We Found the $2 Trillion
Sometime between the 2024 election and the 2025 inauguration, Americans discovered that they had actually voted for Elon Musk for president. Since the election, Donald Trump has faded into the background, while center stage has been taken by the South African–born billionaire with the Twitter addiction of an adolescent, whose frenetic posts are often being treated like official government statements.
Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy were named co-chairs of the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), which sounds like a federal agency (and was actually tucked into an existing White House department) but is actually an outside agitator, tasked with devising recommendations to reduce the size and scope of government. During the campaign, Musk said he was confident he could remove $2 trillion in unnecessary waste from the budget. If he meant annually, that’s nearly one-third of total federal expenditures.
Skepticism is heavily warranted. Presidents going back to Ronald Reagan have impaneled blue-ribbon commissions to hack away at deficits, with minimal success. Nongovernmental advisers carry no formal power, and Congress holds the purse strings tightly. “One person’s waste is another person’s vital congressional jobs program,” said Michael Linden, a former official with the White House Office of Management and Budget.
