Donald Trump is far from the first president to promise he would make the federal government more efficient — he even had such a policy in his first term — but the Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, plan outlined by entrepreneurs Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy appears well thought out and, if executed diligently, could produce real benefits for taxpayers.

Back when Trump was still a Democrat, his future wedding guest President Bill Clinton launched the National Performance Review during his first term and then renamed it the National Partnership for Reinventing Government for his second term. Both efforts were tasked with identifying federal policy changes that would make the government “serve customers better.” Clinton’s initiative even had some encouraging results, including the adoption of electronic tax form filing by the Internal Revenue Service.