I & I Editorial BoardOn Tuesday, Donald Trump announced that Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy would head the “Department of Government Efficiency.” That same day, the Treasury Department released a report showing why this effort is so desperately needed.
In his announcement, Trump said that he’s assigned the two to “dismantle government bureaucracy, slash excess regulations, cut wasteful expenditures, and restructure federal agencies.” It will, he said, “become, potentially, ‘The Manhattan Project’ of our time.”
At Trump’s Madison Square Garden rally in late October, Musk, when asked how much he thought he could “rip out of this $6.5 trillion Harris-Biden budget,” said: “Well, I think we could do at least $2 trillion.”
Washington insiders scoffed at the entire idea of a “government efficiency” department or that these two government outsiders could somehow find $2 trillion to cut.
The truth is a Manhattan Project-level effort will be needed to restore a semblance of fiscal responsibility to the federal government.
This week, the Treasury Department released its first report of the new fiscal year, which began in October.
What it found was that in just the first month, the federal government ran a deficit of $257 billion. That compares with a deficit of $66 billion in October 2023.
The massive jump is the result of a $76.6 billion drop in revenues compared with last year and a $114 billion hike in spending.
Treasury expects the deficit for fiscal year 2025 will total $1.9 trillion, which would mark the third annual increase in deficits under Biden, despite a steadily growing economy, and well above what budget experts had been forecasting.
The federal government is on a runaway train of deficits and debt, thanks to decades of criminal mismanagement of taxpayer money.
But what’s different about DOGE? After all, there’ve been countless audits and inspector general reports pointing out massive amounts of waste and fraud, spending on programs that don’t work or aren’t needed, lack of accountability, duplication of efforts, and pork-barrel spending. But nothing ever seems to get fixed.
Worse, the vast bulk of federal spending today is in the form of “payments for individuals” – which includes welfare, housing aid, food stamps, support payments, health care, Social Security, government pensions, education loans, and grants. These transfer payments accounted for 71% of all federal spending last year.
Which means that cutting this spending will immediately set off clanging alarm bells from groups on the receiving end of those payments.
Trump is getting this effort started in the right way. DOGE won’t be a government agency, instead it “will provide advice and guidance from outside of government, and will partner with the White House and Office of Management & Budget to drive large scale structural reform, and create an entrepreneurial approach to government never seen before.”
By keeping it outside government, it has a better chance of not being caught up in all the phony cost-cutting games played in Washington. And by putting Musk and Ramaswamy in charge – both of whom relish the idea of slashing and burning government bloat – he’s picked the right team to lead the effort.
“This will send shockwaves through the system, and anyone involved in government waste, which is a lot of people!” Musk said.
Musk also promises that “All actions of the Department of Government Efficiency will be posted online for maximum transparency. Anytime the public thinks we are cutting something important or not cutting something wasteful, just let us know! We will also have a leaderboard for most insanely dumb spending of your tax dollars. This will be both extremely tragic and extremely entertaining.”
And the DOGE account on X is already recruiting people: “We don’t need more part-time idea generators. We need super high-IQ small-government revolutionaries willing to work 80+ hours per week on unglamorous cost-cutting. If that’s you, DM this account with your CV. Elon & Vivek will review the top 1% of applicants.”
This is what a revolution looks like. Strap in.
— Written by the I&I Editorial Board
Thank God!
“Washington insiders scoffed at the entire idea of a “government efficiency” department or that these two government outsiders [Elon and Ramaswamy] could somehow find $2 trillion to cut.”
This is what I&I wrote. Why do the “insiders” scoff? Because they think they are important. Like Homan, the new border czar,who exclaimed with outrage when he was cut off by the chair of the House,”I pay your salary. You work for me!”
The “insiders” I&I refers to don’t know, care or believe that. Their arrogance is exceeded only by their swelling backsides and their undeserved salaries.
It’s about time these barnacles were put in their place. It’s about time the realized that they DO work for us. It’s about time many of those excess baggage bureaucracies were thrown overboard. They will not be missed!
Trump doing this is one of the reasons I voted for him. He was a gosh-darn great businessman with fantastic instincts. But-even though those who aren’t MAGA will never believe this-while he’ll always be a wealthy patrician- I believe sincerely that he’ll always know that he works for us and for the US.
And we got him for free! What a bargain-and how fortunate we are.
Maybe, we can finally get rid of the absurd Ad Council, PBS, NPR, school lunch program boondoggle (let local schools and parents feed their children again), and entire Departments and Agencies that are not roles of the federal government under our Constitution: Education, Energy (and EPA), Regulatory commissions, USDA, Commerce, Housing and Urban development, FTC, most of Interior, Fish & Wildlife, BLM, huge swaths in the IRS and DOS (do we really need an office of global women’s issues?), endless commissions and advisory boards and committees (is gaming, migratory bird conservation, marine mammal commissions and a textile committee a role of the Feds?), NEA and Arts agencies (seriously, we do not need Federal taxpayer money to pay for satanic statues in the name of art), NEH, NSF and NASA (corrupted by climate change political agendas), Labor, Federal Reserve, Transportation, the entire agency called Volunteerism, everything with “foundation” at the end of it; clean up massive corruption and unsound actions in USAID, ATSDR, AHRQ, ACE,… good grief, we could eliminate most of the Federal government and return things to the people, states and local communities. The largest department in the federal government is HHS. My one concern is if RFK,Jr will be able to actually apply sound science in slashing departments and cutting food and federal health regulations, return the FDA to objective sound science and clean up the corrupted drug approval process, get feds out of healthcare and insurance industry. Or, will it become another flavor of government regulations?