When President Reagan established the Grace Commission in 1982, he set in motion a revolution in government accountability that continues to this day through the work of President Trump and Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE).

With the Private Sector Survey on Cost Control, referred to as the Grace Commission, the investigation authorized in Executive Order 12369 on June 30, 1982 by President Reagan, he used the now famous phrase, “Drain the swamp”.

Before DOGE, the Grace Commission was the last comprehensive analysis and review of the federal government.

The Grace Commission’s landmark work identified 2,478 recommendations that would save $424.4 billion over three years – an astounding amount at the time. Over the next 10 years, 59% of those savings had been realized, saving taxpayers $240 billion.

President Reagan first drew attention to this progress in his remarks on the 10th Anniversary of the Grace Commission’s work.

“I believe the creation of the Grace Commission will be remembered by the historians, as well as our grateful grandchildren, as the opening volley in America’s war against waste – as the moment when Americans began to recognize the need to stop mortgaging the future to pay for the excesses of the past.

“It was a daunting and exhausting task, two years in the doing and demanding of enormous personal sacrifices by more than 2,000 people directly involved. Pockets of resentment and resistance within the federal bureaucracy had to be overcome.”

If the opposition facing President Trump and Elon Musk looks familiar, it’s because it is. Bureaucrats and entrenched special interests battled the Grace Commission and later CAGW over their government largesse as well.

President Reagan remarked on the tenacity of those who resisted the efforts to eliminate government waste, fraud, abuse, and mismanagement:

“But this storm did not pass. In fact, it rages with even more intensity today, ten years later, lashing at reactionary elements in Congress and gradually washing away the bulwarks of self-preservation they have constructed.

You see, completion and delivery of the Grace Commission report was just the opening round. While many recommendations could be instituted through presidential directive, others had to be approved by a territorial and often hostile Congress.”

No American president added more, monetarily, to the U.S. debt than Barack Obama. Over his eight years in office, the federal debt climbed by $8.3 trillion.

During the Biden-Harris Administration, in which the Obama team was running much of the Executive Office behind the scenes, the Citizens Against Government Waste (CAGW) identified alarming information.

The CAGW 2024 Congressional Pig Book “exposes 8,222 earmarks, 11.2 percent more than the 7,396 in fiscal year (FY) 2023, costing $22.7 billion, 13 percent less than the $26.1 billion in FY 2023.”

“While the lower cost is moving earmark spending in the right direction, the $22.7 billion in FY 2024 is the fifth highest total since CAGW released the first Pig Book in 1991, behind the $29 billion in FY 2006, $27.3 billion in FY 2005, $26.1 billion in FY 2023, and $22.9 billion in FY 2004. Since FY 1991, CAGW has identified 132,434 earmarks costing $460.3 billion.”

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