It won’t be an official department, unless the GOP run House and Senate decide to make it so, and, they really, really, really, really, really should trot out legislation to create it, because it would be delicious to see Senate Democrats filibustering it, for refusing to vote on voting for it (the whole 60 votes cloture thing). Maybe they could simply replace the Department of Education, which doesn’t seem to do much but make education worse
Trump Appoints Elon Musk, Vivek Ramaswamy To Lead New Department Of Government Efficiency
President-elect Donald Trump announced Tuesday that Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy will together establish a new Department of Government Efficiency in his second administration.
Musk and Ramaswamy have been appointed to “slash excess regulations, cut wasteful expenditures and restructure Federal Agencies,” Trump’s statement reads. The former president added that the government department led by Musk and Ramaswamy will partner with the White House Office of Management and Budget in an effort “to drive large scale structural reform.”
“I look forward to Elon and Vivek making changes to the Federal Bureaucracy with an eye on efficiency and, at the same time, making life better for all Americans. Importantly, we will drive out the massive waste and fraud which exists throughout our annual $6.5 Trillion Dollars of Government Spending,” Trump’s statement reads.
“This will send shockwaves through the system, and anyone involved in Government waste, which is a lot of people!” Musk said in a statement included in Trump’s press release.
But, now, they have to figure out a way to make this work and to enforce their recommendations. To have the ability to have federal employees/contractors working for them to find the waste and fraud. To do something about the fraud. The devil is in the details. Especially since they will find so much waste and fraud within the federal system that there is no joke to be found.
(UK Independent) Trump’s announcement has characterized the department as an advisory board that will “provide guidance outside of government.”
Musk and Ramaswamy’s work will conclude “no later than July 4, 2026,” the announcement added – 18 months after Trump takes office.
Now we wait and see. Will this end up being more like Rand Paul’s “Festivus” report on waste, same as a few other Republicans have done? Or something with teeth to do something about the continued waste and fraud?
Nothing says “government efficiency” like creating a new government department of government efficiency. Just like when they created a Department of Homeland Security, even though they already had a Department of Defense.
It reminds me of one of Frank Herbert’s not-Dune books where the main character was an agent in the Bureau of Sabotage. Their mandate was to sabotage the efforts of the other government departments to maintain balance.
It would be better to just have Musk and a team of his people swoop into an agency and start auditing things. Then sit down with employees like in “Office space” and ask, “what would you say you do here?” or just do like Musk did in Twitter and shut down whole departments. Reassign the people to office vacancies in Tulsa and Butte and wait for them to resign or retire. Our government is so hopelessly inefficient that they could afford to lose about 75% of their staff with no impact on productivity. And there is zero possibility of identifying the right 75% to fire so just go in with an axe not a scalpel.
Shrinking government by creating a new bureaucracy? Sounds good!
Elon “First Lady” Musk did a bang-up job on twitter, turning it into a white supremacist message board and cutting its value 80%!!
To cut $2 TRILLION in government spending, the people you fire have to be associated with reducing outlays in costly programs, e.g., Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, Debt Interest and Defense.
Outlays were $6.1 trillion in FY 2023 with receipts of $4.4 trillion.
Elon may not know this, but the US spends “only” $136 BILLION in federal employee pay and benefits per year. So how will Elon cut $2 TRILLION*?
Trump’s policy proposals (spending and tax cuts) are projected to add $7.5
trillion to the debt which is currently at $35.3 trillion.
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*For MAGATs: 1 TRILLION is 1000 BILLION.
Sage economic advice from the swindler who “lost” over $70M at Galera Therapeutics.
MAGA Motherfucker!
*Again thanks for the mandate, Rimjob.