mounting deficits.”
Of course, critics fired back – called the cuts unfair, discriminatory, too few defense cuts, savings overstated, accounting tricks, and would hurt federal retirees.
Many “Grace Commission” recommendations were made, but Reagan did not have control of the US House and only 27 percent could be done by executive action.
Now comes the “Musk Commission,” aimed at reducing the wildly bloated federal government footprint. Maybe, finally, they can do what the others did not.
The Musk or DOGE dive on the “deep state” will be done by a president who may be ready to redline whole agencies and departments to accelerate savings.
President Trump also enjoys control – for now – of Congress, so can push a major government reform and efficiency packages through if he moves fast.
Additionally, the mood of the country – more than in the past – is all for getting government out of people’s lives, less spending, lower taxes, reduced regulation, fewer federal intrusions on rights, wild mandates, subsidies, and shutting down sectors.
In short, Trump has a moment not enjoyed by either TR or Reagan and a mandate to do what he is planning – but he also has a far bigger, arguably uncontainable federal government bureaucracy that wants to protect all that spending.
Net-net, the chances for success are higher, and the mission is now critical, but the inertia Trump faces is considerable. Somewhere, along with most Americans, TR and Reagan are probably watching, nodding, hoping, and praying Trump can do it. We should be, too.
Robert Charles is a former Assistant Secretary of State under Colin Powell, former Reagan and Bush 41 White House staffer, attorney, and naval intelligence officer (USNR). He wrote “Narcotics and Terrorism” (2003), “Eagles and Evergreens” (2018), and is National Spokesman for AMAC.
