Vin Suprynowicz

In a 1967 episode of “The Lucy Show,” efficiency expert Oliver Kasten (Phil Silvers) takes over Mr. Mooney’s office and commandeers his secretary, Lucy, turning her into his order-barking clone. When a major client wants a million dollar loan, “Kasten and Lucy visit their assembly line and start making changes.”

President Obama announced a new effort Monday to eliminate government waste, The Associated Press reports.

Mr. Obama signed an executive order that creates a new oversight board to work with federal departments and agencies to cut waste and improve performance. Vice President Joe Biden will somehow find time in his busy schedule to meet regularly with Cabinet secretaries to chart their progress.

Monday’s announcement “comes as the White House grapples for ways to both boost sluggish economic growth and chip away at the deficit,” The AP reported.

“As we work to tackle the budget deficit, we need to step up our game,” Obama said in a video announcing the Campaign to Cut Waste. “No amount of waste is acceptable — not when it’s your money, not at a time when so many Americans are already cutting back.”

As examples of “pointless waste” and “stupid spending,” Mr. Obama cited federal workers drawing full paper cups of water at the water cooler, when a half cup should do.

No, wait, that was “The Lucy Show.”

As examples of “pointless waste” and “stupid spending,” Mr Obama cited daily publication of the Federal Register, despite the fact that it’s available on the Internet and has been for years.

OK.

Of course some government funds are lost to inefficiencies, redundancies, even fraud. And yes, all of the above should be tracked down and minimized.

Presumably whoever prints the Federal Register can make some case for retaining an archived “hard copy” for legal reasons, But if some trees can be saved, along with some government funds, fine.

But do you think Vice President Biden’s new “board” is going to pencil out how much the free-market economy might benefit from the complete elimination of the federal Departments of Agriculture, Education and Energy … or the EPA?

The problem with the word “waste” is that many taxpayers believe it’s a “waste” of tax moneys to use them to create perverse incentives, under which a welfare recipient’s payments grow if she bears an additional child out of wedlock, for instance, while her check is reduced if she instead marries and/or goes out and lands a part-time job — despite widespread acknowledgement that the job and the marriage are what she most needs to put her and her family back on track to becoming a productive part of the economy.

Said taxpayers might also hold it a “waste” to bother private businessmen with so many government auditors, inspectors, and license requirements.

A typical government bureaucrat, however, is unlikely to consider such programs as “wasteful” in toto — that is to say, in need of being closed, because they slow down business growth, or cripple minority youths by trapping them in fatherless homes with no tradition of developing useful job skills.

Rather, a bureaucrat will traditionally look for “waste” only in terms of (for instance) whether the taxpayers might save the cost of postage by depositing the welfare recipient’s payments directly into her bank account electronically. That is to say, they will seek only marginal improvements in efficiency of delivery; closing down entire regulatory or welfare-state programs which jack up the debt while crippling private-sector job creation won’t even be “on the table.”

Besides: How many such commissions, is this, now?

The Private Sector Survey on Cost Control (PSSCC), commonly referred to as The Grace Commission, was an investigation requested in 1982 by President Ronald Reagan iinto … guess what? Federal government waste and inefficiency. Its chief, businessman J. Peter Grace, asked members of that commission to “be bold” and “work like tireless bloodhounds. Don’t leave any stone unturned in your search to root out inefficiency.”

The Grace Commission Report was presented to Congress in January, 1984. Commission members estimated that with their proposed reforms the federal deficit would rise to only $2.5 trillion by 2000, while without their suggested reforms, the national debt could rise to a barely believable $13 trillion by the year 2000.

Congress ignored the commission’s report. The debt reached $5.8 trillion in the year 2000 and $13 trillion in 2008.

If Vice President’s Biden’s new commission is really interested in eliminating waste and redundancy, the first thing they do should also be the last thing they do: Order new copies of the Grace Commission report printed up and handed out to the president and each member of Congress … and then set a good example by voting themselves out of existence.