President-elect Donald Trump has appointed Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy to lead the newly established Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), aimed at reducing the federal government’s inefficiencies, including an extensive bureaucracy and excessive spending.
Musk proposed the idea for the department and volunteered to lead it during an X Space discussion with Trump in August. On Tuesday, Trump formally announced DOGE, stating that its mission is to “streamline government bureaucracy, eliminate excessive regulations, reduce wasteful spending, and restructure federal agencies,” bringing an “entrepreneurial mindset” to governance.
The newly created department has already generated a flood of memes, thanks to its DOGE acronym, a playful reference to the cryptocurrency Dogecoin. Musk, a known fan of the coin, even replaced X’s logo with its dog meme briefly last year. Another popular meme circulating online depicts Musk and Ramaswamy as the downsizing consultants from the movie Office Space, humorously asking an employee, “What would you say you do here?”
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 13, 2024
Despite its name, the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) will function as an independent commission working alongside the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) to advise the president on eliminating government inefficiencies.
DOGE will operate under a strict timeline, with its mission set to conclude by July 4, 2026, marking the nation’s 250th birthday, Trump announced.
Musk is eager to begin. Since Tuesday’s announcement, the SpaceX founder and Tesla CEO has enthusiastically shared his plans for tackling federal waste while pledging to maintain “openness and transparency” about DOGE’s actions.
One of his primary focuses: cutting back on excessive regulations.
“The world is suffering slow strangulation by overregulation. Every year, the noose tightens a little more,” Musk posted Wednesday. “We finally have a mandate to delete the mountain of choking regulations that do not serve the greater good.”
Musk is calling for a comprehensive review of regulations to assess “which ones make sense and which ones do not.”
His push comes from personal experience with restrictive regulations, particularly while attempting to launch SpaceX rockets. In October, he filed a lawsuit against California regulators, accusing them of “shamelessly breaking the law” after they cited his political views as a factor in rejecting additional rocket launches.
Musk also aims to close hundreds of the over 400 federal agencies. In an interview last month, he noted that the United States, on average, creates more than one new federal agency per year.
“That seems a lot. That seems crazy. I think we should be able to get away with 99 agencies,” Musk said.
Elon Musk explains the importance of creating the Department of Government Efficiency.
— DogeDesigner (@cb_doge) November 13, 2024
"There are around 428 federal agencies. There's so many that people have never even heard of. I think we should be able to get away with 99 agencies."
pic.twitter.com/QIdTmHWQLj
ELON ON D.O.G.E. “We're going to make the spending lower. And if somebody's got a better idea for how to make the spending lower, tell us. But if we don't, we're going to bankrupt the country.”
— America (@america) November 13, 2024
pic.twitter.com/FxCLE5t8RX
Reducing spending is another major priority for Musk.
“We’re going to make the spending lower, and if somebody’s got a better idea for how to make the spending lower tell us, but if we don’t we’re going to bankrupt the country, and so we’ve got to do something, and it’s got to be some pretty big moves,” Musk said during a town hall in Pennsylvania last month.
“Drain the swamps. There’s so many swamps,” he added.
He joked that he will probably need “quite a significant security team because someone might literally go postal on me — from the Post Office.”
Ramaswamy plans to adopt an equally bold strategy. The tech entrepreneur and former Republican presidential candidate announced Tuesday that DOGE would soon start “crowdsourcing examples” of government waste, fraud, and abuse.
“Americans voted for sweeping government reform, and they deserve to play a role in making it happen,” Ramaswamy posted on Tuesday.
He also emphasized the need to address the more than half a trillion dollars annually allocated to nearly 500 expired federal programs.
“This is totally nuts. We can & should save hundreds of billions each year by defunding government programs that Congress no longer authorizes. We’ll challenge any politician who disagrees to defend the other side,” he posted Wednesday.
In September, Ramaswamy proposed a “thought experiment” suggesting the immediate dismissal of 75% of federal employees, using a screening process to identify those with the highest competence, commitment, and understanding of the Constitution.
Vivek’s “thought experiment” of cutting 75% of federal govt employees while avoiding lawsuits of unlawful termination due to discrimination.
— Steve Hou (@stevehouf) November 13, 2024
pic.twitter.com/FWgvcBeATm
“Not a thing will have changed for the ordinary American other than the size of their government being a lot smaller and more restrained, spending a lot less money to operate it,” Ramaswamy said during a podcast interview. “All we require is leadership with a spine to get in there and actually do what conservative presidents have maybe gestured towards and talked about but not really effectuated ever in modern history.”
Ramaswamy argued that government agencies are “no different” from private companies, where “25% of the people perform 80 to 90% of the meaningful work.”
Musk drew a similar parallel when he took over X, cutting about 80% of its workforce—more than 6,000 employees. While Musk admitted the move was “not fun at all,” he emphasized that “drastic action” was necessary as the company faced “a $3 billion negative cash flow” and only had “four months to survive.”
DOGE is already hiring, with Musk and Ramaswamy personally reviewing the top 1% of applicants.
“We don’t need more part-time idea generators,” the new official DOGE account posted Thursday on X. “We need super high-IQ small-government revolutionaries willing to work 80+ hours per week on unglamorous cost-cutting.”
Musk and Ramaswamy face a significant challenge. The federal government’s annual spending totals $6.75 trillion, with an increase of $114 billion already recorded this year. Hidden within that enormous budget is a long list of questionable expenditures.
Last year, Senator Rand Paul (R-KY) identified nearly $900 billion in wasted taxpayer dollars in his annual Festivus Report, which highlights notable and often absurd examples of government waste.
One of the largest expenses in fiscal year 2023 was $659 billion spent on interest payments for the national debt, much of it owed to China, the report revealed. Additionally, taxpayers are footing the bill to power federal office buildings, even though most remain largely unoccupied, according to another report.
