Can Elon Musk teach an old DOGE new tricks?  

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 percent of our national economy. Today, just 2 percent of our population is in the industry, and it makes up about 5 percent of our gross domestic product. Even with that change, however, we still have a Department of Agriculture with 29 departments and over 100,000 employees.   

That sort of government growth, and the lack of structural change, has led to some truly bizarre outcomes. Thus it is that a frozen cheese pizza is overseen by the FDA but a pepperoni pizza is regulated by the USDA. Chickens are regulated by USDA; the eggs they lay are regulated by the FDA; and if you make the egg into an omelet, that is regulated again by the USDA. And a fish that swims from the ocean to a river to spawn is regulated by the Department of the Interior, the Department of Commerce or the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, depending on where it is.  

Trump hated what is best described as “stupid government.” He was well and truly excited about the prospect of fixing things. What he didn’t realize, and what Musk and Ramaswamy will soon discover, is that the bureaucracy will not go down without a fight.   

I am not just referring to the bureaucrats themselves. Indeed, one of the biggest challenges we faced in reforming the government in Trump 1.0 was our own administration. This became painfully obvious when we tried to implement one of Trump’s highest priorities: reforming the Army Corps of Engineers.  

At its simplest level, the Army Corps of Engineers is involved in three basic functions: military building projects, environmental regulation and infrastructure regulation. The first obviously makes sense and is arguably the core function of the Corps. The other two grew over time, such that today, if you want to deepen a port or build a road or a bridge, the Corps is often involved. Importantly, its work is often redundant to agencies such as the Department of Transportation and the Environmental Protection Agency.   

Trump hated this regulatory overlap. He knew how it slowed down infrastructure projects, and how it raised costs to ordinary Americans. So we proposed to get the Corp “back to basics,” focusing on its work doing military construction. Its environmental function would be moved to the EPA, and its transportation work would be consolidated with the Department of Transportation.  

Trump loved it. The bureaucracy did not.   

What happened next is just a quick insight into the challenges that the DOGE will face. That’s because, almost immediately after we went public with our proposal, people at the Pentagon started calling people on Capitol Hill to make sure these changes never happened. And then-Defense Secretary James Mattis made clear, in no uncertain terms, that he did not support the initiative.  

That’s correct: members of Trump own administration were actively working to undermine one of his highest government reform proposals. And they succeeded. Our proposals never saw the light of day on Capitol Hill. It seems that inertia and the desire not to lose funding or power were simply too strong.  

Trump 2.0 will certainly have several advantages that we did not. The experience gained from the first effort will be helpful. There will likely be Cabinet members who are more aligned with pursuing the president’s agenda. And, of course, DOGE will have Musk, who is obviously a lot smarter than the guy leading the effort last time.   

But going up against a federal bureaucracy won’t be easy. While people at Tesla and SpaceX probably ask “how high” when Musk says jump, people at the Department of Education might respond differently. That is, if you can find them.  

Fixing the federal bureaucracy is critical to the future health of our government and of our nation, so I hope DOGE succeeds. But Musk might discover that it’s easier to start a colony on Mars.  

Mick Mulvaney, a former congressman from South Carolina, is a contributor to NewsNation. He served as director of the Office of Management and Budget, acting director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and White House chief of staff under President Donald Trump.