Musk details mass cuts to US federal spending and staff
SPENDING IS SERVICES
AUSTERITY IS POVERTY
By AFP
November 20, 2024
Elon Musk outlined plans Wednesday for his new role as “efficiency” czar — signaling an assault on federal spending and staffing that would be backed by President-elect Donald Trump’s executive powers and a conservative Supreme Court.
In the Wall Street Journal, the world’s richest man said he was taking aim at hundreds of billions of dollars in government spending — including funding for public broadcasting and abortion rights group Planned Parenthood — as well as at bureaucracy that represents an “existential threat” to US democracy.
The Tesla and SpaceX CEO said that he, along with fellow businessman and Trump loyalist Vivek Ramaswamy, would work to slash federal regulations and make major administrative cuts and cost savings.
“We are entrepreneurs, not politicians. We will serve as outside volunteers, not federal officials or employees,” Musk and Ramaswamy wrote in their most detailed remarks since Trump named them heads of a new Department of Government Efficiency.
Musk said DOGE — a nod to Musk’s support for a cryptocurrency — will prepare a list of regulations issued by government agencies without Congress approval, which Trump could then invalidate by executive order.
“When the president nullifies thousands of such regulations, critics will allege executive overreach. In fact, it will be correcting the executive overreach of thousands of regulations promulgated by administrative fiat that were never authorized by Congress,” Musk said.
He added that a reduction in regulations would pave the way for “mass head-count reductions across the federal bureaucracy,” and said DOGE would aim to cut more than $500 billion in government expenditures.
“With a decisive electoral mandate and a 6-3 conservative majority on the Supreme Court, DOGE has a historic opportunity for structural reductions in the federal government,” Musk said.
November 20, 2024
Elon Musk outlined plans Wednesday for his new role as “efficiency” czar — signaling an assault on federal spending and staffing that would be backed by President-elect Donald Trump’s executive powers and a conservative Supreme Court.
In the Wall Street Journal, the world’s richest man said he was taking aim at hundreds of billions of dollars in government spending — including funding for public broadcasting and abortion rights group Planned Parenthood — as well as at bureaucracy that represents an “existential threat” to US democracy.
The Tesla and SpaceX CEO said that he, along with fellow businessman and Trump loyalist Vivek Ramaswamy, would work to slash federal regulations and make major administrative cuts and cost savings.
“We are entrepreneurs, not politicians. We will serve as outside volunteers, not federal officials or employees,” Musk and Ramaswamy wrote in their most detailed remarks since Trump named them heads of a new Department of Government Efficiency.
Musk said DOGE — a nod to Musk’s support for a cryptocurrency — will prepare a list of regulations issued by government agencies without Congress approval, which Trump could then invalidate by executive order.
“When the president nullifies thousands of such regulations, critics will allege executive overreach. In fact, it will be correcting the executive overreach of thousands of regulations promulgated by administrative fiat that were never authorized by Congress,” Musk said.
He added that a reduction in regulations would pave the way for “mass head-count reductions across the federal bureaucracy,” and said DOGE would aim to cut more than $500 billion in government expenditures.
“With a decisive electoral mandate and a 6-3 conservative majority on the Supreme Court, DOGE has a historic opportunity for structural reductions in the federal government,” Musk said.
Musk, Ramaswamy outline plans for government reform
US President-elect Donald Trump said Elon Musk would lead an efficiency drive under his new administration - Copyright AFP/File Kena Betancur
Nov. 20 (UPI) -- The federal government is "anti-democratic and antithetical to the founders' vision," Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy said Wednesday in a joint op-ed on Wednesday.
The nation was founded on the notion that citizens elect people to run the government, but that's not how it works now, Musk and Ramaswamy said in the op-ed that was published by the Wall Street Journal.
Instead, most legal regulations are not those passed by Congress and signed into law by the President. Instead, they are tens of thousands "legal edicts" created annually by millions of unelected bureaucrats.
"Most government enforcement decisions and discretionary expenditures aren't made by the democratically elected president or even his political appointees but by millions of unelected, unappointed civil servants within government agencies," Musk and Ramaswamy said.
The bureaucrats consider themselves "immune from firing" due to civil service protections and impose "massive direct and indirect costs on taxpayers," they said.
President-elect Donald Trump's election victory gives them a "historic opportunity to solve the problem" of a large and bureaucratic federal government through the proposed creation of the Department of Government Efficiency, they said.
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The DOGE, led by Musk and Ramaswamy, will be tasked with reducing the size of the federal government.
"The entrenched and ever-growing bureaucracy represents an existential threat to our republic," Musk and Ramaswamy said, "and politicians have abetted it for too long."
The pair described themselves "entrepreneurs, not politicians" who will "serve as outside volunteers" who will cut costs.
They said they will help the incoming Trump administration to identify and hire a small team of "small-government crusaders"that includes "some of the sharpest technical and legal minds in America."
The DOGE team will work with the White House Office of Management and Budget to promote governmental reforms that include regulatory rescissions, administrative reductions and cost savings.
Executive action will be the prime driver of their reform efforts, Musk and Ramaswamy said.
They intend to advise Trump on executive actions that legally can impose "reductions in force" instead of targeting specific employees to reduce the size of federal agencies and departments without violating civil-service protections.
"Mr. Trump can implement any number of 'rules governing the competitive service' that would curtail administrative overgrowth," the pair said.
After being sworn in, Musk and Ramaswamy said President-elect Trump can impose firings of federal workers on a large scale and relocated federal agencies out of Washington, D.C., to make the federal government more efficient and less costly for taxpayers.
The DOGE and its leaders in Musk and Ramaswamy only can act in an advisory capacity and cannot make any legally binding changes to the federal government.
Any advice provided by the DOGE will require executive or congressional actions to carry the weight of law.
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