Trump wants Elon Musk to reform the government. Here’s what could be on the chopping block

President-elect Donald Trump and Elon Musk have big ambitions to make the federal government leaner and more efficient by overhauling its budget and operations from top to bottom.

Musk, the the world’s richest person which owns or runs multiple companies, has warned that its goals — which include cutting at least $2 trillion in federal spending — could cause “temporary hardship” before ultimately creating “long-term prosperity.” His statements are causing budget experts to scoff, while sending chills down the spines of many federal employees and those who rely on the federal government for aid or their livelihood.

Details on how the new Ministry of Government Efficiencyor DOGE, will operate – and how Musk and his co-leader Vivek Ramaswamy will avoid conflicts of interest – remains scarce. But the duo have spoken openly about parts of the government they would like to see changed, while Trump and Republican lawmakers have a long list of programs and operations they would like to reform.

It’s important to note that while Trump has promised that the initiative will bring about “drastic change,” Musk and Ramaswamy will not have any direct power to implement cuts, regulatory changes or other measures. The group will exist outside the government and will likely serve to make recommendations to the White House for the president’s annual budget, which outlines the president’s vision, but Congress does not have to follow it.

What Musk and Ramaswamy have said they would focus on

When asked at a town hall on X last month what the initiative’s first steps would be, Musk said there is so much government waste that it would be easy to find targets.

“We, like a country, obviously have to live within our means,” Musk said. who owns X and is CEO of Tesla and SpaceX. “So that means you just look at every line item and every expense and say, ‘Is this even necessary?’”

But he also acknowledged that “everyone here goes to the hairdresser.”

“That will necessarily entail some temporary hardship, but it will ensure long-term prosperity,” Musk said.

Musk also addressed the Ministry of Educationa frequent target of Trump and Republicans, who criticize the agency for indoctrinating children with left-wing propaganda and other shortcomings. However, during the town hall he did not call for its abolition.

Meanwhile, Ramaswamy, a biotech entrepreneur and former 2024 Republican presidential candidate who shifted his support to Trump, has been more specific about how he would change the federal government.

During his campaign, he said he would lose up to 75% of the federal workforce. Approximately 2.3 million civilians are employed by the federal government, with nearly 60% employed by the Departments of Defense, Veterans Affairs and Homeland Security.

“Hardes of unelected bureaucrats are stifling innovation and ignoring the voted wishes of the American people,” Ramaswamy wrote in a white paper.

The plan also called for closing the Ministry of Education and shifting workforce training programs to the Ministry of Labor; eliminating the FBI and moving the 15,000 special agents who solve cases to other agencies; and abolishing the Nuclear Regulatory Commission and shifting its duties to other departments.

Eradicating waste in government is “a huge undertaking,” said Stephen Moore, a Trump campaign economic adviser and Heritage Foundation economist.

“DOGE needs hundreds of people to make this happen. It won’t just be Elon and Vivek,” said Moore, who is not involved in the effort.

Experts have doubts

A host of budget experts from across the political spectrum have questioned the ability of this effort to cut nearly $2 trillion a year in spending, which is more than the federal government spent last fiscal year on defense, education, veterans health and other discretionary expenses. .

Larry Summers, a former Treasury secretary in the Clinton administration, and Glenn Hubbard, a former chairman of the American Council of Economic Advisers in the George W. Bush administration, both poured cold water on the idea at an event on Tuesday.

To cut that much from the federal budget — which was roughly $6.8 trillion in fiscal 2024 — it would be necessary to cut each program by about a third, said Bobby Kogan, senior director of federal budget policy at the left-leaning Center for American Progress.

And if Social securityWhile Medicare and veterans programs were protected, the rest of the budget would be cut by 62%, affecting defense, food stamps, home heating assistance, housing assistance, food safety inspections and infrastructure, among other things.

“$2 trillion a year is such an absurdly large number, it’s impossible,” Kogan said, noting that more than 70% of federal government spending (excluding interest payments) consists of payments to individuals, such as Social Security, Medicare , Medicaid and other assistance programs. “You could only imagine $2 trillion a year if you were not interested in living in reality or if you were completely insensitive to the major harmful consequences it would bring.”

The actual savings from reducing waste, fraud and abuse would likely be between $150 billion and $200 billion, said Brian Riedl, a senior fellow at the right-wing Manhattan Institute, posted on X Tuesday.

“Additional cuts beyond that become more of an ideological project focused on killing programs you don’t like, rather than making them more efficient,” wrote Riedl, who also worked for Republican presidential candidates and as chief economist for former Republican Sen. Rob Portman from Ohio. “Trump’s ‘Department of Government Efficiency’ will not be a real department. It probably won’t even be a White House office. It will likely be a private company that writes a report and sends it to the White House and Congress. Nothing more.”

Republicans in Congress have repeatedly targeted cuts to certain government programs and operations, many of which were included Project 2025the conservative blueprint published by the Heritage Foundation that Trump distanced himself from.

Among the biggest targets are Medicaid, which provides health care to lower-income Americans, the Children’s Health Insurance Program and the Affordable Care Act exchanges, which total about 100 million people, said Sharon Parrott, president of the left-leaning Center. on budget and policy priorities.

“The only way to achieve significant savings anywhere near the dollar level that Republicans have put forward is to take away people’s health care,” she said.

Some supporters of the Department of Government Efficiency have compared it to previous budget commissions, most notably the Grace Commission approved by former President Ronald Reagan in 1982. She was charged with eliminating waste and inefficiency within the federal government.

The committee presented more than 2,500 recommendations to Reagan and Congress, but most – especially those that required legislation – were never implemented. wrote for the Peter G. Peterson Foundation last year.

Possible conflicts of interest

Musk and Ramaswamy’s vast business ventures present significant conflicts of interest as they lead the new initiative. For example, in his town hall X, Musk repeatedly criticized government regulations, citing their interference in his businesses. The duo and Trump have all pushed for regulatory cuts.

“It’s quite difficult to get regulatory approval,” Musk said while discussing his Start Neuralink that develops implantable brain-computer interfaces. “It does slow us down, and I think we should be able to move faster in the U.S. with the advancement of Neuralink technology and other technologies not related to my business.”

Legal experts told CNN that, based on what is known about it so far, the government efficiency agency will likely fall under a federal law that requires transparency and a balanced view of such advisory committees.

Multiple committees created under the first Trump administration faced lawsuits under the law known as the Federal Advisory Committee Act, or FACA, and one of those committees — created to study the alleged problem of voter fraud after Trump falsely claimed that millions voted illegally in 2016 – ultimately disbanded rather than continue to fight the cases in court.

The Trump transition team did not respond to CNN’s questions about whether it believes the new initiative would be subject to FACA requirements, but legal experts said if the president-elect follows through with his plan to push it through the two outsiders to lead, the law will do that. be difficult to avoid.

“FACA is typically a situation where the president creates a committee to look at certain issues of interest and concern and so this seems FACA-like,” said Jon Greenbaum, an attorney involved in FACA lawsuits during the first Trump term and founder. from the legal consultancy firm Justice Legal Strategies.

The law has strict transparency obligations that require, among other things, that meetings are announced in advance, that meetings are publicly accessible and that the public has insight into which documents a committee uses to do its work. It also requires that the members of a committee not all take the same position.

“The idea that you can just say, ‘I’m going to give my two rich friends the power to reform the government and they can do it in secret,’ that’s not how it works,” said Harry Sandick, another Trump attorney. organization has sued. voter fraud commission on behalf of a Democratic commissioner who said he was removed from the commission’s work.

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