Republican Governors Offer Budget-Cutting Advice to Elon Musk, Echoing Their Own State Strategies
Mitch Daniels referred to the goal of reducing spending by $2 trillion as “preposterous.”
TroibNews 
Before Elon Musk and his chainsaw, there was Mitch Daniels “the Blade.”
The former Indiana governor and director of the Office of Management and Budget under President George W. Bush earned a reputation in the early 2000s as a force for governmental reduction. While serving as governor, he managed to decrease the size of the state workforce by 18 percent and transformed a $700 million deficit into a $2 billion surplus.
Daniels even issued rebate checks to taxpayers in Indiana, a direct result of his budget cuts.
Today, he and a group of like-minded former Republican governors are observing Musk and President Donald Trump’s Department of Government Efficiency with a mix of nostalgia, uncertainty, and caution—especially from Daniels.
“I certainly would have cautioned against throwing out a number that’s just preposterous,” Daniels said to PMG regarding Musk's ambitious $2 trillion benchmark for DOGE savings. “There’s a real value in an effort like this because they illuminate the fact that the government does a lot of very silly or unnecessary or even counterproductive things, but I would have urged that they go achieve some real success first and then talk. Talk less, do more.”
Daniels isn’t alone in his caution. Former governors from Illinois and New Jersey also attempted similar cuts to government, though often hindered by the same bureaucratic challenges that they sought to address.
The Trump administration claims it is not breaking new ground, referring to President Bill Clinton’s “Reinventing Government” initiative, which was led by Vice President Al Gore. Musk acknowledged this connection, stating on social media, “What @DOGE is doing is similar to Clinton/Gore Dem policies of the 1990s.”
One memorable moment from that era was when Gore promoted the initiative on David Letterman’s late-night show by smashing a government ashtray with a hammer.
In various interviews, the former GOP governors shared their experiences with government reduction. Former Illinois Gov. Bruce Rauner admitted that it was “very, very, very tough to shrink” the government in his state, while former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie acknowledged that he made cuts to human services that he soon regretted, necessitating a reversal.
“I did a bunch of line-item vetoing and by definition that's done more quickly because a bunch comes, and you have a certain period of time to do it. There were cuts to human services that wound up affecting kids in ways that I didn't anticipate they would, and so I went back and changed it,” recalled Christie, a former presidential candidate and long-time Trump critic. “I took some abuse for it when it happened and I deserved it. I made a mistake, so I think when that happens, you just have to go ‘OK. I made the mistake, now fix it.’ It’s not like the mistakes are never going to be made.”
Daniels even once placed pennies on the tires of state-owned vehicles to monitor their usage. When he returned a month later and found the pennies still intact, he auctioned off a fleet of 1,000 vehicles. He also managed to reduce the state's fleet of planes and helicopters from 22 to just 6.
However, none of these efforts resemble the chaos surrounding Musk’s DOGE initiative, which has seen its share of employee firings and re-hirings, particularly among workers in sensitive areas like the nuclear weapons program and those tackling bird flu.
“Personnel costs are such a small part of the money federal government spends and wastes,” Daniels noted. “I think they don't want to overemphasize that, because it hands the friends of the status quo a club: You know, you're hurting these innocent people.”
Daniels, much like Trump, had the backing of a Republican legislature. Rauner and Christie, on the other hand, faced pushback from Democratic-led state legislatures, as well as external pressures akin to the legal challenges Trump encounters.
“There are all kinds of restrictions and union rules and regulatory rules for what you can do as an executive versus what needs legislative or other approvals, including union approvals and employee approvals,” Rauner explained in an interview.
As a follower of Daniels’ approach, Rauner “studied what he did” and even tried to recruit some of his staff. However, Rauner’s Turnaround Agenda aimed at reforming state government led to conflicts with the Democratic-dominated Illinois General Assembly. This resulted in a budget impasse of over two years and significant cuts to social service programs.
He expressed that Republicans believe “the Trump administration deserves credit for trying [to reduce government] because nobody else, literally nobody, has been willing to do it at the federal level in anything like this scale and speed.”
Rauner likened Trump’s approach to corporate tactics — “move fast and break things that are broken. And most Republicans regard the federal bureaucracy as broken. So I think they’re trying to do what a lot of people would support.”
However, Rauner made a crucial distinction: he wouldn’t consider cutting education. “It’s the most important thing we do collectively as a community and as a society,” he stated.
Along with Rauner and Daniels, Christie has been observing the Trump administration’s attempts to reshape government.
He believes that a lack of transparency poses the biggest challenge in the current reinvention of government. He pointed to a recent incident where DOGE “accidentally canceled” initiatives by the U.S. Agency for International Development aimed at preventing the spread of Ebola. Although Musk stated that the efforts would be restored, such missteps can erode public trust.
“That’s why I think you should be going through a process where people know what you’re doing and that you’re doing it in a transparent way by examining it before you cut it,” Christie explained. “Here, I think it’s the opposite process.”
For many years, Daniels has warned that the U.S. is facing a debt crisis—a theme he referred to in a 2011 speech at the Conservative Political Action Conference as the “new red menace.”
During that same address, Daniels proposed the idea of a taxpayer refund, which set aside funds for citizens “beyond a specified level of state reserves.” Today, he argued that a DOGE tax credit would be a “giveaway as crass as what Biden tried to do with student loans.” Daniels previously signed into law a taxpayer refund that has benefited Indiana residents at least three times.
He also advocated for presidential impoundment authority, enabling the administration to refrain from spending money allocated by Congress—a concept Trump also supported during his campaign.
“Nothing radical about it,” Daniels commented recently.
While he is not opposed to Musk's initiative, Daniels believes it is the OMB that possesses the “authority” to implement deeper cuts.
“I want to see them build the case for restraint by doing some things that are effective,” Daniels stated. “The sky won't fall. I've always said you'd be amazed how much government you’d never miss.”
However, he expressed skepticism that Trump and Musk could find the kind of substantial cuts they’re seeking.
“This president has taken off the table the only way you’d ever get close to such a number, and that’s entitlement reforms,” Daniels concluded. “If they won't touch Medicaid, then they don't have a chance of doing much that's real.”
Aarav Patel contributed to this report for TROIB News
The former Indiana governor and director of the Office of Management and Budget under President George W. Bush earned a reputation in the early 2000s as a force for governmental reduction. While serving as governor, he managed to decrease the size of the state workforce by 18 percent and transformed a $700 million deficit into a $2 billion surplus.
Daniels even issued rebate checks to taxpayers in Indiana, a direct result of his budget cuts.
Today, he and a group of like-minded former Republican governors are observing Musk and President Donald Trump’s Department of Government Efficiency with a mix of nostalgia, uncertainty, and caution—especially from Daniels.
“I certainly would have cautioned against throwing out a number that’s just preposterous,” Daniels said to PMG regarding Musk's ambitious $2 trillion benchmark for DOGE savings. “There’s a real value in an effort like this because they illuminate the fact that the government does a lot of very silly or unnecessary or even counterproductive things, but I would have urged that they go achieve some real success first and then talk. Talk less, do more.”
Daniels isn’t alone in his caution. Former governors from Illinois and New Jersey also attempted similar cuts to government, though often hindered by the same bureaucratic challenges that they sought to address.
The Trump administration claims it is not breaking new ground, referring to President Bill Clinton’s “Reinventing Government” initiative, which was led by Vice President Al Gore. Musk acknowledged this connection, stating on social media, “What @DOGE is doing is similar to Clinton/Gore Dem policies of the 1990s.”
One memorable moment from that era was when Gore promoted the initiative on David Letterman’s late-night show by smashing a government ashtray with a hammer.
In various interviews, the former GOP governors shared their experiences with government reduction. Former Illinois Gov. Bruce Rauner admitted that it was “very, very, very tough to shrink” the government in his state, while former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie acknowledged that he made cuts to human services that he soon regretted, necessitating a reversal.
“I did a bunch of line-item vetoing and by definition that's done more quickly because a bunch comes, and you have a certain period of time to do it. There were cuts to human services that wound up affecting kids in ways that I didn't anticipate they would, and so I went back and changed it,” recalled Christie, a former presidential candidate and long-time Trump critic. “I took some abuse for it when it happened and I deserved it. I made a mistake, so I think when that happens, you just have to go ‘OK. I made the mistake, now fix it.’ It’s not like the mistakes are never going to be made.”
Daniels even once placed pennies on the tires of state-owned vehicles to monitor their usage. When he returned a month later and found the pennies still intact, he auctioned off a fleet of 1,000 vehicles. He also managed to reduce the state's fleet of planes and helicopters from 22 to just 6.
However, none of these efforts resemble the chaos surrounding Musk’s DOGE initiative, which has seen its share of employee firings and re-hirings, particularly among workers in sensitive areas like the nuclear weapons program and those tackling bird flu.
“Personnel costs are such a small part of the money federal government spends and wastes,” Daniels noted. “I think they don't want to overemphasize that, because it hands the friends of the status quo a club: You know, you're hurting these innocent people.”
Daniels, much like Trump, had the backing of a Republican legislature. Rauner and Christie, on the other hand, faced pushback from Democratic-led state legislatures, as well as external pressures akin to the legal challenges Trump encounters.
“There are all kinds of restrictions and union rules and regulatory rules for what you can do as an executive versus what needs legislative or other approvals, including union approvals and employee approvals,” Rauner explained in an interview.
As a follower of Daniels’ approach, Rauner “studied what he did” and even tried to recruit some of his staff. However, Rauner’s Turnaround Agenda aimed at reforming state government led to conflicts with the Democratic-dominated Illinois General Assembly. This resulted in a budget impasse of over two years and significant cuts to social service programs.
He expressed that Republicans believe “the Trump administration deserves credit for trying [to reduce government] because nobody else, literally nobody, has been willing to do it at the federal level in anything like this scale and speed.”
Rauner likened Trump’s approach to corporate tactics — “move fast and break things that are broken. And most Republicans regard the federal bureaucracy as broken. So I think they’re trying to do what a lot of people would support.”
However, Rauner made a crucial distinction: he wouldn’t consider cutting education. “It’s the most important thing we do collectively as a community and as a society,” he stated.
Along with Rauner and Daniels, Christie has been observing the Trump administration’s attempts to reshape government.
He believes that a lack of transparency poses the biggest challenge in the current reinvention of government. He pointed to a recent incident where DOGE “accidentally canceled” initiatives by the U.S. Agency for International Development aimed at preventing the spread of Ebola. Although Musk stated that the efforts would be restored, such missteps can erode public trust.
“That’s why I think you should be going through a process where people know what you’re doing and that you’re doing it in a transparent way by examining it before you cut it,” Christie explained. “Here, I think it’s the opposite process.”
For many years, Daniels has warned that the U.S. is facing a debt crisis—a theme he referred to in a 2011 speech at the Conservative Political Action Conference as the “new red menace.”
During that same address, Daniels proposed the idea of a taxpayer refund, which set aside funds for citizens “beyond a specified level of state reserves.” Today, he argued that a DOGE tax credit would be a “giveaway as crass as what Biden tried to do with student loans.” Daniels previously signed into law a taxpayer refund that has benefited Indiana residents at least three times.
He also advocated for presidential impoundment authority, enabling the administration to refrain from spending money allocated by Congress—a concept Trump also supported during his campaign.
“Nothing radical about it,” Daniels commented recently.
While he is not opposed to Musk's initiative, Daniels believes it is the OMB that possesses the “authority” to implement deeper cuts.
“I want to see them build the case for restraint by doing some things that are effective,” Daniels stated. “The sky won't fall. I've always said you'd be amazed how much government you’d never miss.”
However, he expressed skepticism that Trump and Musk could find the kind of substantial cuts they’re seeking.
“This president has taken off the table the only way you’d ever get close to such a number, and that’s entitlement reforms,” Daniels concluded. “If they won't touch Medicaid, then they don't have a chance of doing much that's real.”
Aarav Patel contributed to this report for TROIB News
