Elon Musk couldn’t believe it. “Maybe it’s just me, but I think there is room for improvement here,” he posted on X after learning the federal government uses a cavern to store its paper retirement records. Yes, the filing is still done by paper in an era where Musk’s companies catch rockets on the fly.

However, this hasn’t really been a secret. Over the past decade or more, as David Strom at Hot Air points out, both The Washington Post and the heretofore-obscure Government Executive Magazine have penned stories about the Iron Mountain facility in the backwoods of western Pennsylvania. Heck, even the Post considered the files in the limestone cave “a long-outdated, inefficient system” back in 2014. But as Strom opines, “What used to be outrageous waste is now a charming quirk of the federal government, or perhaps a jobs program for people in the Deep State. I don’t know what they think, but they are no longer interested in such wastes of government money because … Trump.” And if that’s not enough, as we’ve seen in congressional hearings, mention the name “Elon Musk” and the Left goes berserk.

Yet the story of the federal files goes back almost 60 years, and at the time, it seemed like a great solution. Abandoned limestone mines are sheltered from acts of war or natural disasters such as hurricanes or tornadoes that can flatten a warehouse. They also have both the space and load bearing for rows upon rows of heavy personnel files, some of which have probably been untouched and gathering dust for 50 years or more. Even when the rest of the world went digital, federal attempts to computerize these records failed over the years. The old analog ways remained in place. Thus, the process for federal employee retirement is measured in months, and with more than 10,000 new applications a month, the federal goal is a 60-day backlog. Now, the excuse for keeping all these paper records is cybersecurity.

Moreover, as Pennsylvania-based columnist Salena Zito notes, Iron Mountain is a significant source of jobs in an area that doesn’t have a whole lot of good-paying ones. As one local resident told Zito, “There are 700 jobs here, around 300 of them are [Office of Personnel Management], but the rest are government contract jobs that revolve around OPM, with the overwhelming majority of those jobs held by citizens of small towns in Butler County. If this place is nixed and 70% of the jobs are gone, it will devastate [us].” He added, “We have no comparable jobs.” If the location sounds familiar, Iron Mountain is about 20 miles from the Butler Farm Show location where Donald Trump was nearly assassinated last July, only to triumphantly return in October, a month before the 2024 election. He then proceeded to carry Butler County by an almost 2-to-1 margin, helping assure victory in the Keystone State.

While it seems extremely wasteful to do things this way, there are advocates for Iron Mountain as well. “Once there is more nuance and context provided as to what exactly is done here and why it is done the way it is done,” things will work out, explained local Congressman Mike Kelly. Even Musk admitted that he wouldn’t bat 1.000 in his efforts, knowing he would make mistakes but vowing to “fix the mistakes very quickly.”

This situation shows the nuance required in cutting the federal workforce, most of whom work outside the Beltway. While Internet memes have painted a picture of a mass real estate exodus from the DC region, and prices have declined significantly there, the reality is that there are a number of “company towns” like Butler County, Pennsylvania, where the federal government has an outsized influence.

Separating the wheat from the chaff is a messy process, and, as Musk concedes, some mistakes will be made. However, the overall effect will eventually be positive, as the government takes less from our paychecks and our economy. All spelunking aside, perhaps a bright, entrepreneurial mind will figure out a better use for all that storage and allow the local Butler economy to thrive without federal assistance.