President-elect Donald Trump has tasked businessmen Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy with running a “Department of Government Efficiency” (DOGE), with a goal of reducing the size of the federal government. Their efforts have received significant publicity in the weeks since Trump’s victory. Yet, skeptics have wondered how much they can accomplish with no statutory authority.
The history of an earlier commission that worked to ferret out inefficiencies and cut government waste indicates that much will depend on whether they can get buy in from Congress. Without it, DOGE may end up making little impact.
On June 3, 1905, Republican President Theodore Roosevelt empaneled a “Committee on Government Methods,” recognizing that the government was in need of reform. Roosevelt had earlier served as Civil Service commissioner and assistant secretary of the Navy; he had been president since the assassination of William McKinley in 1901. This experience meant that Roosevelt knew firsthand that some aspects of government administration had changed little since the Civil War.
Simultaneously, Roosevelt had political goals. He had just come off an election campaign in which Democrats had pounded him for “Republican extravagance” and growing federal spending. They called for “the strictest economy and frugality” in government.
Roosevelt tasked his six-man committee — which included two personal friends — with determining what changes were necessary to “place the conduct of the executive business of the government on the most economical and effective basis in light of the best modern business practices.” His sweeping victory had buoyed the president’s optimism about what could be achieved, and he saw no need to consult the Republican-controlled Congress before establishing the commission. He assumed that they would just go along with whatever he proposed.
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The commission distributed a survey to all government departments. It included 107 questions relating to organization, purchasing practices, and accounting. The results shaped the work of a dozen subcommittees, which investigated issues in more depth.
The committee identified graft and corruption, inefficiencies and waste. For example, the committee found that the Department of Agriculture had been using inaccurate crop reporting procedures. And it found that the Government Printing Office was riddled with wasteful practices, such as printing too many copies of unimportant government reports. Two GOP officials had also awarded a contract for typesetting machines to a company in which their wives held stock.
More broadly, the government lacked standard purchasing procedures. That led various departments to buy archaic typewriters, 28 kinds of typewriter ribbons, and 132 kinds of pencils. The government was also overpaying for telephones, building design, construction, and shipping services. Finally, its personnel classification systems were inconsistent and there was no retirement system for aging employees.
The commission issued several reports over the next few years. Roosevelt released them to the press and sent them to Congress with recommendations for action. During a press conference in March 1906, he reported how the investigation revealed “a good deal of duplication of work, a good deal of clumsiness of work” and agencies generating a lot of paperwork without addressing “the real facts at issue.”
But Roosevelt had made three fatal miscalculations. First, he had counted on support, or at least interest, from the media. But most editors were largely indifferent to administrative reform and didn’t see his investigation as particularly newsworthy. Others in the media saw something more sinister: a President trying to consolidate power, which resonated after Democrats had attacked Roosevelt for a tendency toward what they branded “executive usurpation” during the campaign. Only a few outlets, most notably the progressive Nation, followed the script Roosevelt had hoped for and reported positively on the commission’s recommendations.
Second, Roosevelt struggled to get buy-in for implementing the committee’s recommendations from his own cabinet. A few cabinet members, like Oscar Straus, Secretary of Commerce and Labor, did move quickly to do so. Straus even established a special committee in his agency to lead the charge. But others resented the commission’s findings — which exposed their lack of administrative ability — and the President’s public endorsement of them. They balked or dragged their feet over implementation or slow-walked reforms.
Roosevelt enacted what he could through executive orders. But he also had to nudge, cajole, and, in some cases, even order recalcitrant cabinet members to follow through on the committee’s recommendations.
The President’s most critical mistake, however, was not obtaining buy-in from Congress. When the committee made recommendations for legislative changes, he quickly sent them to Capitol Hill, expecting lawmakers to serve as a rubber stamp. This was a reasonable assumption given that in 1906 Congress passed significant regulatory legislation, including the Hepburn Act, which gave the Interstate Commerce Committee power over railroad rates, and two pieces of legislation — the Meat Inspection Act and the Pure Food and Drug Act — to protect consumers from unsafe food and drugs.
Yet, congressional chieftains like Speaker of the House Joseph G. Cannon and Senator Nelson Aldrich saw reorganizing the executive branch as wholly different. They viewed it as, in the words of Montana Republican Senator Thomas H. Carter, “an executive encroachment on the sphere of congressional action.” And these power brokers had little interest in letting Roosevelt infringe upon their prerogatives. Even worse, the committee’s recommendations threatened vested interests and jobs, including patronage jobs over which members of Congress held sway.
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As a result, lawmakers imperiously rejected every one of the commission’s recommendations that required legislative action. They refused to provide the full amount Roosevelt asked for to pay for salaries for outside experts to advise the commission, and they wouldn’t fund printing the committee’s reports at all. In 1907, they shot down a request from Roosevelt that he be empowered to reorganize government agencies on his own, in line with the commission’s recommendations.
In 1909, after Roosevelt left office, Congress went even further, and prohibited the expenditure of federal funds by any committee conducting an investigation into administration that had not been authorized by lawmakers.
Roosevelt lashed out, labeling the law “pure spite and pure foolishness,” and pledging that he would have ignored it if lawmakers had passed it during his presidency. But his successor, William Howard Taft, signed the bill into law. He then sought and obtained congressional authorization — and funding — for his own government efficiency commission in 1910. That set a precedent for other executive investigations.
In his autobiography, Roosevelt tried to spin the meager results of his commission’s work, claiming that it saved thousands of dollars and laid the basis for future investigations. He even argued that it changed the mindset of public servants about their work. But this was just putting the best face on a modest impact.
Over the ensuing decades, many of the recommendations made by the commission did become law. In 1920, Congress passed the Civil Service Retirement Act. Three years later, lawmakers established a federal personnel classification system. In 1935, Congress created the Federal Register to provide a notice of government rules, contracts and other information. And in 1949, lawmakers created the General Services Administration to handle procurement, building contracts, and other service functions.
It is too soon to predict how DOGE will proceed. The boisterous Musk and Ramaswamy have already solved one of Roosevelt’s problems by generating numerous headlines, from among other things, a trip to Capitol Hill. If Roosevelt’s example is any guide as to whether DOGE eventually goes out with a bang or a whimper, it will come down to whether the two prominent businessmen can generate buy-in from Congress, or if lawmakers eventually come to see them as encroaching upon their prerogatives. Only time will tell.
Bruce W. Dearstyne is a historian in Albany, N.Y. His most recent book is Progressive New York: Change and Reform in the Empire State, 1900-1920 — A Reader (2024).
Made by History takes readers beyond the headlines with articles written and edited by professional historians. Learn more about Made by History at TIME here. Opinions expressed do not necessarily reflect the views of TIME editors.
