What we know about Musk's cost-cutting mission
Elon Musk, who visited the Capitol with his son on Thursday, says he can cut roughly one-third of federal government spending
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Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy are on Capitol Hill to discuss their newly-announced advisory team that the two billionaires say will cut regulations, spending, and headcounts within the federal government.
"The taxpayers deserve better," House Speaker Mike Johnson said on Thursday ahead of a meeting with Musk and Ramaswamy. "They deserve a more responsive government, a more efficient government."
The Department of Government Efficiency, or “Doge” - seemingly a winking reference to Musk’s cryptocurrency of choice, dogecoin - was first announced by Donald Trump last month.
“It will become, potentially, 'The Manhattan Project' of our time,” the president-elect wrote on his social media platform, referring to a top-secret World War Two programme to develop nuclear weapons. “Republican politicians have dreamed about the objectives of 'DOGE' for a very long time.”
But despite Trump’s enthusiasm, much remains unclear about Doge and how it will function. As Musk and Ramaswamy meet with lawmakers, here’s a look at what we know about their nascent agency.
It is not a government department
Though Doge has the clear support of Trump, and has the word “department” in its name, it is not an official government department - the type of body that has to be established through an act of Congress and typically employs thousands of staff.
Instead, it seems Doge will operate as an advisory body, run by two of Trump’s closest allies and with a direct line to the White House.
In an opinion piece published in the Wall Street Journal last month, external, Musk and Ramaswamy said they would “serve as outside volunteers, not federal officials or employees”.
The pair will assist the Trump transition team in recruiting the Doge team, they said, who will provide guidance to the White House on spending cuts, and compile a list of regulations they believe are outside agencies’ legal authority.
“DOGE will present this list of regulations to President Trump, who can, by executive action, immediately pause the enforcement of those regulations and initiate the process for review and rescission,” they wrote.
To some supporters of this new body, Doge's outsider status - as well as its somewhat vague mandate - will serve as a benefit.
"They're a little more untethered to the bureaucracy itself and to the systems that slow processes down around here," Republican Senator Kevin Cramer of North Dakota told the BBC on Thursday. "I think the lack of parameters is part of what will make them effective."
Cut, cuts and more cuts
The specifics do not seem nailed down, but the overall picture is clear - Doge’s leaders want major government reform, by way of major cuts.
The federal bureaucracy “represents an existential threat to our republic,” Musk and Ramaswamy wrote in the Journal. “Unlike government commissions or advisory committees, we won’t just write reports or cut ribbons. We’ll cut costs.”
Musk, the world’s richest person, has said he can find more than $2tn in savings - around a third of annual federal government spending.
And the two have said they will slash federal regulations, oversee mass layoffs and shut down some agencies entirely.
"I think we should be spending the public's money wisely," Musk said on Thursday, on his way to a closed-door meeting with incoming Senate Majority Leader John Thune, a South Dakota Republican.
Vivek Ramaswamy, who joined Musk in meeting with lawmakers, threw his support behind Trump soon after dropping out of the Republican primary in January
Ramaswamy, a financier who ran for the Republican presidential nomination earlier this year, vowed during his campaign to shutter the Education Department, the FBI, and the IRS - promises he has repeated in recent weeks.
Speaking at a gala held at Mar-a-Lago last month, Ramasamy thanked Trump “for making sure that Elon Musk and I are in a position to start the mass deportations of millions of unelected federal bureaucrats out of the DC bureaucracy".
"And I don't know if you've got to know Elon yet, but he doesn't bring a chisel, he brings a chainsaw, and we're going to be taking it to that bureaucracy," Ramaswamy said. "It's going to be a lot of fun."
‘Compensation is zero’
Musk has solicited employees on X, formerly Twitter, the social media platform he owns.
Doge-hopefuls have been asked to send their resumes directly to the newly-created Doge account on X. Applicants should expect 80+ hour workweeks, according to a post from Doge, devoted to “unglamorous cost cutting”. And, according to Musk, all that work at Doge will not be rewarded with a salary.
“This will be tedious work, make lots of enemies & compensation is zero,” he wrote on X.
Only the "top 1% of applicants" will be reviewed by Musk and Ramaswamy, the Doge account said, though it did not specify how applicants will be ranked.
Doge is on a deadline
Even before it’s really up and running, Doge’s expiration has been set - 4 July, 2026.
“A smaller Government, with more efficiency and less bureaucracy, will be the perfect gift to America on the 250th Anniversary of the Declaration of Independence,” Trump said when announcing the new body.
Some Trump allies hope Doge will mirror the Grace Commission, a private-sector commission established by President Ronald Reagan in 1982 to reform the federal bureaucracy and control spending.
During its two-year tenure, the Grace Commission submitted more than 2,500 recommendations to the White House and Congress. Most were never implemented, however.
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Critics have questions
Musk and Ramaswamy’s bold promises have incited some incredulity among experts, who say the size and scope of their mandate borders on the impossible.
Elaine Kamark, a senior fellow in governance studies at the Brookings Institution, told the BBC that efforts to streamline government spending "can be done".
Kamark pointed to her work managing the Clinton Administration's National Performance Review, an effort to reduce government spending in the 1990s which saved over a billion dollars and cut 250,000 people from the federal work force.
But so far, Musk and Ramaswamy's project, "is not a serious effort", she said.
The notion of cutting one-third of the government’s spending - like Musk has pledged - is “ridiculous”, she said. Roughly two-thirds of the total budget is mandatory, and includes popular programmes like Social Security and Medicare.
“You cannot touch people's social security payments or their veterans retirement payments or people's medicare reimbursements without getting statutory changes... they don't have the power to enact any of those," she said.
But some parts of Doge have attracted somewhat unlikely praise.
Bernie Sanders, an independent Senator from Vermont who caucuses with Democrats, said this week Musk “is right” about proposed cuts to the defence budget. The Pentagon has “lost track of billions”, Sanders wrote on X, saying the department had failed its seventh audit in a row.
Other Democrats have offered similar glimmers of support. Representative Ro Khanna of California said he also supported cuts to Pentagon spending. And this week, Democratic Representative Jared Moskowitz of Florida became the first in his party to join the House Doge caucus, a Congressional caucus that is tasked with reducing government spending, but does not report directly to the Doge advisory board.
“Reducing ineffective government spending should not be a partisan issue,” he said in a statement.
With additional reporting from Jessica Parker and Cai Pigliucci
