CNN
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President-elect Donald Trump and Elon Musk have big ambitions to make the federal government leaner and more efficient by overhauling its budget and operations from top to bottom.
Musk, the world’s richest man who owns or operates multiple companies, said his goals, which include cutting federal spending by at least $2 trillion, will create “temporary hardship” before ultimately creating “long-term prosperity.” He warned that it could cause “. His comments have drawn derision from budget experts and sent chills down the spines of many federal employees and those who rely on the federal government for aid and livelihoods.
Details remain scarce about how the new Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) will operate and how Musk and his co-leader Vivek Ramaswamy will avoid conflicts of interest. But while Mr. Trump and Republicans have a long list of policies and operations they would like to reform, both men have been outspoken about the areas they would like to see reformed in the government.
Trump has promised the initiative will bring about “fundamental change,” but note that Musk and Ramaswamy have no direct authority to cut spending, change regulations or take other action. is important. The group would exist outside the government and would be tasked with recommending the president’s annual budget to the White House, which outlines the president’s vision but does not require Congress to follow suit.
What Musk and Ramaswamy said they would target
Asked at a town hall in X last month what the first steps in this effort would be, Musk said it would be easy to find targets because there is so much waste in government.
“As a country, we obviously have to live within our means,” said Musk, who owns Company X and is CEO of Tesla and SpaceX. “That means looking at every line item, every expense, and saying, ‘Do I really need this?'”
But he also acknowledged that “everybody’s getting haircuts here.”
“It will inevitably involve temporary difficulties, but long-term prosperity will be ensured,” Musk said.
Musk also took aim at the Education Department, a frequent target of Trump and Republicans, criticizing it for allegedly indoctrinating children with left-wing propaganda and other failings. But he did not call for its repeal at City Hall.
Meanwhile, Ramaswamy, a biotech entrepreneur and 2024 Republican presidential candidate who has switched his support to Trump, has been more specific about how he would change the federal government.
During his campaign, he said he would cut up to 75% of the federal workforce. The federal government employs approximately 2.3 million civilians, nearly 60% of whom work for the Departments of Defense, Veterans Affairs, and Homeland Security.
“A horde of unelected bureaucrats is stifling innovation and ignoring the aspirations of the American people,” Ramaswamy wrote in the white paper.
The plan also called for closing the Department of Education and transferring its workforce training programs to the Department of Labor. Eliminate the FBI and redeploy its 15,000 case-solving special agents to other agencies. and abolish the Nuclear Regulation Authority and transfer its duties to other departments.
Stephen Moore, an economic adviser to President Trump and an economist at the Heritage Foundation, said eradicating waste in government is a “huge undertaking.”
“DOGE needs hundreds of people to pull this off. It’s not just Elon and Vivec,” said Moore, who was not involved in the effort.
Many budget experts across the political spectrum have questioned the initiative’s ability to reduce spending by nearly $2 trillion a year, which in the last fiscal year was the largest increase in spending for defense, education and veterans affairs. more than the amount spent on health and other discretionary items. .
Larry Summers, former Treasury secretary in the Clinton administration, and Glenn Hubbard, former chairman of the U.S. Economic Advisers in the George W. Bush administration, poured cold water on the idea at an event Tuesday.
To cut that much from the $6.8 trillion federal budget for fiscal year 2024 would require cutting every program by about a third, said Bobby Cogan, senior director of federal budget policy at the left-leaning Center for American Progress. said.
And if Social Security, Medicare, and veterans programs are protected, the remaining budget would have to be cut by 62%, with defense, food stamps, home heating assistance, housing assistance, food safety inspections, and infrastructure, among others. may have an impact.
“Two trillion dollars a year is an incredible number, it’s impossible,” Kogan said, adding that more than 70% of federal spending (excluding interest payments) goes to Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, and Medicare. He pointed out that it consisted of payments to individuals. Other assistance programs. “You could only propose $2 trillion a year if you were not interested in living in reality, or if you were completely indifferent to the significant negative consequences that it entailed.”
Brian Riedl, a senior fellow at the right-wing Manhattan Institute, posted on Tuesday that the actual savings from reducing waste, fraud and abuse would likely total between $150 billion and $200 billion.
“Any additional savings beyond that would be an ideological project focused on killing programs we don’t like, rather than making programs more efficient,” said Mr. wrote Riedl, who also served as chief economist for the state’s former Republican Sen. Rob Portman. “President Trump’s ‘Department of Government Efficiency’ is not an actual department. It probably won’t even be an office in the White House. It will probably be a private effort to produce a report and send it to the White House and Congress. There’s nothing more.”
Congressional Republicans have repeatedly targeted specific government programs and cuts, many of which were included in Project 2025, a conservative blueprint released by the Heritage Foundation, which Trump has distanced himself from.
Among the biggest targets are Medicaid, which provides health insurance to low-income Americans, the Children’s Health Insurance Program, and the Affordable Care Act, which collectively covers about 100 million people, said Sharon Parrott, director of the Left Center. on budget and policy priorities, including the exchange system.
“The only way to achieve the kind of deep savings that Republicans are proposing on the dollar level is to take health care away from people,” she said.
Some supporters of the Office of Government Efficiency liken it to past fiscal commissions, particularly the Grace Commission authorized by former President Ronald Reagan in 1982. The department was tasked with eliminating waste and inefficiency in the federal government.
The committee submitted more than 2,500 recommendations to President Reagan and Congress, but most of them, especially those that required legislation, were never implemented, said the Bipartisan Policy Center senior who served on Senate Republican staff for 25 years. Vice Chairman G. William Hoagland wrote: for the Peter G. Peterson Foundation last year.
Mr. Musk and Mr. Ramaswamy’s vast business operations raise considerable conflict of interest concerns if they were to lead a new effort. For example, Musk has repeatedly criticized government regulations in his X City Hall for interfering with his company. Together, they and Mr. Trump have pushed for fewer regulations.
“It’s very difficult to get regulatory approval,” Musk said, talking about his startup Neuralink, which is developing an implantable brain-computer interface. “It certainly slows us down, but I think we should be able to move faster in the U.S. by advancing Neuralink technology and other technologies that are out there that are not affiliated with my company. Masu.”
Trump’s victory makes Elon Musk $15 billion richer
Legal experts told CNN that, based on what is known so far about the government efficiency vehicle, the government efficiency vehicle balances transparency and input on these advisory committees. The company says it is likely to be subject to the federal law it seeks.
Several commissions established under the first Trump administration are facing lawsuits under a law known as the Federal Advisory Commissions Act (FACA), including one that involved President Trump It was established to investigate voter fraud after the US government falsely claimed that voters had voted illegally. 2016 – Finally dissolved rather than continue the case in court.
President Trump’s transition team did not respond to CNN’s questions about whether it believed the new initiative would be subject to FACA requirements, but legal experts said the president-elect would be led by two outsiders. He said the law would apply if he carried out his plan to seize power. It would be difficult to walk around.
“This certainly looks similar to FACA, where presidents typically set up commissions to look at specific interests and concerns,” said a lawyer who worked on FACA cases during President Trump’s first term. said founder John Greenbaum. Belongs to the legal advisory firm Justice Legal Strategies.
The law sets out strict transparency obligations, including, among other things, advance notice of meetings, that meetings be publicly accessible, and what records the committee uses to carry out its work. There is a need for the public to be able to view the information. It is also necessary that not all committee members have the same perspective.
“The idea that you can just say, ‘I’m going to give two wealthy friends the power to reorganize the government, and they can do it in secret,'” said Harry Sandick, another lawyer who sued President Trump. , it doesn’t really work.” A committee was established on the Voter Fraud Commission to replace Democratic committee members who claimed to have been removed from their work on the Voter Fraud Commission.
