Entrepreneurs Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy will find it’s not so easy to radically downsize government. Their task, though, will be a worthy one if they take the right advice.
President-elect Donald Trump has announced that the two financial titans will lead a new “Department of Government Efficiency … to dismantle government bureaucracy, slash excess regulations, cut wasteful expenditures, and restructure federal agencies. … [They will] drive large scale structural reform, and create an entrepreneurial approach to government never seen before.”
The announcement, well intentioned though it may be, immediately raises several alarms, even apart from the almost comical self-parody of creating a new bureaucracy to eliminate bureaucracy. For example, what does Trump mean by a “Department?” A new government department or agency can be created only through legislation,…
