When Elon Musk brandished a chainsaw on television, promising to slash government spending, many Americans cheered. Others panicked. Neither side addressed the real problem with government inefficiency — or its solution.

Musk’s recent shift in tone — acknowledging the need for caution, to measure twice and cut once — suggests the Department of Government Efficiency is learning this lesson, too.

DOGE fired probationary employees without understanding their roles and inadvertently gave Americans a crash course in what government actually does. Nuclear power plant operations were nearly compromised, Meals on Wheels deliveries were threatened and the U.S. egg supply was nearly jeopardized when swine flu containment teams received walking papers.

As a 20-year federal employee, I witnessed government's remarkable achievements and its maddening inefficiencies. I saw National Institutes of Health lead efforts to successfully map the human genome and achieve a sickle cell anemia cure in a patient, and I saw the FAA lead the world’s global airspace.

I also saw enormous waste, but it wasn’t lazy workers or fraud that caused it. The waste was the result of well-intentioned systems and requirements that have accumulated over the years, like sedimentary rock, layer upon layer, never to be removed.

Or, in other words, it’s the red tape, stupid.

Let me illustrate with an example so absurd you might think I'm making it up. Imagine a family with 12 children. The parents require each child to bill their siblings whenever they help each other. Tying shoes? That's $2.50. Homework help? $5.75 per........

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