It looks like Elon Musk really is going to try to fix the federal bureaucracy. I hope he succeeds. But as he and Vivek Ramaswamy settle in at the still somewhat undefined Department of Government Efficiency (humorously referred to as “DOGE”), there is something they need to fully grasp from the outset: the federal government really, really doesn’t want to be reformed.

In fact, fixing it might make catching rockets look like child’s play.

The DOGE will actually be the incoming president’s second attempt at fixing the government. Back in 2018, then-President Trump tasked me, and the Office of Management and Budget that I led, with restructuring the federal bureaucracy. It was a gargantuan task. Other administrations had tried — most recently the Clinton administration — and failed. But we knew that the government was screaming out for reform.

Our current federal government is a construct of the Roosevelt New Deal era. And as the country grew, so did the government. But our country has done more than just grow over the last 100 years — it has also evolved, from an agrarian to an industrial to a technology and information economy. Critically, the government never changed with it.

At the beginning of the last century, almost 40 percent of Americans worked in agriculture, and that industry made up more than 15........

© The Hill