Trump appoints Elon Musk to head agency that will cut wasteful government spending

The Department of Government Efficiency, dubbed ‘DOGE,’ will operate outside traditional government structures with a mandate to identify and eliminate excessive regulation and spending.

By JBN

President-Elect Donald Trump has tapped tech entrepreneur Elon Musk and former Republican presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy to lead a new agency focused on cutting federal spending and reducing government bureaucracy.

The Department of Government Efficiency, dubbed “DOGE,” will operate outside traditional government structures with a mandate to identify and eliminate excessive regulation and spending. The name references a cryptocurrency meme associated with Musk, who has pledged to target $2 trillion in federal budget cuts.

“This will send shockwaves through the system,” Musk said in a statement released by the Trump transition team. The Tesla CEO later posted on X that the initiative represents a “threat to bureaucracy, not democracy,” though he acknowledged the cuts would mean “temporary hardship” for some people. While specific targets remain largely undefined, Musk has criticized smaller federal recipients, including the Education Department and NPR.

Ramaswamy, who made eliminating federal agencies a cornerstone of his primary campaign, has advocated for aggressive measures, including mass layoffs of federal workers. During his campaign, he identified several agencies for elimination, including the FBI, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, the Education Department, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, and the Food and Nutrition Service within the Agriculture Department.

In a recent appearance with former Fox News host Tucker Carlson, Ramaswamy argued that implementing standard office hours would trigger significant departures.

“If you simply mandated federal employees to work Monday through Friday, 8 a.m. to 6 p.m., like most Americans, you’d see a mass exodus. Probably a 25% thinning of the bureaucracy right there,” Ramaswamy said.

The former president set an ambitious deadline of July 4, 2026, for the department to complete its work, comparing its potential impact to the Manhattan Project.

“It will become, potentially, ‘The Manhattan Project’ of our time,” Trump said on Tuesday. “Republican politicians have dreamed about the objectives of ‘DOGE’ for a very long time.”

“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.”

According to NBC News, Trump may seek “presidential reorganization authority” from Congress under the Presidential Reorganization Act, which would permit him to consolidate, reorganize or eliminate agencies within the executive branch — a power last granted during the Reagan administration.