President-Elect Trump recently announced his intention to create a Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) that will be led by Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy. This will be an external initiative to identify ways to improve the economy, efficiency, and hopefully the effectiveness of the federal government from an organizational and operational perspective. Stated differently, it seems to be an expedited and expanded Grace Commission type effort with a reporting date of July 4, 2026, which is America’s 250th birthday.
This initiative is much needed and long overdue. In fact, I called for a Government Transformation Initiative over twelve years ago. An initiative designed to streamline and simplify the organization of the federal government, attack fraud and waste, devolve certain functions and activities to the states, leverage technology, and implement modern planning and management practices, including human capital practices.
In my view, the federal government has grown too big, promised too much, subsidized too many, lost control of the budget, failed to focus on results, usurped states’ rights, and failed to discharge its fiduciary and stewardship responsibilities to current and future generations of Americans. It is time for transformational change.
Shockingly, despite being in existence since 1789, the consolidated federal government does not have a future focused, integrated, results-based, and resource constrained strategic plan. It also does not have a set of key outcome-based national indicators to know what is being accomplished based on the plan, related trends, and how our nation’s performance compares to our comparators and competitors.
Since 1913, the federal government has grown from about 2.5% of the economy to over 23% and growing. Mandatory spending has grown from 3% of the budget to 73% and is growing. We now spend more on interest every year than national defense and Medicare! The federal government has become a bloated bureaucracy that does not focus on outcomes and when things do not go right it typically seeks to spend more money to throw at the problem. This is unacceptable and unsustainable.
The DOGE can help to shed light, create heat, and make recommendations to improve federal government operations. Its recommendations will need to be sent to the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) for review and designation regarding, which can be done through an Executive Order, which would require legislation, and which would require a Constitutional Amendment.
Based on my extensive transformation experience at GAO and other roles in government, it is possible to save several hundred billion dollars a year if this effort is properly designed and effectively implemented. That is a great start, but it is not enough to put our nation on a prudent and sustainable fiscal path.
Restoring fiscal sanity and sustainability will also require a comprehensive review and reassessment of current mandatory and discretionary spending programs as well as tax policy. Attempting to perform this type of review and reassessment cannot be done on a piecemeal basis through the regular order. Congress cannot even pass the annual appropriations bills on time!
While we need to adopt more pro-growth-oriented policies which can help to ease our burdens, our fiscal gap is too great, and our financial hole is too deep to simply grow our way out of this challenge. Tough fiscal choices are needed sooner versus later.
Accomplishing these tough choices will require a statutory Fiscal Sustainability Commission that will engage the American people, seek input, and make a package of fiscal reform recommendations that will be guaranteed a vote in Congress. There should be a separate vote on proposed Social Security reforms and a second vote on a package of all other proposed fiscal reforms.
Pursuing the above approaches can help achieve a huge step forward in putting our federal finances in order. However, we need to enact a Fiscal Responsibility Constitutional Amendment that establishes a limit on federal debt to GDP with limited exceptions and puts us on a path to achieve a lower and more sustainable level of debt/GDP over the next 10-15 years. Only a Constitutional amendment can bind current and future Congresses. As Chair of the Federal Fiscal Sustainability Foundation, I am working with my fellow Board members and others to make this a reality. This includes working with the states to help them pursue their rights under Article V of the Constitution to constitute a Convention of States to propose such an amendment given the Congresses failure to act.
President-Elect Trump is a major change agent who cannot seek re-election. He will have a Republican Senate and House for at least two years. As a result, he needs to aggressively pursue all these initiatives in an expedited manner. Our collective future depends on it.
Hon. David M. Walker is the Former Comptroller General of the Unites States and Chairman of the Federal Fiscal Sustainability Foundation