A Bipartisan Efficiency Commission
An idea! Policy debate has been largely absent from a campaign season pitting a theme of joy against eating pets.
The IDEA came, predictably, from Elon Musk, who offered to run a “government efficiency commission” for Donald Trump. Trump immediately embraced the idea.
But what would an “efficiency commission” actually do? Musk didn’t say, and Trump says it would eliminate fraud and waste.
The opportunity here is far greater than stopping fraud, and potentially transformative in ways that both parties should embrace. It’s been decades since anyone tried to make sense of how government operates. Looking under the hood reveals a dense jungle of red tape, inflexible mandates, obsolete programs, and anti-social entitlements.
In this essay for News Items, Philip Howard sketches out a roadmap of what an efficiency commission might do. It’s hard to overestimate the benefits of making government manageable—on the order of at least $10,000 per American family per year. Liberating these resources could be used in all sorts of ways to strengthen America.
Probably the only way to get this done is on a bipartisan basis—appointing something like a “base-closing commission” to clean house. No de-regulation is required. Democrats should want good government. Republicans should want leaner government. Americans want less red tape.
An idea can have power. What’s needed is for people to demand it.
Syndicated columnist Quin Hillyer cites our work in an op-ed on the four areas that the 2024 candidates are ignoring:
“Much of the direction for the reorganization and streamlining of bureaucracy should spring from the insights of Philip K. Howard, author of The Death of Common Sense and subsequent books that argue for less rule-bound, more accountable systems for administrative agencies. And almost all public-sector unions should be phased out of existence.”