Elon Musk is the owner of SpaceX, Tesla, X (called Twitter), “and, oh, some other stuff.” He is the current “world’s wealthiest person.” When NASA and Boeing couldn’t find a way to safely retrieve two astronauts from the space station, they asked Musk. He obliged.
During the first Trump administration, Musk became exercised over what he saw as Progressives’ censorship of speech that they disliked.[1] He bought Twitter, then used it as a platform to support Trump’s run for a second term. He also spent $190 million in support of Trump during the months before the November 2024 election. Now he is a court “favorite.”[2]
Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy have been instructed to create an extra-governmental “Department of Government Efficiency” (DOGE). Their mission, should they decide to accept it, is to identify “trillions [as in $2 trillion] in possible budget cuts.” More than that, they will “slash excess regulations, cut wasteful expenditures, and restructure Federl Agencies.”[3]
This development stirred up the hornets. Normally, government officials and politicians spend a lifetime in public employment. Their wealth is in the stock market and real estate investment. If necessary, it can be placed in blind trusts. This creates a reassuring sense of propriety among the public. Not Elon Musk. Like Donald Trump, he’s going to continue operating his big and important firms even while looking for places to cut spending (i.e. jobs). “Look, and by the way,” he’s a Libertarian with a lot of government contracts. So not fair!
Democrats warn that Musk “could reap a windfall from deregulatory moves” if he has some kind of leverage on government agencies that regulate his business empire. That’s a more than fair point, so it is fair to ask how much leverage he would have. The “DOGE” would be a non-governmental advisory committee, not a real government department.[4] The “DOGE” could recommend changes, but they would need Congressional action to take effect.
Then there is Musk’s record on overhauling his own companies. After he bought Twitter, he fired 80 percent of the employees. That definitely got expenses down. Will he recommend the same thing to the federal government? Cutting the Departments of Education seems like a no-brainer, while foreclosing on the Housing and Urban Development would free up office space. It would be necessary to cut 85 percent of government’s non-entitlements, non-defense, and non-interest payments to get $2 trillion out of the budget.
If it can’t all be got that way, then sacred cows are going to “Bovine University.”[5] Some people believe that Trump and Musk are “planning to cut Social Security and Medicare.” Perhaps all of the chopping by Musk and Ramaswamy in the rest of the government is intended to show that the national finances cannot be repaired without “changes” (either cuts or efficiencies) to these two programs. All this—mindlessly—leaves higher taxes off the table.
[1] “Payback: The United States of Elon Musk,” The Week, 22 November 2024, p. 34.
[2] See: Favourite – Wikipedia It’s actually kind of reassuring.
[3] “Trump’s MAGA administration takes shape,” The Week, 22 November 2024, p. 4.
[4] Without wanting to stretch the point too far, during the Cold War the U.S. government had a group of “wise men” to consult on international crises. See: Walter Isaacson and Evan Thomas, The Wise Men: Six Friends and the World They Made (2013). Curiously, Isaacson now is at work on a biography of Musk. Similarly, the “9-11 Commission” made important suggestions about improving government action against foreign terrorism. It isn’t clear how these recommendations have been followed.
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