President-elect Donald Trump announced Tuesday that two of his most vocal supporters, Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy, will lead “Department of Government Efficiency.”
“Together, these two wonderful Americans will pave the way for my administration to dismantle government bureaucracy, cut excessive regulations, reduce wasteful spending and restructure federal agencies.” Trump said. “This will probably become the ‘Manhattan Project’ of our time.”
If you’re wondering why you’ve never heard of this category before, it’s because it doesn’t exist. Despite the misleading name—Executive Department Can only be established by Congress – Trump just seems to be creating a new one Presidential Advisory Commission or offer task force guidance.
So at first glance, this commission may seem completely absurd. Its acronym, “DOGE,” is an apparent homage to the meme cryptocurrency which musk often propagatesand currency value Increased after Trump announced It is also somewhat ironic that a commission on government inefficiency and waste needs not one, but two vice-chairs.
But the project isn’t just an inside joke, it’s also part of Trump’s existing plan to destroy the federal workforce. His call to preach Transfer of Government Employees Outside Washington, D.C., and making significant cuts to civil service jobs — an effort to dismantle what Trump and his allies call the “deep state,” even though those jobs are often necessary to keep federal programs running — and “DOGE” shows he at least He started implementing that plan.
Trump hasn’t acknowledged that the so-called Department of Government Skills is new, nor has he actually explained what it would look like. He only Offer vague detailsSuch as how the commission will “provide advice and guidance from outside the government, and partner with the White House and the Office of Management and Budget to implement large-scale structural reforms.” In other words, the commission is unlikely to have any regulatory teeth of its own, but it can no doubt influence the incoming administration and how it sets its budget.
What Kasturi and Ramaswamy want and why it is dangerous
While it is not yet clear what this commission will look like or how large it will be, there is ample reason to take the threat it poses seriously. On the campaign trail, Musk, who served as a Trump surrogate, promised to find out $2 trillion That can be deducted from the federal government’s $6.75 trillion budget. And Ramaswamy, who ran against Trump in the Republican primaries but later campaigned for him, has proposed Cut 75 percent of the federal workforce and abolish agencies like the FBI, IRS, and Department of Education.
The scale of those cuts would be catastrophic. In October, Musk himself said that his plan to cut the federal budget would cause economic turmoil, upset markets and “definitely cause some temporary hardship.” Experts also say that Musk’s $2 trillion figure is more than mere ambition — it’s virtually impossible to get a cut of that much money without putting it away. Social programs on the chopping board.
“You can’t do the things that people really care about and rely on that you throw at them,” Sharon Parrott, president of the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, said via email.
As my colleague Eric Levitz writes, if Trump doesn’t cut Social Security, Medicare or defense spending, he’ll have to cut other government programs by up to 80 percent:
It involves infrastructure investments in all social services for low-income Americans, food inspections, airline security, health insurance subsidies, and countless other things.
The commission, which Trump said would complete its work within two years, is also riddled with conflicts of interest. Musk’s company SpaceX, for example, There are more than 10 billion dollars There are government contracts, and organizations like NASA Already overly dependent on it. So did the federal government Investigated And File a case Against Musk’s companies, and Musk himself often complaints about His company faces a lot of government scrutiny. Now, Musk will advise the next president on which companies he should try to eliminate.
“Department of Government Efficiency” is not necessarily a new concept
Politicians always promise to end government waste and frequently target the civil service. Under the Clinton administration, for example, led by Vice President Al Gore National Partnership for Government RestructuringAn initiative aimed at streamlining the federal bureaucracy by eliminating unnecessary jobs and cutting wasteful spending. Although the project was successful in some areas, it also produced poor results. Federal workforce reductions Wasn’t a particularly good aimAnd as a result, people with essential and specialized skills leave, making it difficult for the government to do better as promised.
President Ronald Reagan – who in his inaugural address said“Government is not the solution to our problems; “Government is the problem,” — also promised a massive scaling back of the federal government’s reach. He planned to eliminate key government agencies like the Department of Education and the Department of Energy. Imposing a hiring freeze On the first day of his administration. But Reagan’s plan to reduce the federal government’s footprint failed, and by the time he left office, More people were employed by the federal government since he started.
Trump’s plan to dramatically cut government spending and shrink the size of the federal workforce will likely run into similar hurdles. One reason Kasturi and Ramaswamy may have a hard time finding legitimately wasteful spending is that the federal workforce hasn’t grown all that much. The federal government employs about 3 million full-time workers — Almost the same In the late 1960s. And that number is much higher (about 10 million) when you take into account contractors, That hasn’t changed much either Since the 1980s, most ebb and flow but do not increase exponentially.
The newly created commission is especially unlikely to succeed in finding significant sources of waste — at least not close to $2 trillion — because it likely can’t go after spending areas like the Pentagon that actually need better accounting. Its audit failed Six years in a row. But that doesn’t mean the commission won’t recommend any cuts, and the scale that Musk and Ramaswamy are hoping for will almost certainly have a negative impact on the economy.
So while the commission’s announcement may have some Republicans excited and Meme-Coin InvestorsThey should know that if this commission is successful, there could be recession on the other side.
