Today, we’re taking a look at a predecessor to DOGE: The Reinventing Government project (officially known as the NPR, for National Partnership for Reinventing Government). The NPR ran for almost the full duration of President Bill Clinton’s two terms, and led to the elimination of over 100 programs and over 250,000 federal jobs.
Both NPR and DOGE are case studies in a long history of government reform efforts — some more successful than others. Our guest is John Kamensky, who served as Vice President Al Gore's deputy for the National Performance Review (NPR) for eight years. Kamensky was colloquially known as “Mr. Checklist” for his work organizing the Reinventing Government initiative.
Kamensky is a clear-eyed observer, and he doesn’t hedge about NPR’s failures and missed opportunities. In some ways, the Reinventing Government Initiative was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to cut headcount, spending, and regulation at the end of the Cold War and change the way the government operated.
We discuss:
* Did the NPR actually work?
* What was the Board of Tea Experts?
* Why was the federal government subsidizing mohair?
* NPR made the federal workforce older. Was that bad?
* What doesn’t Elon understand about the federal government?
You can find the transcript for this conversation at www.statecraft.pub.
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