Can Elon Musk engineer a federal budget miracle?

Kurt Mahlburg
November 15, 2024 8 Reactions

US$20,000 for drag shows in Ecuador.

$3 million for steroid-fuelled hamster fights.

$3.7 million to study gambling monkeys.

$1.3 billion sent to dead people.

$70 billion in funds planned for the “COVID-19 response” through to 2026.

This is just some of the excess fat about to be trimmed from the US Federal Government’s $6.5 trillion annual budget, following Trump’s appointment of Elon Musk and fellow tech entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy to lead the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE).

Trump’s announcement came on Tuesday, in which he laid out the terms of their appointment:

Together, these two wonderful Americans will pave the way for my Administration to dismantle Government Bureaucracy, slash excess regulations, cut wasteful expenditures, and restructure Federal Agencies — Essential to the “Save America” Movement.

Despite its name, the President-elect clarified that DOGE does not represent a new formal department — rather, it will “provide advice and guidance from outside of Government” and will work collaboratively with the White House and Office of Management and Budget to achieve its aims.

Notably, DOGE comes with a built-in expiry date, and an auspicious one at that: July 4, 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’s statement read.

Though radical enough, the Musk-Ramaswamy appointment was one of Trump’s least controversial announcements this week, with the leader in waiting also naming Matt Gaetz as Attorney General, Tusli Gabbard as Director of National Intelligence, and Robert F. Kennedy Jr. as Secretary of Health and Human Services.

Censures of Trump’s cabinet picks have flown thick and fast, with Washington insiders castigating his appointees for their lack of experience in DC and their unyielding loyalty to the former president.

However, Trump defenders have shot back with a genre of memes aimed at highlighting his critics’ hypocrisy.

“God forbid we let RFK Jr. be in charge of HHS, otherwise he might do something crazy like fund experimental gain-of-function research in Chinese laboratories and cause a global pandemic. Oh wait,” quipped conservative attorney Will Chamberlain.

Vice President-elect JD Vance similarly mused:

The main issue with Matt Gaetz is that he used his office to prosecute his political opponents and authorized federal agents to harass parents who were peacefully protesting at school board meetings.

Oh wait, that’s actually Merrick Garland, the current attorney general.

Other critics in the legacy media have questioned whether Musk and Ramaswamy sought out their new roles with potential financial windfalls in view. The thesis seems unlikely, however, given that both men are already billionaires.

“I want no pay, no awards, no recognition or fancy title,” Musk has previously said. “I just want America to reach greater heights.”

If X is any indicator (a platform that correctly predicted Trump’s election), fans of DOGE vastly outnumber its critics. The official DOGE X account has already collected 1.3 million followers in the few days since its inception.

 

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The approach that Musk and Ramaswamy plan to take is, as you might expect for a pair of savant pioneers, revolutionary. As explained by Musk:

All actions of the Department of Government Efficiency will be posted online for maximum transparency.

Anytime the public thinks we are cutting something important or not cutting something wasteful, just let us know!

We will also have a leaderboard for most insanely dumb spending of your tax dollars. This will be both extremely tragic and extremely entertaining.

As a US taxpayer, I for one am hopeful that Musk’s engineering genius will provide the solutions that have evaded — or been avoided by — prior leaders.

Don’t forget this is a man who, after purchasing Twitter, fired 80 percent of its staff within six months. Today, Musk’s newly-badged X continues to break its own usage records.

For further insight into how powerful DOGE may prove to be, consider Vivek Ramaswamy’s commentary on how the overturning of the Chevron doctrine will streamline their work:

One thing’s for sure: change is coming to Washington, D.C. — and small government enthusiasts are getting the popcorn ready.  

Forward this to your friends.  

Kurt Mahlburg is a writer and author, and an emerging Australian voice on culture and the Christian faith. He has a passion for both the philosophical and the personal, drawing on his background as a graduate architect, a primary school teacher, a missionary, and a young adult pastor.

Image credit: Alex Proimos on flickr and Bigstock   

 

 

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  • Anon Emouse
    commented 2024-11-17 11:02:08 +1100
    Also Kurt doesn’t realize that Congress holds the power of the purse, not the executive branch.

    But if he wants to talk budgets, he’d do well to learn that every Democratic president since Nixon has lowered the deficit whilst every Republican president has increased it,
  • Anon Emouse
    commented 2024-11-17 05:49:37 +1100
    Not surprised Kurt didn’t have the intellectual curiosity to dig further into any of that funding or studies, relying entirely on surface level meme analysis. His understanding of how scientific discoveries are made (often researching something erode) is lacking.
  • Julian Cheslow
    commented 2024-11-16 02:52:18 +1100
    I have yet to see proof of Garland being this tyrant persecuting Republicans left and right. If that was true Trump would have been in jail or at least disbarred from running for President again. Meanwhile the House ethics panel was set to vote on releasing a report critical of Gaetz, which will no longer happen because of Gaetz resigning.

    Also unfortunately Covid is still a thing, and with bird flu posing a danger of becoming the next pandemic I think more investment in making sure we can deal better with airborne pandemics. Personally I think we need to invest in improving air filtration/purification in all indoor spaces(and at this point possibly crowded outdoor events due to the mutations that have happened)

    Lastly any measure to reduce waste/spending without looking at military and defense spending is foolish.
  • Jürgen Siemer
    commented 2024-11-15 17:41:32 +1100
    The new US government should stop funding the war in Ukraine, the bombing of Syria, and the genocide in Gaza, close all the military bases in foreign countries, bring the boys home, cut the funding of the military industrial complex, close the CIA and all the other spy agencies most of which Target American citizens, close Fauci’s bioweapons funding organizations, and cut the funding of the various “think tanks” whose purpose is to interfere in the elections of foreign countries.

    Should save trillions.

    And the repay debt and cut taxes burdening labor in the US.
  • Emberson Fedders
    commented 2024-11-15 14:40:11 +1100
    Also, Mahlburg starts the article with about $70 billion worth of savings.

    Just need to find another $1.93 trillion to cut.

    And it will be the poorest that suffer.
  • Paul Bunyan
    commented 2024-11-15 14:39:32 +1100
    The first step by any administration should be to guarantee food, healthcare and shelter for everyone.

    Employees are much more productive when they’re healthy and don’t spend time worrying about their next meal.
  • Emberson Fedders
    commented 2024-11-15 14:38:04 +1100
    Betteridge’s law.
  • Kurt Mahlburg
    published this page in The Latest 2024-11-15 14:00:42 +1100

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