Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy have been selected by President-elect Donald Trump to lead a new commission called the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE). The commission, named after the popular meme cryptocurrency, aims to cut government spending and reduce the federal workforce. Ramaswamy has proposed eliminating multiple federal agencies, while Musk has vowed to cut $2 trillion from the federal budget.
“I think people will be surprised by how quickly we’re able to move with some of those changes,” Ramaswamy said in a recent interview with Fox News. The DOGE commission has posted a call for qualified applicants willing to work long hours for no pay, emphasizing the need for high-IQ small-government revolutionaries dedicated to cost-cutting. Scores of followers have sent in their résumés, expressing their enthusiasm for the project and their desire to contribute to a more efficient government.
One of the initial targets of the commission could be the nearly two-thirds of federal workers who are still approved to work from home 18 months after the pandemic ended. The high cost of maintaining vacant federal office space in downtown Washington has been a concern for city leaders, including Mayor Muriel Bowser, who has requested a meeting with President-elect Trump to advocate for the return of federal workers to the city.
Musk, Ramaswamy spearhead federal cuts
According to the Office of Management and Budget, telework-eligible federal workers are in the office 60% of the time, and about 10% of all workers are fully remote. However, union representatives argue that more than half of federal jobs do not qualify for working from home, such as health care workers at VA hospitals, corrections officers, and Border Patrol agents. The US government is the largest employer in the country, with more than 2 million Americans collecting their paychecks from federal agencies.
Eight cabinet-level agencies have more than 100,000 civilian employees, with the Department of Veterans Affairs employing almost half a million people and the Department of Education having just over 4,000. While neither Trump, Musk, nor Ramaswamy has made clear which departments could be targeted for cuts, Trump has previously expressed interest in closing the Department of Education and sending education work back to the states. Musk has mentioned that the commission’s goal is to cut spending by reducing head count, but he would consider giving impacted workers “very long severances” that could amount to two years’ pay.
Making major changes to federal agencies would require congressional approval, and it remains unclear how exactly the commission would function and whether Congress would approve Musk and Ramaswamy’s spending cuts. The fiscal year 2024 budget priorities include Social Security, health programs, and Medicare, which could potentially be on the commission’s chopping block but would require new legislation to change.
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