- Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy were asked to run the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) to minimize the size and scope of the federal government.
- Trump asked them to "dismantle Government Bureaucracy, slash excess regulations, and cut wasteful expenditures."
- There are several obstacles that could stand in their way, including the federal employees' union and fixed costs in the budget.
After Donald Trump’s win last week there was a very brief pause, a moment to acknowledge the red wave that had in fact crashed across the country — and then, in the next moment, a realization that Americans had actually voted a second time for Trump’s norm-busting brand of politics.
During his first administration, many of Trump’s picks for his Cabinet and other positions were conventional. He did manage to secure deep tax cuts, but his promise of fighting the “deep state” by downsizing the bureaucracy never materialized, so deficits surged. That was especially true after the economy shut down because of the pandemic.
This time, Trump promised during his campaign, things would be different.
As evidence: Trump asked his friends Elon Musk, the richest man in the world, and Vivek Ramaswamy, a wealthy entrepreneur and former presidential candidate, to head the Department of Government Efficiency, or “DOGE,” and use it to suggest ways to drastically cut the size and scope of the federal government.
Musk and Ramaswamy were part of the Trump campaign’s team of misfits, who Trump likened to the Marvel movie superheroes the “Avengers.” Voters seemed to like this idea of outsiders fighting together to remake government, to make it less expensive and more responsive to the common man.
Now, in the still-hazy days following the election, Trump is quickly assigning his team to actual positions in the government, including “DOGE,” and there is a collective gasp coming from the establishment — which is perhaps the effect Trump was going for. It seems Trump is setting out to actually do what he promised. But whether he can actually accomplish his goals, and whether voters will like the results, is still unknown.
What will “DOGE” do?
It’s early days, but essentially the Department of Government Efficiency would be tasked with finding ways to cut the “waste” and inefficiencies out of government.
In his press release announcing the creation of the advisory committee, Trump said it would be the “Manhattan Project of our time,” referring to the initiative to create an atomic weapon during World War II. Its mandate is, according to Trump, to “dismantle Government Bureaucracy, slash excess regulations, cut wasteful expenditures and restructure Federal Agencies.”
Musk said he wouldn’t be compensated for his work with DOGE, and Ramaswamy reportedly won’t either. Their work — a “gift” to the nation, Trump said — will end on July 4, 2026, the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence.
The new DOGE account on X already put out a call for resumes. The post read: “We are very grateful to the thousands of Americans who have expressed interest in helping us at DOGE. We don’t need more part-time idea generators. We need super high-IQ small-government revolutionaries willing to work 80+ hours per week on unglamorous cost-cutting. If that’s you, DM this account with your CV. Elon & Vivek will review the top 1% of applicants.”
Ramaswamy seems ready to start cutting. During a speech at a Buckley Institute at Yale event last week, he described himself as a “national libertarian” who supports reducing the size and scope of the federal government.
“Do we believe in replacing the left-wing nanny state with a right-wing nanny state? Or do we want to actually get in there and dismantle the nanny state?” he asked.
“I think the right answer for the future of the country is to just get in there and shut it down,” he said.
Much of federal spending is locked up
Musk and Ramaswamy have both run businesses — with Musk somewhat famously cutting 80% of the workforce at Twitter, now X, telling the BBC the process was “painful.”
Now Musk is saying he wants to cut $2 trillion out of the $6.75 trillion federal budget.
But he may find cutting government spending more difficult because so much of it is locked up in promises made to creditors or to American taxpayers. In 2024, the federal government spent $1.1 trillion on interest payments on the nation’s debt, $2.9 trillion on Social Security and Medicare, and another $1.4 trillion in defense spending.
Republicans have been saying for a while they want to rein in government spending while raising the alarm about the national debt. The federal government’s budget has increased as a percentage of GDP since 2015, from 20% to 23%, and the national debt, at $35.46 trillion, is 123% of GDP.
It’s just that Democrats and Republicans have different ideas about how to reduce the annual deficit, which was $1.8 trillion in 2024 — Democrats say the wealthy and corporations should pay more in taxes, while many Republicans want to cut spending.
Ramaswamy is firmly on the side of cutting spending. In recent days he has spoken about wanting to cut the federal bureaucracy, with the idea that this will be a place he can find significant savings. About 3 million Americans work for the federal government, not including military personnel or government contractors. Federal employees live in every state in the country, although the largest number live in the Washington, D.C., area, including the Virginia and Maryland cities that ring the district.
Even cutting government employees will be difficult. Most are unionized, with 800,000 federal workers organized under the umbrella union the American Federation of Government Employees, AFGE.
After the election, the AFGE released a statement that said, “During Trump’s first term, his administration tried to dismantle many of our negotiated union contracts, downsize and relocate federal agencies at great disruption and cost to taxpayers, and replace tens of thousands of non-partisan civil servants with political appointees who would blindly do his bidding.” The union said it would not “stand by and let any political leader — regardless of their political affiliation — run roughshod over the Constitution and our laws.”
Trump is hoping by cutting regulations and taxes he can grow the economy in a way that will help drive up federal revenue. He also plans to increase federal revenue through tariffs on foreign goods, but economists point out that would drive up costs for consumers.
The other “problem” is Congress — ultimately Congress decides how much the government spends, and largely how it is spent, by passing budget bills. Trump and agency heads may be able to implement some of the suggestions generated by DOGE, but they’ll have to rely on Congress to make big, lasting changes.
Government waste isn’t hard to find
As soon as word spread about Ramaswamy and Musk’s new roles, people started peppering them with ideas about what to cut.
On Thursday, Musk added an emoji to a post from Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul, which said, “The National Institutes of Health spent over $3,000,000 to watch hamsters fight on steroids.”
Paul is ready with a host of other ideas from his annual “Airing of Grievances” report on federal spending, containing about $500 billion in ideas on what to cut.
There have been suggestions to abolish the Department of Education, although most of its spending would continue as block grants to the states, and to abolish the IRS.