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“President-elect Donald Trump has picked Elon Musk for a role in government cost-cutting, as part of his drive to ‘dismantle’ bureaucracy when he returns to the White House next year. Tech billionaire Musk, who has called for huge spending cuts, has been picked alongside biotech investor Vivek Ramaswamy to lead a new ‘Department of Government Efficiency’ (DOGE). The acronym is a nod to Musk's favourite cryptocurrency, Dogecoin. Trump said the pair would act in an advisory capacity, and that the DOGE would not be an official government department…
“Musk, who also founded SpaceX and Tesla, recently called for at least $2tn in cuts to US federal spending, nearly a third of the government's budget, without offering specifics. He has also proposed eliminating hundreds of federal agencies, arguing that many of them have overlapping areas of responsibility… Last year, while running for president, Ramaswamy said he would fire more than 75% of the federal work force and close down several major agencies, including the Department of Education, the FBI and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives.” BBC
The left is skeptical that the new department will be effective.
“The federal government is overdue for an overhaul. Some of its IT dates back to the disco era. Its worker-pay system is stuck in 1949. Government accountability and HR processes are woefully dysfunctional, making it hard to speedily hire standout candidates or cut underperformers loose. But Trump’s agenda is not about these good-government reforms…
“Trump and his allies have telegraphed that their real objective is to harness state power to reward friends and retaliate against enemies. Former White House strategist Stephen K. Bannon recently described the coming federal purge as ‘rough Roman justice,’ declaring that federal agencies such as the FBI and Justice Department are getting ‘swept out’ and will ‘pay the price for trying to destroy this country.’”
Catherine Rampell, Washington Post
“It's unclear how Musk will chart a $2 trillion cut when two-thirds of the $6.7 trillion federal budget goes to mandatory spending through programs like Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid while discretionary spending is largely used for military and defense programs that neither Democrats nor Republicans have much appetite for downsizing…
“Trump, for his part, has denied any intention of cutting Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid though he does have a history of walking back on his promises, and his proposed 2020 budget would have cut all three. Any steep budget cuts or the elimination of agencies Musk and Ramaswamy might have in their crosshairs will require the approval of Congress, where Republicans hold only a narrow majority in the House and must, for now, contend with potential Democratic filibusters in the Senate.”
Nicholas Liu, Salon
“A sober assessment would view Musk’s experience with X as a cautionary tale. Although the platform has functioned as a megaphone for its owner, it has also shed users; experienced repeated and embarrassing technical glitches; witnessed steep declines in advertising revenue; and may now be worth as little as a fifth of what he paid for it in 2022…
“Do Americans want vital government services such as food inspection, air traffic control, or Social Security payments to suffer similar breakdowns? Dislocation and deconstruction may have a visceral appeal among elements of the MAGA base. But once the new Trump administration is in office, the American people will expect it to deliver the public goods and services they rely upon—and do so smoothly, fairly and efficiently…
“Disruption may sound trendy in Silicon Valley or tough in conservative think-tank circles, but delivery is what will ultimately determine the success or failure of these reforms.”
Robert P. Beschel Jr., The Atlantic
The right is cautiously optimistic about the new department.
The right is cautiously optimistic about the new department.
“Entrepreneurs Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy will find it’s not so easy to radically downsize government… If Musk and Ramaswamy don’t let ambitions completely outrun reality, though, they can do a lot of good. To do so, they will need to understand that almost nothing can be done via executive fiat. Most of the reforms will need painstaking detail work that Congress will need to approve through legislative action…
“Two key laws, or sets of laws, must be completely rewritten. The first is the Administrative Procedure Act, passed in 1946, that dictates how the federal government may issue rules and regulations. The second is the set of existing civil service laws, with some provisions dating all the way back to the Pendleton Act of 1883…
“If Trump, Musk, and Ramaswamy just want to make a lot of noise about revamping government, their task will be easy. If they want to actually accomplish much, their jobs will be much harder. If they do that harder work, though, the benefits to the public, notwithstanding Ramaswamy’s wild hyperbole, could be immense.”
Quin Hillyer, Washington Examiner
“The greatest gain of reform would come from scrapping the rusty machinery that grinds public choices through years of meetings and box-checking… Modernizing infrastructure requires years of review and inter-agency meetings, often followed by years of litigation. Projects that survive this gauntlet cost more than twice as much and are often redesigned in ways that mollify self-interested parties. One example: Congress in 2021 allocated $42.5 billion to provide broadband coverage to ‘unserved areas.’ Three years later, no projects have been built…
“Since the 1980s, the partisan battle line has been between deregulation and more regulation. But the failures of modern government are mainly failures of implementation… This should be the mandate for Messrs. Musk and Ramaswamy: not to hobble government but to make it work again.”
Philip K. Howard, Wall Street Journal
“Musk is a brilliant appointment. To start with, he is an innovator. Nobody gets to amass a $300 billion fortune, working in manufacturing and technology, without an ability to embrace new ideas, and disrupt established ways of working. Musk has built two huge companies, and has plenty more bubbling away. If anyone can bring genuinely fresh thinking into government, then he probably can…
“Next, he is a fearless risk-taker. At X, formerly Twitter, which in many ways had become a bloated mini-government (it even had its own foreign affairs department for some unknown reason) he simply slashed staff, and assumed the survivors would find a way to cope. Despite all the predictions of disaster, they did.”
Matthew Lynn, Spectator World
