After Donald Trump’s victory last week, there was a very brief pause, a moment to acknowledge the red wave that had effectively crashed across the country — and the next moment the realization that Americans were actually falling for Trump’s standard for the second time had voted. -breaking kind of politics.
During his first administration, many of Trump’s choices for his Cabinet and other positions were conventional. Although he succeeded in introducing deep tax cuts, his promise to fight the ‘deep state’ by cutting the bureaucracy never materialized, causing deficits to balloon. This was especially true after the economy shut down due to the pandemic.
This time, Trump promised during his campaign, things would be different.
As proof, Trump asked his friends Elon Musk, the richest man in the world, and Vivek Ramaswamy, a wealthy entrepreneur and former presidential candidate, to run the Department of Government Efficiency, or “DOGE,” and use this to propose ways to drastically change the economy. reduce the size and scope of the federal government.
Musk and Ramaswamy were part of the Trump campaign’s maverick team, which Trump compared to the superheroes from the Marvel films, the “Avengers.” Voters seemed to like this idea of outsiders fighting together to reshape government, making it cheaper and more responsive to the common man.
Now, in the still-hazy post-election days, Trump is quickly assigning his team to actual positions in government, including “DOGE,” and there’s a collective gasp from the establishment — which may be the effect Trump is going for went. . It appears that Trump intends to actually do what he promised. But whether he can actually achieve his goals, and whether voters will like the results, is still unknown.
What will “DOGE” do?
It’s still early days, but essentially the government’s Ministry of Efficiency would be tasked with finding ways to eliminate ‘waste’ and inefficiencies from 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 a nuclear weapon during World War II. His mandate, according to Trump, is “to dismantle government bureaucracy, reduce excess regulation, reduce wasteful spending, and restructure federal agencies.”
Musk said he would not be compensated for his work at DOGE, and Ramaswamy reportedly wouldn’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 The message 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 small government revolutionaries with super high IQs who are willing to work 80+ hours a week on unglamorous cost cutting. If that’s you, send a DM to this account with your CV. Elon & Vivek will review the top 1% of applicants.”
Ramaswamy looks ready to start cutting. Speaking at a Buckley Institute event at Yale last week, he described himself as a “national libertarian” who favors 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 go in and dismantle the nanny state?” he asked.
“I think the right answer for the future of the country is to just go in and close it down,” he said.
Much of federal spending is tied up
Musk and Ramaswamy have both run companies – with Musk somewhat famously cutting 80% of the workforce at Twitter, now X, telling the BBC the process was “painful”.
Now Musk says he wants to cut $2 trillion from the $6.75 trillion federal budget.
But he may find it harder to cut government spending, because much of it is tied up in promises to creditors or American taxpayers. In 2024, the federal government spent $1.1 trillion on interest payments on the national debt, $2.9 trillion on Social Security and Medicare, and another $1.4 trillion on defense spending.
Republicans have been saying for some time that they want to curb government spending while raising alarms about the national debt. The federal government’s budget as a percentage of GDP has increased 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 reached $1.8 trillion in 2024. Democrats say the rich and corporations should pay more taxes, while many Republicans want to cut spending.
Ramaswamy is firmly in favor of austerity. In recent days he has talked about wanting to reduce federal bureaucracy, with the idea that he can make significant savings here. 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 DC region, including the cities of Virginia and Maryland that surround the district.
Even cutting government employees will be difficult. Most are unionized, with 800,000 federal employees organized under the umbrella union, the American Federation of Government Employees, AFGE.
After the election, the AFGE released a statement saying: “During Trump’s first term, his administration attempted to dismantle many of our negotiated union contracts, downsize and relocate federal agencies, at great disruption and cost to taxpayers, and left tens of thousands -replace contracted agencies. -partisan officials with political appointments who would blindly do his bidding.” The union said it “would not stand by and allow any political leader – regardless of their political beliefs – to trample on the Constitution and our laws.”
By cutting regulations and taxes, Trump hopes to grow the economy in a way that will help increase federal revenues. He also plans to raise federal revenues 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 DOGE’s suggestions, but they will have to rely on Congress to make major, lasting changes.
Government waste is not difficult to find
As soon as word spread about Ramaswamy and Musk’s new roles, people started bombarding them with ideas about what they should cut back on.
On Thursday, Musk added an emoji to a message from Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky, which read: “The National Institutes of Health spent over $3,000,000 watching hamsters fight on steroids.”
Paul is ready with a slew of other ideas from his annual Airing of Grievances report on federal spending, which contains about $500 billion of ideas on what to cut.
Suggestions have been made to abolish the Department of Education, although most of its expenditures would continue as block grants to the states, and to abolish the IRS.
