presidential election donald trump has announced tech billionaires Elon Musk And Vivek Ramaswamy will lead a new Department of Government Efficiency in his second administration.
“Together, these two amazing Americans will lead the way for my Administration to eliminate government bureaucracy, reduce excess regulation, cut wasteful spending, and reorganize federal agencies,” Trump said.
The announcement by Ramaswamy and especially Musk – who lead companies with existing, lucrative government contracts – raises immediate questions about potential conflicts of interest.
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It is not immediately clear how the department – which Trump said would “provide advice and guidance from outside the government” – would work, and whether a Congress, even one entirely run by Republicans, would Controlled, the government has the appetite to approve such a massive change. Expenses and operations.
Trump proposed the creation of a government efficiency commission when he unveiled a list of new economic plans in early September.
At the time, he said Musk had agreed to lead it if he won the election.
“This will shock the system and anyone involved in government waste, which is a lot of people,” Trump’s statement quoted Musk as saying.
Ramaswamy responded separately on X, formerly Twitter, with a slogan he often used during his presidential campaign to dismantle federal agencies, writing: “Stop it.”
During the campaign, Trump pointed to his proposed Government Efficiency Commission as a way to reduce government spending.
“As a first order of business, this Commission will develop an action plan to completely eliminate fraud and improper payments within six months,” he said in September.
“This would save trillions of dollars.”
Ramaswamy, who faced a challenger in the Republican presidential primary before endorsing Trump in January, made reducing waste in government spending a key policy platform of his campaign.
Last year, Ramaswamy – who promised during the campaign to dismantle the FBI, the Department of Education and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, which would cost thousands of federal employees their jobs – released a white paper outlining a legal framework. In which he said that it would allow. The President can eliminate federal agencies of his choice.
Musk supported Trump during his campaign, saying he would roll back massive government regulations, something he has long complained about.
The CEOs of Tesla and SpaceX have also introduced an evaluation system that threatens to lay off redundant employees and have proposed offering generous severance packages to laid-off government employees.
Musk first suggested Trump create a government efficiency commission and appoint him to it in a conversation between the two held at X in August. Trump responded: “I would love to.”
A few days later, Musk posted an image of himself on a podium with an X on the Department of Government Efficiency and the label DOGE – the name of Musk’s favorite meme and cryptocurrency.
He wrote, “I am ready to serve.”
On Tuesday, he pledged on X that such an office would post all of its operations online for the sake of transparency and teased “a leaderboard for the stupidest spending of your tax dollars.”
The department’s work will be finished before July 4, 2026, Trump said.
He said, “A smaller government, with more efficiency and less bureaucracy, would be the best gift America could give on the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence.”
“I am confident that they will succeed.”
Doubt over $2 trillion cut
Musk, who cut staff after buying Twitter — now X — in 2022, has embraced the idea of being a “cost-cutting secretary,” as Trump called him in a Fox News interview last month.
At a rally last month when Trump-Vance transition team co-chairman Howard Lutnick asked how much he could cut from the country’s $6.5 trillion budget, Musk replied: “Well, I think we can.” “Can do at least $2 trillion.”
“Your money is being wasted, and the Department of Government Efficiency is going to fix it,” Musk said at the Madison Square Garden rally in New York City.
“We’re going to get the government off your back and out of your pocketbook.”
According to the Treasury Department, the federal government plans to spend $6.8 trillion in fiscal year 2024.
Experts have expressed skepticism that Musk will be able to cut it close to $2 trillion.
Speaking at the Economic Club of New York on Tuesday, former Treasury Secretary Larry Summers said Musk would be lucky to get a $200 billion federal budget cut because there is limited scope to curb waste.
Glenn Hubbard, an economist and former dean of Columbia University’s business school, said it would be very challenging to reduce spending this much if interest expenses, entitlement programs and defense are out of bounds.
“Finding $2 trillion is mathematically impossible,” Hubbard, former chairman of the U.S. Council of Economic Advisers in the George W. Bush administration, said at the Economic Club.
Trump and congressional Republicans have long pointed to tackling waste, fraud and abuse as ways to save the federal government money.
But that avoidance is “too often an excuse to do nothing,” Mark Goldwein, senior policy director at the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, told CNN when Trump first discussed creating a government efficiency commission.
Goldwyn said the commission would need to be given a broad mandate to review the largest federal spending programs — Social Security, Medicare and Defense — to be most effective.
A main union for federal employees, who are already preparing for the possibility of a purge during a second Trump administration, also criticized the idea of a government efficiency commission.
“Elon Musk and Donald Trump care about one thing: lining their pockets. Not government efficiency, and certainly not making things better for everyday Americans,” Everett Kelly, national president of the American Federation of Government Employees, said in early September.
