If there’s been one bit of news out of the nascent Trump 47 administration that’s being greeted with excitement — and equal amounts of concern — among conservatives, it’s the new Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE.
The excitement comes from the fact that President-elect Donald Trump sees efficiency and the curbing of big government as a priority in his second term. Equal excitement is the dual heads of it: two CEOs with some knowledge of the political sphere, Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy.
But DOGE doesn’t exactly have a mandate to carry out its own suggestions; it’s a proposed presidential advisory commission, whose advice could just be filed away deep in a locked cabinet in the unlit, disused basement lavatory of a government building with a sign saying “Beware of the Leopard” on the door. (Geek points for those of you who get that reference.)
Furthermore, just how serious this commission is remains to be seen. Yes, both Musk and Ramaswamy have put their careers on the line to make a political stand, and Musk in particular has put serious pressure on Republicans to reject a larded-up continuing resolution to keep the government open. However, the fact that DOGE’s acronym itself is a meme — so seldom a good sign when Elon is involved, it must be noted — makes one wonder whether this is just another way for Republicans to make empty promises to slash big government while sustaining it through compromises and backsliding.
Thus, if DOGE is going to be effective, it’s going to have to be brutal. Like, Milton Friedman brutal.
In 1999, a little under three years after President Bill Clinton declared that “the era of big government is over” and also a little under three years after Clinton proved he had no intention of following through on the limits, the libertarian Nobel laureate economist sat down with Peter Robinson, a research fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University — a body which Friedman, at the time, was part of as well — for an interview for Robinson’s show “Uncommon Knowledge.”
Toward the end of the episode, Robinson — a former speechwriter for Ronald Reagan best known for penning the line, “Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall” — asked Friedman about a bit of “cabinet remodeling,” or what he’d do if he had his way with the (then) 14 cabinet-level departments there were.
“Now, 14 is a lot for television, so I just want to go right down the list quickly and have you give me a thumbs up or a thumbs down, keep them or abolish them,” Robinson said.
Department of Agriculture: “Abolish,” Friedman said.
Are you excited for the DOGE to begin working?
Department of Commerce: “Abolish,” Friedman said.
Department of Defense: “Keep.”
Department of Education: “Abolish.”
Department of Energy: “Abolish,” although Friedman said he would “accept that energy ties in with the military.”
“Well, then we shove it under defense,” Robinson said.
Department of Health and Human Services: “There is use for some public health activities to prevent contagion[s]” and the like, he said.
“So you keep the National Institutes of Health, say, and the Center for Disease Control,” Robinson said. No, Friedman wouldn’t: “Those are mostly a research agency. No, no, that’s a question about whether the government should be involved in financing research, and the answer is no.”
However, the answer isn’t easy due to contagions and other such matters, so Robinson said “We’ll eliminate half the Department of Health and Human Services.” This, Friedman agreed to.
Department of Housing and Urban Development: “Out.”
“Oh, didn’t even pause over that one,” Robinson said, as Friedman smiled.
“But Housing and Urban Development has done an enormous amount of harm,” Friedman said, insisting to pause a little bit. “My God! If you think of the way in which they’ve destroyed parts of cities under the rubric of eliminating slums.”
Department of the Interior: “Well, given the problem there is that you first have to sell off all the land that the government owns — but that’s what you should do. … The government now owns something like one third of all the land in the country, and that’s too much,” Friedman said, adding it should go down to almost zero. However, they should own government buildings, so maybe a very, very, very downsized Department of the Interior would suit Friedman’s likings.
Department of Justice: “Oh yes, keep that one.” (Friedman died roughly 15 years before he could to come to know the words “Attorney General Merrick Garland,” it must be worth noting.)
Department of Labor: “No.”
Department of State: “Keep it.”
Department of Transportation: “Gone.”
Department of the Treasury: “You have to keep it to collect taxes.” (Not that Friedman was much fond of that, but thems the breaks of where we were at, financially, even back then.)
Department of Veterans Affairs: “You can regard Veterans Affairs as a way of paying, essentially, salaries for services of those who have been in the Armed Forces. But you ought to be able to get rid of it, you should be able to pay off [lump sums]” and dump the department.
He was then asked what he would do if he were dictator for a day.
Milton Friedman was as good as it gets. pic.twitter.com/xoQAgpjmGu
— Thomas Sowell Quotes (@ThomasSowell) December 17, 2024
“No, no, I don’t want to be made dictator,” Friedman said. “If we can’t persuade the public that it’s desirable to do these things, we have no right to do them.”
With all due respect to the occasional rhetorical flourishes of the president-elect, this is the proper attitude. And while it’s way beyond what DOGE will likely recommend, Musk and Ramaswamy will have to understand they’re coming into a swamp where this continuing resolution is hardly the biggest piece of pork they’ll have to deal with:
Ever seen a bigger piece of pork? pic.twitter.com/ZesFCNSNKp
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) December 18, 2024
Yes. There are now 15 cabinet-level departments thanks to Homeland Security’s creation after 9/11. It’s now so effective that it can’t stop record numbers of illegal immigrants from crossing our borders, far more than ever before it was created.
But then, this shouldn’t be a surprise. People gasp when conservatives talk about eliminating the Department of Education. All right, then: That department was created in 1979. Have our schools gotten any better, our students any smarter since then? The Department of Energy was created in 1977. To the extent that America has gained any level of energy independence since then, it’s been through private-sector innovations like fracking — something the Democratic candidate for president once endorsed banning and which the current president uses for windmill boondoggles.
If one half of the DOGE duumvirate thinks this is the biggest piece of pork he’ll ever have to send back to the kitchen, in other words, he really ought to start watching what Milton Friedman was saying 25 years ago, then realize how much worse things have gotten since then.
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