Source: Jinshi Data

Musk, head of Trump's "DOGE" (DOGE), announced in an interview with Fox News on Thursday that he plans to complete a $1 trillion spending cut by the end of May. The billionaire claims that his team will achieve this within 130 days of the beginning of Trump's term on January 20 — equivalent to more than half of the non-defense autonomous spending budget ($1.8 trillion) for fiscal 2024. "We will do most of the work required to cut the deficit by a trillion dollars within the time limit," Musk said. He claimed that by eliminating "fraud and waste" and without affecting critical services, about $1 trillion of spending that accounts for 15% of the annual total spending ($6.75 trillion in fiscal 2024).

This radical plan has triggered a chain reaction. Although Trump expressed his "satisfaction" with DOGE's achievements in the next one or two months, he also admitted that large-scale reforms "may not be popular."

Most of the federal expenditures are on mandatory programs such as Medicare and Social Security, where there is little room for cuts. Musk said without citing evidence that the items were full of fraud and waste.

At present, the Ministry of Efficiency has dispatched at least 10 staff to the Social Security Agency to verify potential waste. But the data does not support the claim that mass fraud is being taken. According to a report from the Office of the Inspector General last year, between 2015 and 2022, the Social Security Agency estimated that the total amount of improper payments was approximately US$72 billion, less than 1% of total welfare expenditures.

This interview marks the first time that many key figures working with DOGE talk about their work publicly: Steve Davis, Musk's long-time assistant, was the chief operating officer, and Joe Gebbia, a Tesla director and co-founder of Airbnb, was involved.

So far, Musk's own team's accounts show that they are still far from the $1 trillion mark. DOGE's official website only listed about $22 billion in contract savings, and has been repeatedly questioned due to data errors and exaggerations. Additionally, DOGE claims to have cut the overall cost by about $130 billion, but has not provided specific details.