If it is to be taken seriously, the proposed government efficiency agency needs to go after waste, fraud, and abuse in Pentagon spending.
President-elect Donald Trump has pledged to create a “Department of Government Efficiency,” co-chaired by businessman Elon Musk and former political rival Vivek Ramaswamy. Both have pledged deep cuts.
In a September 2023 speech in Los Angeles, Ramaswamy pledged to shut down the FBI, IRS, Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission and Department of Education. Just to drive home the point, Ramaswamy said that “[m]ass layoffs are absolutely what I would bring to Washington DC.”
Ramaswamy has failed to explain how the government will be able to carry out basic functions like collecting revenue, enforcing the law, dealing with pandemics, or preventing nuclear accidents once his targeted agencies are no more.
For his part, Musk has suggested that he could cut federal government spending by $2 trillion, nearly a third of current spending levels. This would mean taking a wrecking ball to the government, and it would be difficult to achieve without legislative changes that would allow for reductions in spending on Medicare or Social Security. The easiest items to cut are in the federal discretionary budget, which includes virtually everything the U.
