Before November’s election, Elon Musk said the government efficiency commission he’d establish under a second Donald Trump administration would slash the federal budget by “at least two trillion” dollars. Now, as Trump prepares to take office and the time comes for the Department of Government Efficiency to start making good on those lofty promises, Musk seems to be seeking to scale back expectations: Actually, he suggested to strategist Mark Penn in an interview this week, a more realistic goal would be half his original pledge.
“I think we’ll try for two trillion dollars—I think that’s like the best outcome,” the billionaire Trump adviser said. “But I do think you kind of have to have some overage. If you try for two trillion, you have a good shot at getting one.”
That would still be an “epic outcome,” Musk said. But, of course, it’s a far cry from his bluster on the campaign trail—and it’s still not clear how he’d be able to pull it off. Asked by Penn where he’d seek budget cuts, Musk was noncommittal, saying that he would seek to slash regulations—presumably including ones his own companies have butted up against—where “the harm is worse than the good.” The federal government, he said, is a “very target-rich environment”: “It’s like being in a room full of targets,” Musk said. “You can close your eyes and you can’t miss.”
The notion of an unelected billionaire closing his eyes and hacking away at the government agencies and programs is more than a little concerning—especially given his previous suggestion that Americans would need to endure “temporary hardship” due to government belt-tightening. (Trump, also prone to grand promises, said in December that the reductions would have “no impact” on the American people—though hitting that $2 trillion promise would likely require cuts to entitlements and defense.) Nevertheless, Musk’s nongovernmental panel—which essentially began as a meme—has picked up momentum, with DOGE caucuses being established in both the House and Senate. (At least two state-level Republicans, New Hampshire Governor Kelly Ayotte and Missouri House Speaker designee Jon Patterson, have proposed a Committee on Government Efficiency in their respective states.) Meanwhile, the Washington Post reported Friday that Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy—the other billionaire heading up DOGE—have already begun dispatching representatives to federal agencies as part of their effort to reduce the government’s size and budget, including the Treasury Department, the IRS, and Veterans Affairs.
Cutting government funding by nearly a third, without touching the programs Trump said would be safe under his watch, was always a fantasy; and now that it has served its electoral purpose, it can be discarded, just like some of the president-elect’s own big campaign trail pledges—including to send grocery prices “down fast” immediately upon taking office. “It’s hard to bring things down,” the president-elect acknowledged to Time last month, “once they’re up.”
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