What we know about Musk’s cost-cutting mission

Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy visited Capitol Hill on Thursday to discuss their newly-announced advisory team, which both billionaires say will cut regulations, spending and headcount within the federal government.

The Department of Government Efficiency, or “Doge” – an indirect reference to Musk’s cryptocurrency of choice, Dogecoin – was first announced by Donald Trump last month.

“This will, potentially, become the ‘Manhattan Project’ of our times,” the president-elect wrote on his social media platforms, referring to a top-secret World War Two program to develop nuclear weapons. “Republican politicians have dreamed about the purposes of ‘DOGE’ for a very long time.”

But despite Trump’s enthusiasm, much remains unclear about Doge and how it will work. As Musk and Ramaswamy meet with lawmakers, here’s a look at what we know about their budding agency.

Although DOGE has Trump’s explicit support, and has the word “department” in its name, it is not an official government department – ​​the kind of body that has to be established through an act of Congress and typically has thousands of employees. Are employed.

Instead, it seems Doge will serve as an advisory body, run by two of Trump’s closest allies and with a direct line to the White House.

in an opinion piece Published in the Wall Street Journal last monthMusk and Ramaswamy said they would serve “as outside volunteers, not as federal officials or employees”.

The pair will assist the Trump transition team in recruiting a Doge team, he said, who will provide guidance to the White House on spending cuts, and compile a list of rules they believe will interfere with external Agencies have legal rights.

“DOGE will submit this list of rules to President Trump, who can, by executive action, immediately stop enforcement of those rules and begin the process of review and revocation,” they wrote.

The specifics have not been made clear, but the overall picture is clear – Doge’s leaders want major government reforms through major cuts.

The federal bureaucracy “represents an existential threat to our republic,” Musk and Ramaswamy wrote in the Journal. “Unlike government commissions or advisory committees, we will not simply write reports or cut ribbons. We will cut costs.”

Musk, the world’s richest man, has said he could save more than $2 trillion — about a third of annual federal government spending.

And both have said they will cut federal regulations, oversee mass layoffs and close some agencies entirely.

Ramaswamy, a financier who ran for the Republican presidential nomination earlier this year, vowed during his campaign to shut down the Education Department, the FBI and the IRS — promises he has reiterated in recent weeks.

Speaking at an event held at Mar-a-Lago last month, Ramasamy thanked Trump for “making sure that Elon Musk and I are in a position to begin the mass deportation of millions of unelected federal bureaucrats from the D.C. bureaucracy “.

“And I don’t know if you know Elon yet, but he doesn’t bring a chisel, he brings a chainsaw, and we’re going to take it to that bureaucracy,” Ramaswamy said. “It’s going to be a lot of fun.”

Musk has urged employees on his owned social media platform X (formerly Twitter).

Doge hopefuls have been asked to send their resume directly to the newly created Doge account on X. According to a post from Doge, applicants should expect 80+ hour work weeks, dedicated to “unglamorous cost cutting.” And, according to Musk, there will be no pay for all the work done at Doge.

“It will be hard work, make a lot of enemies and the compensation will be zero,” he wrote on X.

The DOGE account states that only the “top 1% of applicants” will be reviewed by Musk and Ramaswamy, although it does not specify how applicants will be ranked.

Even before it’s actually launched, Doge’s expiration date has been set – July 4, 2026.

When announcing the new body, Trump said, “A smaller government, with greater efficiency and less bureaucracy, would be the perfect gift to America on the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence.”

Some Trump aides expect Doge to mirror the Grace Commission, a private-sector commission established by President Ronald Reagan in 1982 to reform the federal bureaucracy and control spending.

During its two-year tenure, the Grace Commission submitted more than 2,500 recommendations to the White House and Congress. However, most were never implemented.

Musk and Ramaswamy’s bold promises have created some mistrust among experts, who say the size and scope of their mandate borders on the impossible.

“Every few decades you really need to look at everything,” Ellen Kamark, senior fellow in governance studies at the Brookings Institution, told the BBC’s US partner CBS.

But cutting government spending by one-third — as Musk has promised — is “madness,” he said. About two-thirds of the total budget is mandatory, and includes programs such as Social Security and Medicare. “That’s the first warning sign that this is going to be a failed operation.”

Nevertheless, parts of Doge have attracted somewhat unexpected praise.

Senator Bernie Sanders, an independent from Vermont who allies with the Democrats, said this week that Musk is “right” about the proposed cuts to the defense budget. The Pentagon has “lost track of billions,” Sanders wrote on Twitter, adding that the department had failed its seventh consecutive audit.

Other Democrats have offered similar expressions of support. Representative Ro Khanna of California said he also supports cutting Pentagon spending. And this week, Democratic Representative Jared Moskowitz of Florida became the first person from his party to join the House DOGE Caucus, a congressional caucus that is tasked with reducing government spending but does not report directly to the DOGE Advisory Board. .

“Reducing ineffective government spending should not be a partisan issue,” he said in a statement.