Trump
Taps Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy to Slash Government
The two
wealthy entrepreneurs will lead what the president-elect called the Department
of Government Efficiency, which he said would seek “drastic change.” But the
announcement left a lot unanswered.
Michael D.
ShearEric Lipton
By Michael
D. Shear and Eric Lipton
Reporting
from Washington
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/11/12/us/politics/elon-musk-vivek-ramaswamy-trump.html
Nov. 12,
2024
How do you
slash, cut, restructure and even dismantle parts of the federal government?
If you’re
President-elect Donald J. Trump, you turn to two wealthy entrepreneurs: the
spaceship-inventing, electric-car-building owner of a social media platform and
a moneymaking former pharmaceutical executive who was once one of your
presidential rivals.
Mr. Trump
said on Tuesday that Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy will lead what he called the
Department of Government Efficiency. It will be, he said, “the Manhattan
Project” of this era, driving “drastic change” throughout the government with
major cuts and new efficiencies in bloated agencies in the federal bureaucracy
by July 4, 2026.
“A smaller
Government, with more efficiency and less bureaucracy, will be the perfect gift
to America on the 250th Anniversary of The Declaration of Independence,” Mr.
Trump wrote in a statement. “I am confident they will succeed!”
The
statement left unanswered all kinds of major questions about an initiative that
is uncertain in seriousness but potentially vast in scope. For starters, the
president-elect did not address the fact that no such department exists. And he
did not elaborate on whether his two rich supporters would hire a staff for the
new department, which he said is aimed in part at reducing the federal work
force.
Mr. Musk,
who became one of Mr. Trump’s biggest campaign contributors, said before the
election that he would help the president-elect cut $2 trillion from the
federal budget. But he did not explain in any detail how that would be
accomplished or what parts of the government would be slashed.
“This will
send shockwaves through the system, and anyone involved in Government waste,
which is a lot of people!” Mr. Musk said in the statement.
The
statement by Mr. Trump also did not address how Mr. Musk in particular would
handle this task, without creating conflicts of interest, given that SpaceX has
secured more than $10 billion worth of federal contracts over the last decade.
SpaceX,
Tesla and other companies Mr. Musk created, such as Neuralink, which is
manufacturing computer chips that are implanted in the brain, have also been
targeted recently in at least 20 different investigations or lawsuits by
federal agencies. That means Mr. Musk will somehow be watching over agencies
that police his companies.
Mr. Trump’s
statement said only that this new department would “provide advice and guidance
from outside of government,” suggesting that Mr. Musk will not take a formal
role as a federal official.
Slashing
government regulations and spending became a top priority for Mr. Musk as his
frustrations have grown, particularly this year, with what he considers
excessive or redundant oversight by the Federal Aviation Administration and the
Interior Department, as SpaceX sought launch licenses to continue testing its
newest rocket called Starship.
SpaceX’s
Texas launch site is set up next to a national wildlife refuge and state park,
requiring detailed environmental reviews before launches, a process that has
infuriated Mr. Musk, slowing his plans to take humans to Mars.
The name of
the new department — DOGE — appeared to be a play on another one of Mr. Musk’s
many investments: the cryptocurrency Dogecoin, which the billionaire regularly
promotes to others.
Mr.
Ramaswamy, a 39-year-old political novice, challenged Mr. Trump for the
Republican nomination before dropping out and becoming a fervent Trump acolyte.
As Mr. Trump campaigned in the last year, Mr. Ramaswamy became a frequent
surrogate, singing his praises and spreading the conspiracy theories that Mr.
Trump had long embraced.
As part of
his message, Mr. Ramaswamy vowed to help take Mr. Trump’s promise to cut
government even further. He proposed immediately eliminating the Education
Department, the F.B.I. and the Internal Revenue Service by executive order. He
said the federal work force should be cut by 75 percent in a mass layoff. And
he said he would slash foreign aid to places like Ukraine, Israel and Taiwan.
Promises of
government reform are hardly new in Washington. Previous presidents have
pledged much the same, though often without quite as much flourish.
In 1993,
after President Bill Clinton promised to “reinvent government,” Vice President
Al Gore led the newly created National Partnership for Reinventing Government.
The goal was similar to Mr. Trump’s effort — to reduce federal spending by
eliminating wasteful programs, cutting unnecessary jobs and making the
bureaucracy work better.
By the time
it ended five years later, Mr. Gore’s effort had succeeded in reducing some
overlap in government programs and cutting some federal jobs. But it fell far
short of a total reinvention of the government. With about three million
employees, the federal government head count has grown slightly in recent years
but remains well below the peak it reached in the late 1980s.
Mr. Trump,
whose political appeal was built in part on a promise to “drain the swamp” in
Washington, has long taken aim at the size of the bureaucracy. But in his first
term, he did little to act on those promises.
Now, he is
promising that Mr. Musk and Mr. Ramaswamy will succeed where he did not.
“I look
forward to Elon and Vivek making changes to the Federal Bureaucracy with an eye
on efficiency and, at the same time, making life better for all Americans,” Mr.
Trump wrote. “Importantly, we will drive out the massive waste and fraud which
exists throughout our annual $6.5 Trillion Dollars of Government Spending.”
Michael D.
Shear is a White House correspondent for The Times, covering President Biden
and his administration. He has reported on politics for more than 30 years.
More about Michael D. Shear
Eric Lipton
is an investigative reporter, who digs into a broad range of topics from
Pentagon spending to toxic chemicals. More about Eric Lipton
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