The administration makes the case that Elon Musk’s doge group will make the government more responsive to our needs, but just getting rid of people and finding fraud and abuse might do some good; it fails to get to the heart of how to get things done in a timely fashion in America. Even the Doge claims a trillion dollars in savings, which pales beside the returns of actually getting things built or produced.

Even some left-of-center people realize that rather than Americans being able to interact in enterprises in reasonable time frames, it’s likely that any enterprise will ever come to fruition. In their new best-seller, “Abundance,” Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson lament how difficult it is to get anything done in America. An illustration they feature is California’s long-delayed high-speed rail. Having spent billions with no rails laid, the project’s goal was reduced to linking the great cities of Fresno and Merced instead of Los Angeles and San Francisco.

The author’s example misses the mark by omitting that Florida has already linked Miami and the Gold Coast to Orlando with high-speed rail. Last year, the privately owned Brightline carried 2.7 million passengers.

Rather than lamenting America’s inability to build things, it is better to look at how people who faced a similar problem got up and running. As a private for-profit company, no question about who was in charge and responsible. The project leader coordinated everything on a set timeline. Because the route mainly ran on already-in-use Florida East Coast rails, permitting obstacles were minimal.

The relative success of high-speed rail in Florida vs. California’s costly failure should provide some principles for Governments to use to provide the framework for successful ventures.