For 4 months, the arena’s richest guy has performed an unheard of function in U.S. govt. Originally of his 2025 time period, President Donald Trump requested Elon Musk to chop govt “waste and fraud.” That translated into the Musk-driven firing of 121,000 federal employees, necessarily ultimate complete govt systems and departments.
Many American citizens protested Musk’s paintings. His unsupervised get entry to to delicate govt fabrics and unchecked affect over the firing of federal workers represents an unheard of second in the US. An unelected billionaire sought to overtake the government, empowered and legitimized now not via Congress however most effective via the president.
There are two people intrinsic to any presidential effort to restructure govt: the president himself and the individual he entrusts with the duty.
In 2025, Musk has been the individual designated to hold out the president’s targets.
In 1910, it used to be Frederick Cleveland, an educational, who used to be President William H. Taft’s designated head of his effort to streamline govt.
Each presidents, Taft and Trump, have mentioned they sought after to beef up how govt functioned.
However whilst Taft labored with Congress to release his effort, Trump hasn’t adopted that direction. And the lads each and every president requested to steer their efforts have been massively other within the accountability given to them, and other in values in addition to temperament.
Frederick Cleveland, head of President Taft’s fee to reform govt management.
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Energy on Pennsylvania Street
Some of the many ancient makes an attempt via presidents to streamline federal govt, Taft’s management supplies a definite parallel to an management making an attempt to make govt extra environment friendly.
The Taft management’s early Twentieth-century identical to the Musk-run Division of Govt Potency, or DOGE, used to be known as the Fee on Economic system and Potency.
Not like DOGE, created via presidential fiat by way of an govt order, Taft’s potency fee used to be funded via Congress.
Taft additionally delegated the paintings of this reorganization to relied on Cupboard subordinates, somewhat than an intruder who used to be now not showed via Congress. Different presidents of Taft’s era would have discovered it unthinkable to delegate such consequential paintings to any person outdoor of the paperwork to the level that Trump has empowered Musk.
The paintings of Taft’s fee happened all through a time of turmoil for the function and tool of the president, as the rustic itself become extra tough and its governance extra advanced, calling for larger potency via streamlining.
Finding out and streamlining govt
Taft arranged his fee in 1910, a yr into his presidency. It lasted till his divided celebration ended in his election defeat in 1912.
The fee’s targets have been tied to economic system and potency – because the fee itself used to be named. Certainly, Secretary of the Military George von Lengerke Meyer, one in every of Taft’s relied on Cupboard contributors, concisely defined how the “main object was the establishment of a system which would enable the Secretary to administer his office efficiently and economically, with the advice of responsible expert advisers, ensuring continuity of policy for the future.”
Taft got here to the presidency in 1909 with transparent ideas of the way the country’s most sensible workplace had to change into extra tough to satisfy the rising nation’s burgeoning wishes.
The presidency, he believed, additionally had to increase its energy to satisfy the modernizing calls for of the Modern Technology in early Twentieth-century The us. This period put new calls for on govt to be attentive to the rustic’s increasing wishes, from grassroots calls for via electorate for better govt activism to pros searching for extra environment friendly enhance for his or her companies from the federal government.
Taft used to be seriously acutely aware of current inefficiency, with bureaucratic paintings overlapping at expense to the federal government, with none transparent mandate, activity description or hierarchy. The imaginative and prescient of the fee is obvious in a diagram for the Struggle Division that sought to streamline the paperwork, conglomerating the present 18 divisions into 8.
A chart of the Taft fee’s proposed streamlining of what used to be then known as the ‘War Department.’
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The Fee on Economic system and Potency considering offering answers for this obviously outlined downside of presidency inefficiency. On the time of Taft’s ultimate message to Congress in 1913, the fee had submitted 85 reviews to Taft encouraging the reorganization of govt departments, together with new and in particular outlined roles for presidency workers.
One of the crucial reviews from Taft’s fee, which he brought to Congress.
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Lengthy-term, centered adjustments
Not like the novel unilateral movements taken via DOGE, the Taft fee really helpful motion to Congress for the long run, whilst making extra centered adjustments to the manager paperwork at the back of the scenes.
Regardless of Taft’s pleas stressing the want to maintain those adjustments past his tenure, Congress used to be uninterested in the empowerment of the manager via Republican presidents Theodore Roosevelt, adopted via Taft, and had no incentive to enhance reorganization.
That is in direct distinction to Trump and Musk’s much less substantiated considerations over “fraud and abuse” or ongoing imprecise considerations over the scale and value of the government. That phraseology might encourage extra consensus over the issue, however now not essentially the answer.
President William Howard Taft at a table within the Oval Place of job in 1909.
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Empowering the manager
Taft’s selection to move his fee, Frederick Cleveland, used to be a kindred spirit who believed in a bolstered presidency. Cleveland used to be an educational with previous affiliations with the College of Pennsylvania and New York College. Congress accredited Cleveland’s nomination, seeing him as a pioneer within the realm of public management.
Cleveland are compatible the Modern Technology’s mantra of using mavens. As a qualified however now not a member of the rich elite, and having been thought to be via Congress, Cleveland represents a transparent difference from Musk, who seems to have little working out of what a median American might want from an operative federal paperwork.
Cleveland mirrored the Taft management’s manner of short of to remold the federal government with out animosity towards federal employees in particular or the federal government extra extensively. He embraced the Modern Technology ethos in searching for to rectify inefficiency.
Streamlining didn’t equate to special cuts. The concern remained making sure the American govt may meet the larger calls for of the brand new century.
Very similar to DOGE, the White Area used to be the command heart for the Fee on Economic system and Potency. That enabled Taft to control reorganization of the manager department from the Oval Place of job.
No longer all the modernizing and streamlining of the government would come on the behest of Taft’s fee.
Impatient to put in force alternate whilst watching for the fee’s reviews, and with the fee hampered via a lower in congressional investment in 1912, Taft had in an instant sought growth inside of his personal management.
But if the fee’s reviews have been in spite of everything to be had, Taft used to be within the unlucky place of being a lame duck and may do little but even so emphasize the will for additional motion.
Whilst restricted within the quick time period, the fee’s reviews have been later credited for main adjustments: “Although the report fell on deaf ears in Congress, it would become an essential roadmap for the budget reforms of 1921. The Budget and Accounting Act of 1921 addressed and mirrored the concerns and proposals of the Commission’s Report,” as described via the Calvin Coolidge Presidential Basis.
Not like DOGE, the manner of Taft and his fee considering streamlining somewhat than gutting federal paperwork.
That manner used to be reflective of an technology when mavens have been respected and wanted somewhat than maligned. As an skilled bureaucrat, Taft characteristically directed that the issue of presidency inefficiency be studied. This secured his legacy, as his schedule used to be in the end put into apply and embraced, proving his reflective solution to be forward of its time.
