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Since the Department of Government Efficiency (or DOGE) was announced, Elon Musk has stated that he will use the organization to attack and dismantle a large part of the federal bureaucracy. However, Musk has already backed down on his promises, stating that his previously stated goal—to cut $2 trillion in spending from the federal budget—probably won’t happen.
“I think if we try for $2 trillion, we have a good chance of getting one,” Musk said. during a recent live streaming conversation on his platform, X. He added that the elimination of $2 trillion was “like, the result of the best case”.
Those with knowledge of the federal budget process already noted that Musk’s goal sounded quixotic, if not impossible. Indeed, the largest parts of the federal budget – Social Security, Medicare and defense spending – are all political third rails, and so it is not easy to cut any of them. “A bird’s eye view of the federal budget reveals that it is basically two things – a military one, with health and social security programs attached,” Glenn Kessler of the Washington Post. he wrote earlier.
Of course, maybe cutting popular social welfare programs is the plan, even if it is political suicide. It is certainly true that the right-wing libertarian organizations behind Trump are focused on cutting government benefits to Americans, whom they describe as government “waste”. Alex Nowrasteh, the vice president for economic and social policy studies at the Cato Institute, recently he told a Utah newspaper that DOGE represents “a welcome opportunity to, at the very least, highlight some areas where the federal government needs to be cut and where the federal government’s interference in our lives can be withdrawn.”
To Nowrasteh, government “interference” is apparently when the Social Security Administration sends you a check in the mail. Cato recently published a report that suggested “raising the eligibility age for Social Security by three years, decreasing the size of Social Security’s inflation adjustments, reducing Medicare spending by one-third, and allowing to enrollees to spend Medicare funds themselves.” Desert News reports. Moss it also cleared the prospect to cut mandatory programs, such as Social Security and Medicare, despite the fact that these programs are very popular with Trump’s base. Trump has also suggested cutting taxes on Social Security payments, which would hasten the program’s financial catastrophe.
Musk also said he would like to see DOGE “get rid of” various regulatory agencies, albeit critical ones they noted that this would be difficultif it is not possible. In general, Musk’s targets for removal could be agencies that have been investigating his companies. Musk’s businesses have been investigated by a variety of agencies, including the Securities and Exchange Commission, the Department of Justice, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, and others.
That regulatory scrutiny is likely well-placed, however, as Musk’s companies are known to stir up controversy. Case in point, this week the directors of Tesla agreed to pay almost a billion dollars to settle claims that they were overpaid through stock options for hundreds of millions of dollars. The legal case stems from a 2020 lawsuit filed by the City of Detroit Police and Fire Retirement System, which alleged that the Tesla executive’s compensation package was completely unrelated to normal compensation practices. Reuters notesfor example, that the chair of the board, Robyn Denholm, made as much as $280 million with her compensation package.
