Mercurial Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk has made a big deal out of being put in charge of a “Department of Government Efficiency” or DOGE by president-elect Donald Trump, where he says he’ll excise $2 trillion from the national budget.
But as NBC News reports, it sounds an awful lot like the so-called “Department” is nothing more than a way for Trump to dangle a carrot in front of the richest man in the world and make him feel like he’s in charge. The advisory group, which according to Trump would “partner with the White House and Office of Management & Budget” to “drive large scale structural reform,” is a mere facade erected for Musk to tout his purported prowess in cutting the fat — despite having absolutely no experience running the government whatsoever.
Even the group’s name is a cringeworthy reference to a cryptocurrency that literally started out as nothing more than a joke.
Put another way, Trump is figuratively handing Musk an unplugged gaming console controller, kind of like a big brother would with his younger brattish sibling.
For one, anything DOGE wants to do will require approval from Congress first, which is far from a guarantee. As NBC points out, the “department” — which won’t actually be a department like the Department of Homeland Security — won’t even operate from within the government.
Instead, DOGE will “provide advice and guidance from outside of government,” according to Trump’s announcement, and won’t be made a permanent fixture either.
“From the outside, will Musk and Ramaswamy be able to do a whole lot?” Partnership for Public Service CEO Max Stier told NBC. “It’s very difficult to see how that will be the case.”
Stier argues that Cabinet leaders Trump is currently naming for his incoming administration will ultimately have the power, not Trump or Ramaswamy.
“You can say ‘Do this’ or ‘Do that’ from the outside, but to get it done, you need people who really know how to make things happen and to execute effectively,” he continued.
Meanwhile, Musk is frothing at the bit to take his frustrations with regulation out on the American people by promising “some temporary hardship” during an October town hall.
“I’ll probably need a lot of security, but it’s got to be done,” he said at the time. “And if it’s not done, we’ll just go bankrupt,” he added, furthering a debunked claim.
Ramaswamy has also called for “defunding government programs that Congress no longer authorizes” — which happens to include veterans’ healthcare.
The former pharmaceutical executive has also vowed to dismantle the FBI and the Education Department, plans that could leave more pragmatic members of Congress shaking their heads.
Now at the helm of DOGE, Musk and Ramaswamy have been given 530 days to deconstruct the US government, as Trump wants the work to be done by the 250th anniversary of the founding of the United States in 2026.
Needless to say, that’s a tall order, especially given the many hoops the so-called department will have to jump through.
Whether DOGE is toothless or not, now that Congress has been taken over by the GOP, which holds a majority in both the House and Senate, it’ll be up to the top Republicans whether they’ll kowtow to Musk and Ramaswamy’s extremist agenda.
Democrats will largely have to contend themselves with watching helplessly from the sidelines.
“This should be seen as a real attempt not to try to get more government accountability but just to gut agencies and departments and purge the federal workforce where they see fit,” Project on Government Oversight policy counsel Joe Spielberger told NBC.
“It’s unclear at this point what the exact role or mandate will be of this advisory committee,” he added. “But first of all, just putting two knuckleheads in charge of government efficiency sounds pretty counterintuitive as a starting point.”
Another possible outcome is the quick deterioration of Trump and Musk’s relationship and the dissolution of DOGE. After all, they’ve both made it their life’s mission to spend as much time as possible in the limelight; that kind of terminal main character energy could easily lead to a clash of the titan egos, leaving Musk once again jilted by the famously moody Trump.
Put simply, the faster Musk and Trump’s relationship deteriorates, the further the country edges away from the abyss.
More on DOGE: America Cringes as Trump Puts Elon Musk in Charge of “DOGE” Department
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