Source: Zhou Ziheng

Donald Trump enlists Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy Responsible for cutting federal spending. What they call the Department of Efficiency (DOGE) is not actually a department but an advisory body, but it can still change. Or it will end up disappearing without a trace, as many blue ribbon committees have done before.

The Washington Post said Musk and Ramaswamy want to use a "chainsaw" to cut the federal budget. Possible budget cuts include everything from veterans' health care and education spending to NASA and international aid. etc. all aspects. Ramaswamy said on Fox News that Trump is "demanding that we have a complete, sweeping overhaul of the federal bureaucracy." Arguably, the federal government needs to tighten its belt as the debt approaches $36 trillion. But the Washington Post says making deep cuts "may be more difficult than chainsaw users expect."

Musk has set a goal of cutting $2 trillion from the federal budget. The New York Times said this was a "difficult task." There is certainly waste in the federal budget—last year, the Medicare and Medicaid programs together spent $100 billion on fraud. But the New York Times said achieving Musk’s goals would be “tricky” without “cutting the programs that Congress or Trump wants to protect.”

The Efficiency Department is actually “the Project 2025 Department—but worse,” Michael Embridge said in Rolling Stone . Musk and Ramaswamy had proposed laying off as many as 95% of employees to achieve the $2 trillion goal, but "the math just doesn't work." Worker wages typically account for 80 percent of private sector costs, yet less than 4 percent of the federal budget goes to pay civilian employees. Firing all those workers would save a relatively paltry $271 billion. Enbridge said Musk and Ramaswamy say they want to run it like a business, but "their analogy doesn't hold up."

JD Tuccille Putting the responsibility for cost-cutting in the hands of "a few wealthy tech bros might work when nothing else works," Reason said. With the federation "not balancing the books in decades," the unlikely duo "may be our only hope of averting disaster." Tuccille said the DOGE proposal would likely face "a complete lack of will from Washington." "But is there an alternative?"

Jim VandeHei and M"Politicians like to give, not take," ike Allen said on Axios. Musk wants to be a "trailblazer" for Trump, while the president-elect's aides are looking for ways to "bypass Congress" and go it alone. We will adopt DOGE's suggestions. But "legally speaking, Elon can't stop cutting checks." Ultimately, Congress holds the power of the purse strings, and elected officials are unlikely to approve cuts to Social Security, Medicare or defense spending. "From a technical point of view, this will be costly," VandeHei and Allen said.

But Musk and Ramaswamy don’t have to worry about voters; they have big ideas. "We anticipate that some institutions will be eliminated completely," Ramaswamy told Fox News' Maria Bartiromo. He doesn't expect that opportunity to happen again. “If we don’t shrink the federation now scale," Ramaswamy said, "that will not happen in the future either."

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