At the Economic Club of New York, President Trump announced: “I will create a Government Efficiency Commission tasked with conducting a complete financial and performance audit of the entire federal government — and making recommendations for drastic reforms.” Elon Musk is eager to get involved with the project. In one fell swoop, every other reason for re-electing Donald Trump took a back seat to the tantalizing possibility of turning his second term into an Office Space sequel.

No government since the Byzantine Empire has been in more desperate need of immediate downsizing. Can you picture the billionaire boys putting on their “efficiency expert” hats and shearing the bloated federal workforce one incompetent functionary at a time? Commissioner Musk: “So what is it that you would say you do here?” Crickets. President Trump: “You’re fired. Bring in the next one.” If that’s all those two did for four straight years, round two of Trumpalooza would be a colossal success.

Most of the federal blob is dead weight. Its chief purpose is to hook so many families on a federal paycheck that tens of millions of Americans will never stop voting for its continuing expansion. Even worse, it’s a Janus-faced monstrosity with internally conflicting mission objectives. We’ve got departments dedicated to fomenting wars abroad and departments dedicated to stopping them. We’ve got agencies tasked with confiscating taxpayers’ income and agencies tasked with providing economic relief. Committees are organized to study “problems,” but those problems can’t be officially solved because doing so would mean that committee-members are out of jobs. That possibility becomes the only “problem” that needless federal workers decide to solve, and they “solve” it by doing absolutely nothing. The end result is that an unknowable number of ghost programs dedicated to issues that arose decades ago are still bouncing around the bureaucratic ether for no other reason than to keep the federal blob paid and happy. There’s........

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