Elon Musk and businessman Vivek Ramaswamy were recently appointed to lead The Department of Government Efficiency by Donald Trump. The Department of Government Efficiency, acronym D.O.G.E., is an agency operating “outside of the Government” created with the purpose of advising President Donald Trump’s Government during his term. They plan to cut government spending by a proposed 2 trillion by minimizing government bureaucracy, streamlining department organization, excess spending, processes, and regulation; essentially gutting departments and firing workers which they deem as a “massive waste.”
Billionaire and alt-right public figure Elon Musk, is the architect behind Donald Trump’s new department. DOGE’s assumed namesake is likely the 13 year old popular internet meme dog, Elon Musk’s beloved Doge.
Musk had been alluding to his leadership and the establishment of DOGE in a tweet posted on August 20th after publicly endorsing Trump. This tweet featured an AI generated image of him standing at a podium labeled “D.O.G.E.” engraved with “Department Of Government Efficiency,” captioned “I am willing to serve”
After his initial endorsement, Elon Musk had been speaking out on government spending for months up to the election. In his appearances at a Trump rally in October, he exclaimed “Your money is being wasted, and the Department of Government Efficiency will fix that,” pointing to his appointment along with Ramaswamy.
Musk and his partner Ramaswamy, who in his presidential run promised to shut down the FBI, the Department of Education, and the Food and Nutrition Service, causing some concern; Both with no governmental experience and CEOs of billion dollar corporations, have questionable motives.
There is no doubt that the U.S. Government wastes millions on unnecessary spending. Examples can be found everywhere, such as maintaining empty government buildings, hundreds of billions in payment errors, producing pennies, Russian lab brain experiments on cats, underwater rescue robots for communities not near any large body of water, price gouging and overcharging for military on cheap and/or commercially available products, or controversially 8 billion on Israel.
Musk credits this streamlining to help humanity towards progress like colonizing mars saying DOGE is “the only path to extending life beyond Earth.” However, government investigations on Tesla, Space X’s multiple government contracts, and feuds with the FAA, say otherwise.
Closer ties to the government and the ability to push for and lead deregulation will allow Musk and Ramaswamy to further their business pursuits and formally regulate some now-illegal business practices.
For the public this could possibly mean more exploitation, less climate regulations, and more rocket crashes. On the economic front, Musk said on the record, the change to be made with DOGE “necessarily involves some temporary hardship” for the American people.
