For 4 months, the world’s richest man has performed an unprecedented position in U.S. authorities. At first of his 2025 time period, President Donald Trump requested Elon Musk to chop authorities “waste and fraud.” That translated into the Musk-driven firing of 121,000 federal employees, primarily closing whole authorities applications and departments.
Many People protested Musk’s work. His unsupervised entry to delicate authorities supplies and unchecked affect over the firing of federal workers represents an unprecedented second in america. An unelected billionaire sought to overtake the federal authorities, empowered and legitimized not by Congress however solely by the president.
There are two people intrinsic to any presidential effort to restructure authorities: the president himself and the particular person he entrusts with the duty.
In 2025, Musk has been the particular person designated to hold out the president’s goals.
In 1910, it was Frederick Cleveland, a tutorial, who was President William H. Taft’s designated head of his effort to streamline authorities.
Each presidents, Taft and Trump, have mentioned they wished to enhance how authorities functioned.
However whereas Taft labored with Congress to launch his effort, Trump hasn’t adopted that route. And the lads every president requested to guide their efforts had been vastly completely different within the duty given to them, and completely different in values in addition to temperament.
Frederick Cleveland, head of President Taft’s fee to reform authorities administration.
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Energy on Pennsylvania Avenue
Among the many many historic makes an attempt by presidents to streamline federal authorities, Taft’s administration supplies a definite parallel to an administration trying to make authorities extra environment friendly.
The Taft administration’s early Twentieth-century equal to the Musk-run Division of Authorities Effectivity, or DOGE, was referred to as the Fee on Financial system and Effectivity.
In contrast to DOGE, created by presidential fiat by way of an government order, Taft’s effectivity fee was funded by Congress.
Taft additionally delegated the work of this reorganization to trusted Cupboard subordinates, relatively than an outsider who was not confirmed by Congress. Different presidents of Taft’s technology would have discovered it unthinkable to delegate such consequential work to somebody outdoors of the paperwork to the extent that Trump has empowered Musk.
The work of Taft’s fee happened throughout a time of turmoil for the position and energy of the president, because the nation itself turned extra highly effective and its governance extra complicated, calling for elevated effectivity by means of streamlining.
Learning and streamlining authorities
Taft organized his fee in 1910, a 12 months into his presidency. It lasted till his divided get together led to his election defeat in 1912.
The fee’s goals had been tied to financial system and effectivity – because the fee itself was named. Certainly, Secretary of the Navy George von Lengerke Meyer, one in all Taft’s trusted Cupboard members, 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 clear ideas of how the nation’s high workplace wanted to grow to be extra highly effective to fulfill the rising nation’s burgeoning wants.
The presidency, he believed, additionally wanted to develop its energy to fulfill the modernizing calls for of the Progressive Period in early Twentieth-century America. This period put new calls for on authorities to be attentive to the nation’s increasing wants, from grassroots calls for by voters for better authorities activism to professionals searching for extra environment friendly assist for his or her companies from the federal government.
Taft was critically conscious of present inefficiency, with bureaucratic work overlapping at expense to the federal government, with none clear mandate, job description or hierarchy. The imaginative and prescient of the fee is evident in a diagram for the Warfare Division that sought to streamline the paperwork, conglomerating the prevailing 18 divisions into eight.
A chart of the Taft fee’s proposed streamlining of what was then referred to as the ‘War Department.’
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The Fee on Financial system and Effectivity targeted on offering options for this clearly outlined drawback of presidency inefficiency. On the time of Taft’s closing message to Congress in 1913, the fee had submitted 85 studies to Taft encouraging the reorganization of government departments, together with new and particularly outlined roles for presidency workers.
One of many studies from Taft’s fee, which he delivered to Congress.
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Lengthy-term, focused modifications
In contrast to the novel unilateral actions taken by DOGE, the Taft fee really useful motion to Congress for the long run, whereas making extra focused modifications to the manager paperwork behind the scenes.
Regardless of Taft’s pleas stressing the necessity to maintain these modifications past his tenure, Congress was bored with the empowerment of the manager by Republican presidents Theodore Roosevelt, adopted by Taft, and had no incentive to assist reorganization.
That is in direct distinction to Trump and Musk’s much less substantiated considerations over “fraud and abuse” or ongoing obscure considerations over the scale and price of the federal authorities. That phrasing could encourage extra consensus over the issue, however not essentially the answer.
President William Howard Taft at a desk within the Oval Workplace in 1909.
Corbis Historic/Getty Photographs
Empowering the manager
Taft’s selection to move his fee, Frederick Cleveland, was a kindred spirit who believed in a strengthened presidency. Cleveland was a tutorial with previous affiliations with the College of Pennsylvania and New York College. Congress accepted Cleveland’s nomination, seeing him as a pioneer within the realm of public administration.
Cleveland match the Progressive Period’s mantra of using consultants. As knowledgeable however not a member of the rich elite, and having been thought-about by Congress, Cleveland represents a transparent distinction from Musk, who seems to have little understanding of what a median American may have from an operative federal paperwork.
Cleveland mirrored the Taft administration’s strategy of desirous to remold the federal government with out animosity towards federal employees particularly or the federal government extra broadly. He embraced the Progressive Period ethos in searching for to rectify inefficiency.
Streamlining didn’t equate to large cuts. The precedence remained guaranteeing the American authorities may meet the elevated calls for of the brand new century.
Much like DOGE, the White Home was the command heart for the Fee on Financial system and Effectivity. That enabled Taft to handle reorganization of the manager department from the Oval Workplace.
Not the entire modernizing and streamlining of the federal authorities would come on the behest of Taft’s fee.
Impatient to implement change whereas awaiting the fee’s studies, and with the fee hampered by a lower in congressional funding in 1912, Taft had instantly sought enchancment inside his personal administration.
However when the fee’s studies had been lastly out there, Taft was within the unlucky place of being a lame duck and will do little in addition to emphasize the necessity for additional motion.
Whereas restricted within the brief time period, the fee’s studies had been later credited for main modifications: “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 by the Calvin Coolidge Presidential Basis.
In contrast to DOGE, the strategy of Taft and his fee targeted on streamlining relatively than gutting federal paperwork.
That strategy was reflective of an period when consultants had been revered and wanted relatively than maligned. As an skilled bureaucrat, Taft characteristically directed that the issue of presidency inefficiency be studied. This secured his legacy, as his agenda was ultimately put into apply and embraced, proving his reflective strategy to be forward of its time.
