Quicktake
What Can Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency Actually Do?
US President-elect Donald Trump wants to dismantle the federal bureaucracy and even eliminate at least one federal department. To do that, he’s creating a new agency, called the Department of Government Efficiency.
If the name sounds like a meme, it’s because it is. DOGE is the brainchild of billionaire Elon Musk, who came up with the acronym in homage to the mascot for the digital currency Dogecoin, an object of his obsession.
The ambition is big: $2 trillion in government spending cuts. The overarching goal of a leaner, more efficient government has flummoxed a long line of presidents, both Democrats and Republicans, and the Musk-helmed effort is likely to run into the same political opposition that doomed previous deficit-reduction efforts.
The efficiency effort will be led by two people: Musk and entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy, who challenged Trump for the Republican presidential nomination.
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What is the Department of Government Efficiency?
Let’s start with what it isn’t. It’s not a department, because departments are permanent and can only be created — or disbanded — by Congress. Instead, Trump said the group will operate outside of government and disband by July 2026.
How will it operate?
That’s unclear. One potential mechanism is through the Federal Advisory Committee Act, a 1972 law that allows the president to seek input from committees made up of public- and private-sector participants. Trump could create such a committee by executive order, in which case it could become one of about 1,000 federal advisory committees — which cost a total of $399 million last year.
What are the ethics of this?
Putting Musk and Ramaswamy on a federal advisory committee would make them so-called special government employees. These are positions that can be unpaid and allow an individual to work for up to 130 days for a federal agency or the White House. One important consideration for Musk and Ramaswamy, a former biotech executive: Such positions do not require the person to publicly disclose or divest their assets.
Nevertheless, Musk and Ramaswamy would still be subject to federal ethics laws requiring them to recuse themselves from discussions and decisions impacting them personally. That could complicate things for Musk, whose SpaceX company alone has more than $15 billion in federal contracts. Musk’s companies have also been the target of at least 20 federal regulatory agencies, according to a review conducted by the New York Times.
What’s the goal?
Trump said the group would “provide advice and guidance from outside of Government, and will partner with the White House and Office of Management & Budget to drive large scale structural reform, and create an entrepreneurial approach to Government never seen before.” He called the initiative “The Manhattan Project” of our time.
How much is DOGE looking to cut?
Musk has set a goal of $2 trillion in spending cuts, but it’s unclear whether that’s annual savings or over a 10-year budget window. Trump used an annual figure in his announcement, suggesting it’s the former: “We will drive out the massive waste and fraud which exists throughout our annual $6.5 Trillion Dollars of Government Spending.”
Why hasn’t this been done before?
It has — though never quite in this way. Washington is littered with spending-reduction plans that never got implemented. The 2010 Simpson-Bowles commission proposed $4 trillion in cuts over about a decade through delaying the retirement age for Social Security, capping health care costs and eliminating tax breaks. Congress never acted. Then, a new congressional committee dubbed the Supercommittee attempted to find a “grand bargain” for President Barack Obama and congressional Republicans in 2011. It failed. Multiple government shutdowns and debt-ceiling faceoffs that Republicans tried to use to force a budgetary reckoning resulted in short-term fixes. And Trump himself promised in 2016 that he would balance the budget “fairly quickly” but when he left office in 2021, US debt was at a record level.
Why is it so hard?
Serious deficit reduction would require a level of austerity not seen since just after World War II, likely including significant cuts to popular programs such as Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid and veterans’ benefits.
What’s on the chopping block?
Trump has promised to close the Department of Education, turning control of policy and funding back to the states. Republican Representative Darrell Issa, who spoke with Musk shortly after the election, said Musk is especially interested in finding and eliminating Medicare fraud and in expanding the sale of public lands.
What about waste, fraud and abuse?
Trump said the commission will target “massive waste and fraud.” But cutting “waste, fraud and abuse” has long been a mantra of conservative politicians while efforts to achieve it have had mixed results. The Government Accountability Office estimates that federal agencies lose between $233 billion and $521 billion to fraud every year. The biggest culprit has been the Covid-19 spending packages that Trump signed into law in 2020; a 2023 Associated Press review found that 10% of the $4.2 trillion in pandemic relief had been misspent. Waste is more subjective. Since 2011, the GAO has sent Congress 14 reports containing 2,018 recommendations to reduce or eliminate duplicate programs or reduce costs in the federal government. Congress has adopted about two-thirds of them, saving about $667.5 billion.
How will the public know what DOGE is proposing?
Federal law requires advisory committee meetings to be open, and Musk himself has promised that all actions would be “posted online for maximum transparency.” He’s also hinted there could be some game-like public input. “We will also have a leaderboard for most insanely dumb spending of your tax dollars. This will be both extremely tragic and extremely entertaining,” he said.
Can Trump do this without Congress?
Trump doesn’t need Congress to approve Musk’s role, but Congress holds the spending power under the Constitution and would have to approve any cuts. Trump, however, thinks he’s found a workaround. He plans to challenge a key provision of a 1974 law that forms the basis of the modern federal budget process. That provision, known as the Impoundment Control Act, says the president must spend money that’s appropriated unless Congress decides to rescind it. “Bringing back impoundment will give us a crucial tool with which to obliterate the deep state, drain the swamp, and starve the warmongers,” Trump said last year. “With impoundment, we can simply choke off the money.”
