Trump picks Musk, Ramaswamy to lead Department of Government Efficiency: What is it?

Trump 2.0 is slowly taking shape as the US president-elect continues to pick loyalists and supporters for key positions in the administration. Continuing with this trend, Donald Trump announced on Tuesday (November 12) that Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy would lead a new “Department of Government Efficiency” in his second administration.

“Together, these two wonderful Americans will pave the way for my Administration to dismantle government bureaucracy, slash excess regulations, cut wasteful expenditures, and restructure Federal Agencies,” Trump said in a statement.

In his statement, the US president-elect added that the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) will be the “Manhattan Project of our time”.

Confirming his appointment, Elon Musk said on X, “This will send shockwaves through the system, and anyone involved in government waste, which is a lot of people.”

Meanwhile, Vivek Ramaswamy, who also becomes the first Indian-American whom Trump has chosen, said, “We will not go gently.”

However, what exactly is the Department of Government Efficiency? How will it operate? What is it planning to do? And what can we expect from it? Here’s what we have found out so far.

How will Department of Government Efficiency work?

The idea of a Department of Government Efficiency was floated by Donald Trump along with his biggest supporter — Elon Musk — in early September while he was campaigning to be US president. At the time, Trump claimed that in 2022, “fraud and improper payments alone cost taxpayers an estimated hundreds of billions of dollars.” He said the commission would recommend “drastic reforms” and develop a plan to eliminate fraud and improper payments within six months, which he said would save trillions of dollars.

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“I look forward to serving America if the opportunity arises,” Musk then wrote on X. “No pay, no title, no recognition is needed.”

Now, after Trump’s win, it seems that he is going ahead with his plan to create DOGE. However, details of the department — such as the size of its staff, if any, and the scope of its mission — are not yet available.

What is clear as of now is that Musk and Ramaswamy will head this department and have until July 4, 2026, to complete their work. It’s not clear if their positions would also expire at that point.

And despite the name, the department won’t actually be a government agency. It will work from outside the government to offer the White House “advice and guidance” and will partner with the Office of Management and Budget to “drive large-scale structural reform, and create an entrepreneurial approach to government never seen before.”

Some believe that DOGE could come under the Federal Advisory Committee Act, which mandates how external groups can advice the government to operate.

What can we expect from Musk and Ramaswamy?

If Musk’s past statements are any indicator, then one can expect cutting trillions of dollars from the federal budget. In a podcast, Musk revealed how this initiative could transform government operations. He said he would trim down the bureaucracy and reduce government spending by $2 trillion.

99 Federal agencies is more than enough https://t.co/OmWmfEHqyv

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) November 13, 2024

In a recent post on X, he wrote that “there is a lot of waste and needless regulation in government that needs to go”. In another, he added, “Federal government spending will bankrupt the country unless action is taken.”

Hours after his appointment was made final, Musk, who is also the wealthiest man on Earth, said, “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.”

Vivek Ramaswamy has also spoken about eliminating departments and cutting jobs. While campaigning for the post of president, the Indian-American had promised to cut out the FBI, the Department of Education and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, laying off thousands of federal workers in the process.

The US spent more than $6.7 trillion in its 2024 fiscal year on a range of domestic programmes and national defence, from Social Security and healthcare to education, support for military veterans and transportation projects.

Would Musk-Ramaswamy’s DOGE change the US?

For many, the deep financial cuts that Musk and Ramaswamy hope to introduce through DOGE could grind the American economy to a halt.

Many believe that cutting $2 trillion from spending would be devastating for the economy and also almost impossible to implement. Brian Riedl, a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute think tank, told The Washington Post, “There’s a long history of the fantasy that one smart businessman will just identify trillions in waste, but that’s just not how it works.”

The appointment of Musk and Ramaswamy also raises questions about conflict of interest and neutrality. Both Musk and Ramaswamy have companies with existing, lucrative government contracts.

It will be interesting to see how Trump’s DOGE helmed by Musk and Ramaswamy will fare. They can look to past efforts such as the National Partnership for Reinventing Government created during Bill Clinton’s presidency, which aimed to simplify federal bureaucracy, cut costs and make agencies more responsive to the public.

With inputs from agencies