Elon Musk mentioned he plans to scale back $1 trillion in authorities spending by the top of Might in a Thursday interview with Fox Information’ Bret Baier on Particular Report.
Musk said that his Division of Authorities Effectivity is ready to realize these financial savings inside 130 days from the beginning of Trump’s time period on January 20.
Musk defined that the plan would contain chopping greater than half of the $1.8 trillion spent on non-defense discretionary applications in 2024.
“I believe we’ll accomplish a lot of the work required to scale back the deficit by a trillion {dollars} inside that time-frame,” he mentioned.
The billionaire added that his purpose is to chop 15% of the federal government’s annual spending, which totaled $6.75 trillion in fiscal yr 2024. He confidently mentioned that these reductions could possibly be made with out affecting any of the crucial authorities companies.
Musk, labeled as a particular authorities worker who’s allowed to work solely 130 days out of the yr as a brief federal employee, spoke of a sweeping reform effort.
DOGE remains to be removed from reaching the $1 trillion goal
The interview got here simply days after President Trump mentioned he anticipated to be “glad” with DOGE’s cuts within the coming month or two.
Trump acknowledged that the overhauls led by DOGE are usually not “essentially a extremely popular factor to do,” noting the political dangers tied to such wide-ranging cuts.
Many of the federal authorities’s spending is allotted to necessary applications reminiscent of Medicare and Social Safety, the place there’s little room for reductions.
Musk has claimed that these applications are overrun with fraud and waste, although he didn’t present supporting proof for these assertions.In response, DOGE has deployed a minimum of 10 staffers to the Social Safety Administration to determine waste.
Nonetheless, knowledge exhibits that from 2015 by 2022, Social Safety estimated almost $72 billion in improper funds, which makes lower than 1% of advantages paid, in response to an inspector normal report from final yr.
The DOGE web site, which has been criticized for errors and overstatements, at the moment lists about $22 billion in contract financial savings. The web site additionally claims about $130 billion in total price reductions, though these figures are usually not itemized.
Musk has downplayed the impact of job cuts
Musk’s DOGE has additionally pushed a collection of federal authorities layoffs which have been applied previously few weeks. Whereas a number of businesses have introduced workforce reductions, Musk dismissed the affect of those job cuts by saying that “nearly nobody’s gotten fired.”
Among the many latest modifications, the Division of Well being and Human Companies introduced a minimize of 10,000 jobs earlier on Thursday. In March the Schooling Division said that it was lowering its workforce by half. Furthermore, the Small Enterprise Administration is chopping 43% of its workforce. The Division of Veterans Affairs has introduced plans to layoff 80,000 employees, whereas the Treasury Division shared main cuts deliberate in a court docket submitting.
DOGE’s efforts have additionally confronted authorized hurdles. This contains judges rejecting a number of the proposed cuts and blocking Musk’s workforce from accessing sure methods and databases reminiscent of these on the Social Safety Administration.
